What Gift?: The Reality of the Student Who is Gifted and Talented in Public School Classrooms

The era of No Child Left Behind legislation is an excellent time to examine the field of gifted education. Bines (1991) lamented that, after more than 70 years of research, there is not even consensus on an operational definition of giftedness or the most reliable method for identifying gifted students. Evidence does support the following statement: There are some youngsters who are born with the capability to learn faster than others those ideas or concepts that societies value in children and in adults (Baldwin, 1994). According to Dalzell (1998), giftedness may be defined simply as intellectual precocity. Incumbent upon educators remains the challenge to resolve these lingering obstacles in order to best serve the students who are identified as gifted and therefore entitled to gifted education services.