With so much emphasis placed on helping bridge the achievement gap and ensuring that all students meet the standards, a question arises: what about the students who are already meeting and exceeding the standards? There are currently three million gifted students in the United States, about 6% of the school population. In Oregon gifted students’ account for 8% of the school population (National Association for Gifted Children, 2008) . The term gifted is loosely defined and is not necessarily related to IQ scores or a students overall performance. Generally, a gifted student is one who have demonstrated high performance and capability in one or more of the following areas: “(1) general intellectual ability, (2) specific academic aptitude, (3) creative or productive thinking, (4) leadership ability, (5) visual or performing arts, (6) psychomotor ability" (ERIC clearinghouse on handicapped and gifted children, 1990) .
Unfortunately, these students often don’t receive the intellectual, emotional or social support they desperately need in school causing a large percentage of gifted students to underachieve. Gifted students face difficulties with emotional issues including perfectionism, isolationism and depression. Nationwide teachers and administrators face many hurdles in providing a classroom experience that is rewarding for these students and often fail to make meeting the needs of gifted students a priority. Scholars disagree about what is the best way to promote the success of gifted students in the classroom while supporting the other 94% of students nationwide. Many methods have been developed to meet this need including pullout programs, tracking, curriculum compacting, cluster grouping, differentiated instruction and acceleration. It is important that future educators become familiar with the issues surrounding educating gifted children and learn each of these techniques, recognizing their strengths and weaknesses, so that they are better able to meet the needs of gifted students in their classrooms.
Across the nation public education is facing major budget cuts. Administrators are pinching pennies and many programs are being cut. This has harshly affected the programs being offered for gifted children, particularly because NCLB is silent and does not reward schools for advancing such programs. Today only 2.6 cents of every 100 dollars spent on federal education programs benefits gifted students. Gifted students also face a lack of financial support for programs at the state level. Currently, 46 states have defined what is considered a gifted student in their state. Many states mandate programs for talented and gifted students however they often fail to properly fund these programs. In the last ten years over 20 states have defunded programming for gifted children while five additional states have funding to $250,000 (National Association for Gifted Children, 2008) .
Educators have yet to develop a flaw-proof method of identifying gifted learners. Historically gifted students have been identified using IQ testing but this method has proved to be flawed due to cultural biases (Colangelo, Assouline, & Gross, 2004) . Regardless, standardized test performance still has a great degree of value in identifying gifted students. According to the State of Oregon a student who performs in the top 3% of his or her age group is considered gifted (DeLacy, 1996) . Although, testing is not the only way that educators identify gifted students, teachers and parents also have a voice in this process. Many districts have created evaluation methods that include statements from teachers, parents and sometimes even the student (DeLacy, 1996) .
Of the three million gifted students nation wide, low income and minority students, particularly African American, Hispanic and Native Americans, are under-represented. This could be due to a variety of factors; most likely this is due to poor performance on standardized testing that may have cultural and linguistic biases. Experts have concluded that this disparity will continue until the “differential environmental advantages and disadvantages that [these] subgroups experience” are addressed (Pfeiffer, 2002) .
Some educators believe that special programs for gifted students are unneeded. The general thought among these educators is that if students are gifted, they’ll be fine without these resources but this line of thought has been proven wrong time and time again. Gifted students who are given the resources and tools they need in the classroom to be challenged become bored and often isolate themselves or act out despite how “smart” they might be. Many educators also believe that all students are gifted. These educators often are seeking a sense of educational equality. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. All students have talents and gifts but not all students are gifted. Educational equality does not, and should not, mean that all students are treated the same. This is an important fact for educators to recognize. Moreover, educators must recognize that no students ask to be gifted. Giftedness is an innate quality developed within the student that should be cultivated rather than repressed (United States Department of Education, 1993) .
