Why Does Giftedness Matter? Understanding the Importance of Early Identification

A little background on how most schools are set up

Most parents assume that when they’re really bright, maybe gifted or genius child, starts school, he or she will learn. The school will notice and do something. Ha!

The customary method of grouping children in schools is by age and grade levels. When a bright or gifted child is not similar to the majority of the other children in learning ability, this is a big problem. Further, within that structure of grade levels by age, schools primarily use heterogeneous (mixed ability) grouping and “whole class” instruction. Despite considerable evidence that the achievement span among children of the same age can be — and usually is — significant (Lohman, D., 1999), children are typically grouped with others their age. Lohman, co-author of both the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) and the Iowa Tests of basic skills, both widely used by public schools for their elementary school students, asserts,

The typical public school first-grade classroom already has 12-grade equivalencies of achievement in it.

Indeed, grouping children by age for instruction makes about as much sense as grouping them by height. In all of world history, this kind of grouping for…