Gifted Education

State and Federal Actions

Gifted education, like most other aspects of American public education, was seen primarily as a state responsibility for most of the previous century. The first major federal study on gifted education, the “Marland Report,” produced in 1972, included a definition that became the basis for many state definitions: Gifted students exhibit general intellectual ability, specific academic aptitude, creative or productive thinking, leadership ability, visual and performing arts aptitude, and/or psychomotor ability. This definition helped to expand the range of possible areas of giftedness, which had previously been quite limited.

Over the next 20 years, the field of gifted education was seriously impacted by the economic recessions that occurred throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the observation that minority and poor students are often severely underrepresented in gifted programs. Partially as a result of these developments, Congress passed the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act in 1988. The Javits Act funded a research center on gifted students and several local and statewide demonstration projects to increase the nation's capacity to provide services to underserved gifted students. However, the Javits Act is small by federal standards (e.g., peaking at just over $11 million dollars from 2002–2005) and is routinely threatened with elimination.

In 1993, the U.S. Department of Education issued National Excellence: A Case for Developing America's Talent. This report included the following definition, which is incorporated in the No Child Left Behind Act (2002), within which the Javits Act is included:

The lack of a strong federal role results in most relevant legislation occurring at the state level. As might have been expected, this situation led to a wide range of policies: In some states, identification and programming for gifted students is mandated; in others, only identification is mandated; in some, neither is mandated. Definitions of giftedness vary from state to state, as do programming requirements and funding. It is within this context that legal issues within gifted education have developed.

Case Law

The most interesting characteristic of case law regarding gifted education is its limited size, which may be due to parental perceptions that the legal system moves too slowly to rule about a specific issue in a specific grade, which is the focus of most parental concerns about gifted education. Some principal themes are discussed here.

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