Giftedness exists

Every student has gifts. Given time and support, all students can learn deeply and accomplish amazing things.

But a small fraction of students have truly rare potential. Some have unusual artistic potential. Some are socially gifted, with unusual capacity for empathy and insight. Some are physically gifted, with rare athletic potential or extraordinary good looks.

And, of course, some are gifted in ways that most people think of as smart. Classically "smart" kids might have a knack for math, if provided the opportunity to develop it. Or they find it easy to remember things, or to solve problems.

Some schools do better than others at helping students discover and develop their superpowers. As usual, there's a pattern: if you're poor or nonwhite, your giftedness is far less likely to be noticed. Some school systems in America, notably in New York, routinely support students with signs of giftedness. National data on the prevalence of screening for giftedness is not collected.

Giftedness is real—but opportunity to explore gifts is not equally distributed. This post explores how schools identify advanced potential, why some students are overlooked, and what it takes to help exceptional learners thrive.

Giftedness is often lumpy

A person who is gifted in one way is not necessarily gifted in every way. Uneven gifts are the stuff of literature, legend and stereotype. The absent-minded professor. The dumb jock. The psychopathic mean girl. The silent painter. The telegenic dope. The awkward nerd.

Giftedness in any dimension is, by definition, rare. It implies an unusual degree of aptitude and the potential for unusual achievements.

Giftedness must be developed

But there is not an automatic connection between amazing potential and amazing results.

Imagine a world-class violinist. By definition, such a person must have musical gifts: a strong sense of pitch, timing and rhythm, a strong memory for sounds and composition, fine coordination in both hands and an unusual capacity to draw pleasure from repetitive practice.

Oh, and consistent access to a violin. And time and space to play it. And a teacher.

It makes a lot of sense to support gifted students by providing the things they need to flourish. Among other things, long-term research suggests that when things go right, profoundly gifted students are disproportionately likely to change the world. This theme was featured in The G Word, a movie and a collection of resources that explore the topic of giftedness.

HIGHLY CAPABLE from Marc Smolowitz on Vimeo.

The Gifted Gap

California does not require schools to screen all students for signs of giftedness. Identification practices vary by district. Some districts use group-administered screening, while others rely more heavily on referrals from teachers or families. Referral-based approaches can overlook students whose abilities are less readily noticed.

This subjective "referral" approach creates an unequal result sometimes called the Gifted Gap. Low-income students, students of color and girls are less likely to be referred into gifted programs.

There are many reasons why gifted students are overlooked. Kids don't always want to be pigeonholed as smart, for example. Being gifted is a form of being different, which can also feel like being weird. Some gifted students underperform in school because they find it tedious. Some, bored, may fidget or disrupt class. Others, not wanting to be noticed, sit quietly in class, do what they're told and endure the slow pace.

Giftedness is not funded as a disability.
Neither California nor the federal government sets aside significant money to educate gifted students.

California’s annual academic assessments do not designate students as gifted. They primarily measure achievement in grade-level standards, rather than general cognitive ability. Even so, high test scores can be one useful part of a broader identification process, especially when schools look for students performing far above grade level.

Psychologists use a variety of assessments to estimate different forms of intelligence, including "general" intelligence ("G"). Psychologists use individually administered instruments such as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children to estimate several dimensions of cognitive performance. Schools may also use group-administered ability tests such as CogAT. IQ scores are standardized so that 100 is the population average, but a score is an estimate, not an infallible measure of a child’s potential.

No single assessment captures every kind of giftedness. Strong identification systems use multiple measures, which may include achievement data, ability tests, classroom performance, portfolios, observations and input from teachers and families. They also provide more than one opportunity for students to demonstrate advanced potential.

Any assessment can misrepresent a student’s potential. Language differences, disability, cultural mismatch, anxiety, unfamiliarity with testing and ordinary measurement error can depress a score. Preparation and repeated exposure can sometimes raise one. This is why experts recommend using multiple measures rather than treating a single cutoff score as a definitive judgment.

Giftedness and special education

On its own, giftedness is not defined as a disability or special need. Some students are both gifted and have cognitive disabilities, a condition often described as "twice exceptional" or "2e." The movie Rain Man portrays a celebrated fictitious example.

The life and death of "Gifted and Talented" funding

Today, some states still set aside funds specifically for gifted education, but neither California nor the federal government does so meaningfully. This is a shift.

Gifted programs in schools originated in the Cold War. In October of 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world with the launch of Sputnik. Suddenly, support for the education of unusually gifted students became a matter of national security. America needed more rocket scientists, fast: where would they come from?

In 1958, Congress enacted the National Defense Education Act in response to Sputnik and concern about the nation’s scientific and technical capacity. The law supported science, mathematics, foreign-language education, student loans and fellowships. Its Title V provided federal matching funds for testing, guidance and counseling programs intended in part to create a broad education system capable of widely identifying students with the aptitude to pursue higher education. President Kennedy added to the momentum by setting America's sights on the moon. States and school districts responded enthusiastically and in a lasting way; adjusted for inflation, by 1971 California spent about $600 per participating student in a "gifted and talented" program. In 1977 California state budget expenditures for the program had grown to the 2026 equivalent of $83 million.

