Gifted Students Left Behind Too?

My son has a presentation tonight—a project for his QUEST class—so this article seemed pertinent.

Nationally, about 3 million kindergarten through 12th-grade students are identified as gifted, but 80% of them do not receive specialized instruction, experts say. Studies have found that 5% to 20% of students who drop out are gifted.

There is no federal law mandating special programs for gifted children, though many educators argue that these students -- whose curiosity and creativity often coexist with emotional and social problems -- deserve the same status as those with special needs.

I was in a gifted program throughout elementary school, and I hated it. The only thing I wanted to do in, say, fourth grade was learn about fifth- and sixth- and seventh-grade stuff. But the only thing I ever did was "explore" the fourth-grade stuff by being forced to spend my time doing cut-and-paste "projects." I was already bored with the material. How was making a diorama about it going to change that?

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