Every school has students who possess exceptional abilities; who can be considered gifted and talented. Students with special gifts and talents come from all cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Cohen, 1990). Yet as the number of Hispanic English language learners increases across the country, the number identified as gifted remains the same…

Policy and funding influence equitable education for students who are gifted. The concept of equity is examined through variations in policy and in funding at the state, district, and local levels. Challenges and barriers to equity in policy and funding include policy structures, where policy provides guidance without accountability measures, or…

The Great Recession is an economic crisis which has had repercussions through different facets of U.S. society. Texas, despite overall economic health, enacted severe cuts to education as a result of the Great Recession. A potential consequence of these austerity measures is the identification of Black, Latinx, and Native American students for…

The U.S. public K-12 student population experienced a significant increase in the number of English language learners (ELLs) since 2010. Public schools responded to this change in demographics by increasing their services for ELLs; however, many were not initially prepared for this change. Within the field of gifted education, there is a concern…

The annals of gifted education research contain few educational policy studies and even fewer studies on the impacts of changes in policy. To partially fill this gap, the authors performed an ABA study investigating the impact of accountability legislation on the number of students reported gifted in Texas public schools. Data were collected from…

The United States is becoming a more culturally and linguistically diverse nation. This is especially true when we look at the youngest generation of learners. This growing diversity increases the need to accurately identify young children as dual language learners (DLLs) prior to kindergarten. Ensuring educators have a strong understanding of…

Identifying and maintaining talent is important in any organization, but in a low-performing school, it is perhaps "the" most important component to achieving turnaround. Given the importance of teachers and leaders for students and schools, districts and states are wise to hone their efforts related to identifying, attracting,…

The Mathematics Fluency and Calculation Tests (MFaCTs) are a series of measures designed to assess for arithmetic calculation skills and calculation fluency in children ages 6 through 18. There are five main purposes of the MFaCTs: (1) identifying students who are behind in basic math fact automaticity; (2) evaluating possible delays in arithmetic…

The members of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southwest's Texas English Learners Research Alliance requested this project because they were interested in learning more about the participation of current English learner students in gifted and talented (GT) programs in Texas, and how their participation compared with that of former English…

The purpose of the current study was to determine if the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scale (RIAS) scores, as standardized IQ scores, correlate with the children's judgments of their classmates' intelligence, as peer nomination scores, in terms of their power to identify intellectually superior children. Guess Who: Peer Nomination Form (GWPNF)…

The issue of underrepresentation in gifted and talented (GT) programs has developed into a critical educational concern. At the core are ambiguous identification assessment practices, especially for bilingual students. To illustrate, this article reports data from the last decade that supports the underrepresentation of gifted Hispanic bilingual…

This study examined whether Texas students who are gifted and learning disabled are being identified for gifted programs. Survey results from gifted program coordinators (n=386) showed that few school districts (n=75) selected gifted children with learning disabilities for gifted programs. Fewer districts reported identification of these students…

With support from the John Templeton Foundation, the authors held a Summit on Acceleration at The University of Iowa in May 2003. They invited distinguished scholars and educators from around the country to help them formulate a national report on acceleration. This first volume of the Templeton Report on acceleration trumpets an alarm to the…

This monograph contains 11 papers describing model projects that address the identification of gifted students. An introduction by Carolyn M. Callahan and Carol A. Tomlinson identifies commonalities and themes in the promising practices highlighted in the papers. The papers include: (1) "Project STREAM: Support, Training and Resources for…

This theme issue includes five articles that focus on issues surrounding gifted and talented students, especially as they relate to poor, minority, or limited-English-proficient children. "Traditional Methods of Identifying Gifted Students Overlooks Many" (Linda Cantu) presents findings from the National Educational Longitudinal Study…