As public education expanded and succeeded, the cold war era strategy of identifying gifted exceptions for access to higher learning gave way to a more ambitious aim: provide access to higher education broadly. In 1965, the National Defense Education Act was superseded by a key element of the Johnson administration's war on poverty: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The focus on identifying giftedness survived, in modified form, in expanded use of standardized testing.

It was in this Cold War swirl of competing priorities that California's leaders developed a Master Plan for Higher Education in the state. Under this plan, the University of California became the top tier of the state's college system, responsible for serving the top eighth of the state's high school graduates, based on their grades and test scores. This was a far broader aim than the laser-beam identification and education of only the most gifted students.

School boards may fund programs for gifted students using LCFF funds, but they are not compelled to do so

As this larger vision came to pass, the funding for GATE programs withered, first at the federal level, then at the state level. The last vestiges of California's state funding for gifted education disappeared with the adoption of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) in 2013-14. According to the National Association for Gifted Children, a nonprofit organization, most other states have taken a similar path, leaving to school districts and schools the question of how to invest in students with unusual potential. A small remnant of the once-substantial Federal support for gifted programs remains in the form of Javits grants. This small program is still valuable partly as a survey vehicle; every few years it has reported on the state of gifted education programs in America.

In 2025, Federal Javits grants supported two local gifted programs in California. Any other programs for gifted students that now exist in California are local and/or private. The state collects no data about them.

Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Foundation has been a longtime advocate for programs that provide motivated students with access to advanced learning. In a post in 2025 he suggested that the term "gifted" is polarizing and should be dropped. His prescription: "Build advanced education initiatives into every elementary school in the country, serving at least the top 10 percent of students in each campus."

What do other countries do?

Many countries invest in students with high potential partly by providing a system of test-in schools that sort motivated and capable learners along the way. Test scores serve as the sorting hat for many public schools in Japan, Korea, and China, for example. Local programs help students prepare — or cram. In 2021, the OECD summarized information about gifted programs in its member countries, which have taken varying approaches.

Are gifted kids hard to teach?

Gifted students are diverse in every way. "Merely" gifted students might just be the students in each grade who have a fairly easy time meeting the academic expectations at school. But a small percentage of students are so profoundly gifted that they basically break the evaluation tests. Each year in California about half a million students enter kindergarten. Among them are perhaps 600 students that would surpass 145 on an IQ test. These are the students that a elementary school teacher might come across once in a lifetime career.

Teachers have the advantage of networks. If you are an educator struggling to serve a very gifted student, seek advice and think as broadly as you can. Should you help the student where they are? Is there a better place for them? Would skipping a grade help, or would it place the student in a social connundrum? Is there a counselor with relevant experience?

Massively gifted students aren't like other kids their age. They aren't like older kids, either. They more than just "advanced" — they think on a different level. The 2017 movie Gifted explores some of the challenges, and helps bust stereotypes.

Parents with a good problem

"What can I DO for this kid?"

Parents of very gifted students often wonder what to do. Would their child flourish (or at least be less bored and cranky) in a different public school? Is homeschooling a good option, or a recipe for disaster? Could we move to Reno? What about private schools?

In California, state funding for gifted education long ago disappeared, but GATE programs do still exist in some of California's large school districts, notably Los Angeles. Some schools throughout the state identify themselves as specializing in education of gifted students. Selective or intensive summer programs like the Center for Talented Youth attract gifted students from all over the world.

Parents, teachers and counselors of extraordinarily gifted students tend to seek one another out for advice. The California Association for the Gifted holds conferences periodically to help parents learn from one another.

Do gifted programs accelerate learning? It's easy to imagine that gifted programs push young kids to learn content ahead of the grade-level schedule. In 2019 a study by the National Center for Research on Gifted Education demonstrated otherwise, at least for elementary grades. According to the study:

Implications for school boards regarding gifted students

Find your advanced students. Gifted students are scattered throughout your schools. Are they well-served? Testing can definitively identify intellectually gifted students at a very early age. A few have truly rare potential; are your schools administering a screening test capable of noticing them? These students might become a great legacy of your school and change the world, but their family needs your support. Do you know who they are, by name? Who is looking out for them, and how?

Fund them. No federal or state funding meaningfully supports programs to find and fund gifted students. Gifted students do not receive special education services unless they are "twice exceptional" and specifically need them. Gifted programs require local funding — are they in your district LCFF budget?

Make exceptions for the exceptional. PTAs, Chambers of Commerce, museums and other local organizations might want to support the education of gifted students, both financially and by developing creative beyond-school opportunities for them.

Be mindful of motivation. It's tempting to honor kids for being smart. Resist the temptation and honor their effort instead. Intelligence is an unearned quality, similar to being tall or left-handed. Studies of motivation suggest that it is more constructive to celebrate hard work and positive risk-taking. These are behaviors that kids can change through effort.

Updated July 2026.