Gifted students don’t need to be labeled or have a specialized curriculum to know they’re different than their peers. Gifted students recognize very early in schooling that they think and learn in a different way than their age-peers. Unfortunately, if they are not identified as gifted and given the resources and support they need gifted students can face psychological consequences. Gifted students often are isolated from their peers as a result being different. Gifted students also commonly struggle with issues related to perfectionism. This can lead to the development of anxiety. As a result of isolation and perfectionism, as well as a combination of other factors, there is a high prevalence of depression in gifted students. Many gifted children face issues with underachievement and a lack of motivation in schooling. They may perform well on a reasoning or IQ test but fail their classes in school. Often gifted students who are only offered coursework equivalent to the abilities of their age-peers will become bored and turned off from learning and school leading to underachievement and leaving school.
There are many gifted students who are twice exceptional, i.e. they have a learning disability or special needs in addition to being gifted. These students often face the greatest difficulty, as their disability can cloud their giftedness or vice-versa. It is important for educators to recognize students within multiple needs groups and facilitate instruction in a way that balances both needs. Uniquely Gifted, www.uniquelygifted.org, is a website that is great resource for teachers of twice exceptional students including research publications and information on proven strategies to serve gifted students with various learning, psychological or developmental difficulties. Moreover, many of the techniques used to assist gifted students who do not have special needs (outside of being gifted) can also be used to help those with special needs.
There are many methods to accommodate talented and gifted students. Acceleration is the practice of giving younger children material normally reserved for children that are older. It requires matching “the level, complexity, and pace of the curriculum with the readiness and motivation of the student” (United States Department of Education, 1993) . Acceleration generally has costs very little and the school is not required to provide any additional resources for the student. It has proven to be effective in challenging and motivating gifted children in the classroom. Acceleration can occur in a number of ways. Often accelerated students are allowed to skip grades or enter into school early, i.e. entering kindergarten at age four. Students are also commonly given opportunities to take Advanced Placement courses, concurrently enroll in multiple schools to find coursework that best fits the students’ needs or obtain credit for class through examination.
While acceleration is a remedy for the boredom that gifted students face in the classroom, it is not a perfect solution. Many researchers have cited concern for the social and emotional well being of students that are placed in classrooms with students who are older than them. Students who are accelerated often as intellectually mature as their peers but may lack in physical development. The combination of these two factors can lead to excessive bullying or teasing of accelerated students which can lead to poor behavior and cause accelerated students to withdraw and isolate themselves once again. Although, because of the great deal of behavioral issues gifted students face in their original classrooms often allowing students to be accelerated leads to improvements in behavior and social skills (DeLacy, 1996) .
In the past, many educators have had a negative outlook on acceleration. Advancing this outlook could have a great impact on the success of an accelerated student. It is important for educators to understand the value of acceleration. In addition, educators must recognize students within their classrooms that would benefit from acceleration and find ways to facilitate acceleration for these students if possible. Educators must also welcome and be supportive to any accelerated students that are place in their class if the student is deemed to have the maturity and intellectual capability to be in the course. It is vital for students to feel that they have the support of their teachers to be successful in acceleration, particularly with radical acceleration, i.e. acceleration by two or more years.
Acceleration can also occur through grade telescoping or curriculum compacting. Grade telescoping is a process, developed by Stephen Tannenbaum, where students—generally in groups—study "...the basics in the least amount of time thereby sparing themselves the tedium of dwelling on content that they either know already or can absorb in short order” (Reis, et al., 1993) . Using grade telescoping gifted students can master numerous year worth of content in only a short time, allowing them to move to more difficult material rather quickly. Similar to grade telescoping, curriculum compacting, developed by Renzulli & Smith, is a form of acceleration that also has been proven to be effective in educating gifted children. In this method gifted students are assessed to determine what material they have already mastered. This assessment can take many forms from standardized test to informal discussion with the student’s previous teacher (Reis, et al., 1993) . Students are then given alternative activities to the rest of the class to accelerate their learning beyond what they already know and understand. This can be done on a smaller scale within each unit of instruction or on a larger scale during the course of an entire school year.
