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Home › Articles › Back to School Headquarters › Gifted Children

Gifted Children

The Other Side of Special Education

By Kelly Burgess

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, and became an advocate for gifted children.

Like James Delisle, Judy Galbraith, of Minneapolis, Minn., became interested in gifted education in her early days as a teacher when she found she wasn't trained to meet the needs of her gifted students. She decided to go to graduate school and specialize in gifted education. Instead of a thesis, she wrote a book about gifted children. Since then, she has written dozens of books, published under her own label, Free Spirit Publishing, and also has become an advocate for gifted children.

She says that the main problem is that gifted education is far from a priority in our educational system. "Only half of all states have a mandated gifted program, and many of those programs either have no funding, or they're very low on the funding totem pole," Galbraith says. "There also are no federal guidelines, so the services have no uniformity or control."

What Galbraith worries about is that gifted students will become lackadaisical and refuse to "play the game." If they're receiving dull assignments, especially if it's work they already know, they may just stop doing it, and their grades will reflect not their intelligence, but their boredom.

While most experts in gifted education agree that the public schools need a complete overhaul of their gifted programs, Galbraith also says the gifted child's best advocate is an informed parent. She feels parents of gifted children should read and learn about gifted education, programs for gifted children and the rights of their child in their state. Other alternatives are special gifted schools, such as the one Alexa Kottmeyer attends, or even home schooling.

But Delisle warns parents against home schooling for the wrong reasons. "I'm completely behind parents who home school because they think it's best for their child, and they're willing and able to put in the effort and find the necessary resources to challenge that child," Delisle says. "What worries me is a parent who home schools just out of frustration because they can't get what they need from the public school. That tells me the schools are failing in their duties."

The So-called "Underachiever"
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