Urban gifted children encounter many forces that derail the development of their full potential. A report by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and Civic Enterprises found that more than a million children in poverty rank in the top quartile academically, but few of these children will find adequate opportunities to fulfill such potential in urban…

Gaps in the achievement between poor and more advantaged children and minority and nonminority students of all ages continue to be the most central problem in the field of education. Achievement differences by racial/ethnic group and socioeconomic status (SES) level are especially pronounced and pervasive within the major urban school districts in…

Many young people cannot remember a time before Instant Messaging (IM), cell phone text messaging, video conferencing, blogging, e-mailing, and MySpace and Facebook postings existed. Thanks to the ubiquitous nature of technology in the 21st century, digital natives are accustomed to seeing, and being seen, on a scale that was unimaginable by their…

The "Brown v. Board of Education" decision provided unrestricted access to educational opportunities for all students. Unfortunately, despite the passing of the 50th anniversary of this landmark decision, academic excellence remains a dream deferred for many Black students when compared to their peers. This disparity, more popularly known as the…

Millennials, which includes persons born between 1982 and 2002, often have been characterized as a mixed bag with two over-arching variables used in describing this population: (1) the diverse nature of the group; and (2) the closeness that exists between them and their parents. In the case of the latter, millennials have a closeness to their…

This article describes a scenario that highlights an important challenge facing educators in primary grade classrooms. The discussion in this article addresses this challenge by showcasing scholarly literature that examines the importance of infusing culturally relevant material into K-2 classrooms. Following the discussion, methods of using…

Resilience refers to positive adaptation in the face of present or past adversity. It is the "ordinary magic" that rises from the minds of children and their families as they interact with their communities. Gonzales (2003) defined three major components of Resiliency Theory: (1) risk factors; (2) protective factors; and (3) developmental assets.…

Although there is some research addressing gifted African American children who attend K-12 schools, few studies address high-achieving and gifted African American male college students. Moreover, the vast majority of research highlighting the schooling of African American students focuses on their negative educational outcomes instead of their…

The past several centuries have presented well-documented cases of prodigious youth. Many represented extreme examples of children who had burned brightly and then faded into obscurity, succumbed to a mental illness or an early death, or entered into a career deemed below their mental capacity. These very public displays of mental prowess caused…

Response to Intervention (RtI) is sweeping the country, changing the way children's educational needs are recognized and met. RtI was introduced through special education legislation as part of IDEA 2004 and offered an alternative approach for identifying students with learning disabilities (Bender & Shores, 2007). RtI is designed to bring…

Response to Intervention (RtI) has promise for helping students, particularly ones with disabilities, achieve higher levels of academic and behavioral success in the general education classroom. What does it mean for gifted students or for those who are gifted and have a learning disability, such as twice-exceptional students? How might current…

Because implementation of Response to Intervention (RtI) in the framework of special education's identification process still is relatively new, many districts are only now determining the implications at the school or system level. The concept of also identifying students who show promise in a nurturing framework, as opposed to a preventative…

Many books and articles have been written about a Response to Intervention (RtI) model of service delivery for students who are struggling learners. However, little has been written about this model's usefulness as a means of addressing the needs of advanced learners or twice-exceptional learners whose needs may be both remedial and advanced. The…

As a field, gifted education does not endorse any one approach to serving students because of the range of student abilities and resulting concomitant diverse needs. Therefore, service delivery in gifted education is still heavily teacher dependent. Yet, many of the components of Response to Intervention (RtI) are employed in gifted education,…

The authors discuss the challenges that might be faced if gifted education moves toward an RtI (Response to Intervention) approach. The challenges they share can be used as discussion points for planning and reflection. In spite of the remaining challenges, the authors conclude that RtI is certainly changing the face of education and that gifted…