Budget Cutters, School Reformers Taking Aim at Gifted Education

By Debra Viadero

Once educators in his community decided he was gifted, Marcus Simpson began to do wonderful things in school. He created inventions, spent hours working on complex problems, and visited with a local television station to find out how weather reports are produced. He gave a presentation on meteorology to his classmates and spoke for more than half an hour, without notes, because the subject excited him so much.

Marcus lost some of his enthusiasm for school, however, after the local school board voted to eliminate his gifted-and-talented program. Back in his regular classes, his mother noticed, Marcus began to grow restless.

Last fall, six weeks into the 8th grade, he transferred...