Do We Need to Know How Smart Someone Is?

Evaluating and Assessing Giftedness Why?

It matters that people be aware of typical education policy. And yet, we all go to school for at least a little while, and we hope and trust that the schools know what they’re doing. When I write about gifted children and schools, I am writing about adult readers, as well. These realities and experiences helped to form you.

But the reality is that too few people — including educators — understand the vast range of abilities, styles, and needs of our brightest students.

The Deck is Not Evenly Stacked

Over the past 20 years since creating the 5 Levels, I continued to learn about the state of education — and the policies and processes that affect it — in the United States. So, although the early milestones and behaviors that make up the 5 Levels of Gifted haven’t changed significantly, I discovered that in some of the intake forms from the gifted families I served in my consultancy, there are sometimes circumstances where caregivers are not in a position to notice as much of the early milestones as stay-at-home parents do. This also means that there are families who don’t have the ability, for a variety of reasons, to provide as much readiness training or intellectual stimulation during the years before school, even if they have a child of…