Pullout programs have also proven to be effective in supporting the educational needs of gifted students. In a pullout program, a student is taken from a regular classroom for a section of the day to complete more challenging work. These programs are commonly used in math and reading instruction. In the past some educators have mistakenly assumed that because a gifted student participated in a pullout program that their needs were being met within the program. This is never the case. Pullout programs are an additional support for students outside of the support they receive in their classroom. Generally, pullout programs are declining to due to the cost associated with these programs. Pullout programs can also include pulling a student out of regular schooling and having a student attend a magnet school for gifted students or that specializes in a particular content area, e.g. math and science (National Associated for Gifted Children) .
Tracking is a method of grouping students into classes based on academic ability or previous achievement. This leads to high ability students, middle ability students and at risk students being assigned to different classes. It is proven that in tracking it is difficult for a student to be able to move tracks or advance to a different ability level. Tracking particularly hurts students in lower ability groups and often creates a “class system where there are clear differences between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’”(Fielder, 1992) . Therefore, tracking is not viewed as an effective method of supporting gifted students.
Unlike tracking, cluster grouping involves creating a mixed ability classroom by placing three to six gifted students within the same classroom and training the teacher of that class to work with exceptional students (Winebrenner & Devlin, 2001) . Grouping gifted students together for instruction increases achievement for gifted students, and in some cases, also for students who are achieving at average and below average levels.
Ultimately, the method most educators utilize in their classroom is the differentiation of instruction for gifted learners. This can occurs within a regular classroom and the majority of the strategies utilized in differentiating instruction for gifted students benefit all students. In a differentiated classroom a teacher “provides a variety of avenues to content (what is taught), process (activities through which students come to understand what is taught), and products (how a student shows and extends what he or she has learned) in response to … the full range of academic diversity in the classroom” (Tomlinson, 1997) . With gifted learners, teachers should strive to create activities that are “complex enough, abstract enough, open-ended enough and multifaceted enough” to challenge gifted students (Tomlinson, 1997) . Many of the acceleration techniques discussed earlier can be used within a differentiated classroom.
Teachers should give multiple learning options for all students ensuring that gifted students and non-gifted are given the opportunity to complete work that is engaging and interesting. This helps resolve many of the issues gifted students face with isolation, as it is not apparent that they are completing more intellectually challenging work than their peers. Teachers should use flexible ability grouping when differentiating instruction for gifted students. Unlike tracking ability grouping is not permanent. Students can easily move from group to group based on personal growth. In ability grouping, students are grouped with similar ability and complete collaborative learning activities. Ability grouping is particularly helpful with collaborative learning exercises that will be difficult for gifted students if places in a group with diverse ability levels.
There are many resources available for teachers who have gifted students in their classrooms. Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom by Susan Winebrenner is a helpful resource for differentiating instruction and incorporating acceleration without utilizing a pullout program. It includes many strategies with examples, graphics and an explanation of why it is beneficial to gifted students in the classroom. In addition, the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) is working to increase professional development opportunities related to gifted education. The NAGC regularly hosts conferences and seminars for teachers and their website, www.nagc.com, is loaded with classroom resources and publications for teachers. Another great website for teachers is Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page, http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/. This website includes a library of publications about gifted children providing more information on each of the strategies discussed within this paper. It also includes a great deal of information teachers can provide to parents including the best ways to advocate for gifted children and list of enrichment and summer programs for gifted students.
Meeting the educational needs of gifted students is an issue that should concern all educators. Many educators have little to no instruction on the importance of differentiating instruction and meeting the needs of gifted students. Talented and gifted students are currently the most underserved exceptionality in public schools in the United States. Educators have an opportunity to reverse this trend and make a profound impact on these students’ lives by identifying gifted students helping them receive the resources and instruction they need to thrive within school.
