In 2005, Lafayette Elementary School's enrollment and standardized test scores were declining. Although the school was known for its fine programs for special needs students and English-language learners, and its diverse population offered many special opportunities to celebrate other cultures and languages, it was not making strides toward…

Academic learning and creativity should be overlapping goals that can be simultaneously pursued in programs of advanced academics. However, efforts aimed at nurturing creativity and academic learning sometimes are represented as two related but separate paths; this separation is unnecessary and can undermine the development of creative and…

Some may argue that gifted children have many education options, but these options do not always help gifted students learn science. Unfortunately, gifted students often do not reach their full academic potential--they are frequently less motivated to succeed because they are not being academically challenged in regular classrooms (McCoach and…

Cases of secondary integration (Level V), the most advanced level of development through positive disintegration, are easily found within the religious sphere. To find a secular case of secondary integration presents a greater challenge. The life of Peace Pilgrim (1908-1981), known personally to a great many people, appears to be such a case. The…

The author is an enthusiastic supporter of using young adult literature in the classroom with gifted learners--so much, that he has been accused of being "against" the classics. Not so, but he does ask about and challenges teachers to tell him if their classroom use of the classics is appropriate. Do the classics provide the kind of interaction…

The Oregon Statewide Report Card is an annual publication required by law (ORS 329.115), which reports on the state of public schools and their progress towards the goals of the Oregon Educational Act for the 21st Century. The purpose of the Oregon Report Card is to monitor trends among school districts and Oregon's progress toward achieving the…

Case studies about issues arising from education policy were written between 2003 and 2011 by doctoral candidates in Curriculum and Instruction who were career K-12 educators. Literary analysis was employed in grouping 57 case studies, which described primarily situations that occurred in school districts in one large metropolitan area, by topic…

The Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) collects a variety of information including student enrollment and educational programs and services, most of which is disaggregated by race/ethnicity, sex, limited English proficiency, and disability. The CRDC is a longstanding and important aspect of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights…

This study was conducted to determine whether or not a student's focus and motivation during a lesson is a contributor in their educational success rate. Six fifth grade students in an enrichment room from Cambria Elementary School, in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, participated in the study that spanned through April to June of 2011. These students…

This study demonstrates that the current status of gifted education in Illinois varies greatly among school districts since the initial elimination of state mandates and accompanying funding. Systemic programs serving all grade levels within a district are extremely rare and are dependent on recommendations from school administrators and decisions…

The future of our society depends on our gifted children--the population in which we'll find our next Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, or Virginia Woolf. Yet the gifts and talents of some of our most brilliant kids may never be recognized because these children fall into a group known as twice exceptional, or "2e." Twice exceptional kids are both…

Child development involves the process of mastering cultural tools, which modify relations with the world and provide the means to act on the self. A sign is a universal cultural tool, but these tools are not the same for all ages. The problem of specifying development becomes one of finding the tools that children use in their activity.…

Within the United States, the underrepresentation of historically underserved student groups continues to be a phenomenon in gifted and talented (GT) programs. In a phenomenological study exploring teachers' and African American parents' perceptions of the underrepresentation of gifted African American students, four themes emerged from the study.…

Bringing history alive in one Southern, suburban middle school, this application of community-action service-learning and Artful Learning is chronicled from inception to conclusion. This qualitative participatory action research study explored the effects of this program on 8th-grade gifted students. The purpose of the study was to examine one…

Despite a growing national need to develop capabilities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), many men and women who are considered talented in these areas during high school choose not to pursue STEM undergraduate majors. A purpose of the current study was to better understand factors that contribute to an individual's…