Position Statements

NAGC believes it is essential to define giftedness in a way that both reflects best thinking in the field and moves beyond a focus on identification criteria to a deeper understanding of the complex nature of giftedness and the multi-faceted approach to services required to appropriately serve students with gifts and talents. NAGC supports the following definition, which includes five key elements educators in all settings must address to ensure equitable identification and comprehensive services.

Educational acceleration is one of the cornerstones of exemplary gifted education practices, with more research supporting this intervention than any other in the literature on gifted individuals. The practice of educational acceleration has long been used to match high level student general ability and specific talent with optimal learning opportunities.

NAGC believes that schools, districts, and states should be accountable for the learning gains of all students, including gifted and talented learners from all socio-economic, racial, and ethnic subgroups

The arts are essential to a balanced education, with specific benefits for the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor development of all students, with special benefits for gifted and talented learners. Yet frequently, when school resources are limited, arts education funding is reduced or eliminated.

Collaboration among gifted, general, special education and related services professionals is essential to meet the varied needs of today’s diverse student population. Through a shared vision and passion for meeting the needs of all learners, specialized educators share their expertise and insights to plan for their students across programs and services.

Most gifted children in the United States spend the majority of their school time in regular classroom settings, grouped with age peers who have a wide range of academic achievement and potential. This expansive range of needs in every classroom underscores the importance of assessing all students appropriately and providing differentiated curriculum and instruction that will promote their learning. D

This position statement, initiated by the Early Childhood Division of NAGC, focuses on creating optimal environments for recognizing, developing, and nurturing the strengths and talents of young gifted children, age 3 through 8.

Like all other students with disabilities in America’s schools, gifted students with co-existing disabilities—the Twice-Exceptional (2e)—have the right to a free, appropriate, public education. However, due to challenges inherent in accurately evaluating a student’s learning strengths and weaknesses, and special education identification processes that focus on below grade-level achievement, many 2e students are going unidentified.

Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, a major objective of federal and state education policy has been to narrow K-12 achievement gaps.

Gifted students have the same developmental tasks as their less able age peers do (related, for example, to identity, sense of competence, career direction, peer relationships, differentiation, autonomy).

In a world of ever-increasing gender equality in marriage, employment, and military service, of equitable treatment of and opportunities for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, and questioning (GLBTQ) persons in these domains, and of understanding multicultural concerns in general, many educational groups are concerned about how best to address the particular needs of students with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.

Assessments can be used for a variety of purposes, including identifying students for gifted programs; providing ongoing feedback to guide the instructional process; and to determine to what extent students have obtained intended goals (e.g., academic, affective) within a gifted program.

As the nation becomes more and more diverse, gifted education programs should reflect changing U.S. demographics. Equitably identified gifted students represent cultural and linguistic diversity as well as a wide range of socioeconomic groups and geographic areas, yet these populations are too often overlooked. Reversing the underrepresentation of culturally and linguistically diverse students (CLD) in gifted education will require that educators have a thorough understanding of the reasons that CLD students have traditionally been excluded from participation in gifted programs.

NAGC supports mandating services to meet the unique needs of gifted and talented children.

Grouping gifted children is one of the foundations of exemplary gifted education practice. The research on the many grouping strategies available to educators of these children is long, consistent, and overwhelmingly positive (Rogers, 2006; Tieso, 2003). Nonetheless, the "press" from general educators, both teachers and administrators, has been consistently less supportive. Myths abound that grouping these children damages the self-esteem of struggling learners, creates an "elite" group who may think too highly of themselves, and is actually undemocratic and, at times, racist. None of these papers have any founding in actual research, but the arguments continue decade after decade (Fiedler, Lange, & Winebrenner, 2002). This position paper is intended for school board members, school administrators, teachers, parents of gifted children, and other community members with an interest in education.

NAGC believes that parents and families of gifted, high-ability, and advanced learners matter. Family is critical to the development and support of students’ talents and research supports the long- and short-term benefits of parent, family, and community engagement on student performance, school attendance, and social and emotional growth and development, regardless of income, ethnicity, culture, language proficiency, or geography.

The role of pre-service education programs in preparing educators to work effectively with a wide range of learners is critical to student success. However, most teacher licensure programs are not preparing teachers to meet the needs of high-ability students. In order to increase the effectiveness of all teachers in working with gifted and talented students, NAGC calls on pre-service teacher preparation programs to include coursework for all their teacher candidates on the nature and needs of gifted and talented students.

This statement addresses guidelines for use of the WISC-V in the assessment of gifted and twice-exceptional children. Comprehensive, individual intelligence tests can be invaluable when used as part of a multi-faceted approach to identify gifted and twice exceptional children. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) is a popular cognitive assessment for this purpose.

Here is a link to the previous statement on assessment of gifted and the WISC-IV.

The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) is dedicated to advocating for equitably meeting the needs of all gifted and talented learners, and the educators and stakeholders that support them, across the United States. NAGC’s advocacy is rooted in the core belief that education in a democracy must respect the uniqueness of all individuals, the cultural diversity within our society, and the similarities and differences in learning characteristics that can be found within any group of students.

The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) knows that restricting discussions and lessons on culturally responsive topics, such as race, religion, sexuality, and gender, and altering related curricular content can stifle growth and curiosity, constraining the intellectual development of children with advanced abilities.