BACKGROUND

For many years, interested educators, responsible legislators and societal leaders have puzzled over the problem of how to educate the most gifted of our students in the United States where the public educational program was geared primarily to was geared primarily to a philosophy of egalitarianism.

Three major facts have recently emerged from decades of study of this problem and make more urgent such concern. First, the monumental forty-year longitudinal study of fifteen hundred intellectually gifted children by Terman and his colleagues at Stanford University has shown that gifted children can be identified as early as the elementary grades. These children, in later life, often make outstanding contributions to our society; in the arts, politics, business and sciences. But Terman's report has also revealed, and subsequent research confirmed, that many talented children underachieve, perform far less than their intellectual potential might suggest. These results put the lie to the comfortable, but false, notion that intellectual talent can survive all sorts of educational neglect and apathy.

A third body of information, recently available, focuses on the loss of potentially talented and gifted students in minority groups.

It suggests the potentially talented students growing up in unfavorable social and educational environments can have their leadership or creative potential suppressed or diverted to a point where it is not visible in later school years.

The Congress of the United States has expressed its mounting interest and concern by passing a landmark addition to the Elementary and Secondary Education Amendments of 1969; Section 806, “Provisions relating specifically to gifted and talented children." This amendment, unanimously passed in the House and Senate, provides for two specific changes in existing legislation. It makes explicit the congressional intent that the gifter and talented student should participate in Federal education legislation and it directs the Commissioner of Education to conduct a study to:

a. Determine the extent to which special educational assistance programs are necessary or useful to meet the needs of gifted and talented children.

b. Show which existing federal education assistance programs are being used to meet the needs of gifted and talented children. c. Evaluate how existing federal educational assistance programs can be more effectively used to meet these needs and

d. Recommend which new programs, if any, are needed to meet these needs.

This report is the result of part of the response of the Commissioner of Education to that mandate. In order to gain the maximum information regarding current status of education of gifted and talented students, and to provide a broad base of recommendations in terms of what action needs to be taken, the Commissioner called for regional hearings to be held in each of the ten HEW Districts.

Invitations were issued to the public and to specific persons known to be interested in this subject to give oral testimony on this issue. Table I indicates the places and the number of witnesses appearing at each hearing. It also indicates the number of people from each of the regions who provided written testimony. The quick response to the hearings request was impressive. Two hundred and ninety-five witnesses appeared in twelve hearing sites to give testimony, often on very short notice. Another 265 persons felt strongly enough about the subject to write to the Regional Commissioners their feelings on the issue. As Table I indicates, there were, in addition, a total of 415 letters from parents stating their broad support for some positive action on this subject.

TABLE 1.-HEARING SITES FOR EDUCATION OF THE GIFTED

ANALYSIS PROCEDURES

Three major sources of information were used in preparing this report: A State Survey form, the oral testimony given at the time of the open hearings, and written testimony submitted for the record from the ten HEW regions.

The general definition of the gifted child that was used as a general guideline was:

Gifted and talented children are those identified by professional qualified persons, who by virtue of outstanding abilities, are capable of high performance. These are children who require differentiated educational programs and/or services beyond those normally provided by the regular school program in order to realize their contribution to self and society.

State Survey.-The State Survey form was prepared in the Office of Education and sent to each of the State Departments of Education. (A copy of the form is in the Appendix of this report.) The questionnaire attempted to inquire on several major dimensions of the education of the gifted. Among these issues were the availability of staff at the State Department level for gifted programs and the presence of enabling legislation for the gifted. In addition, inquiries were made as to whether planning or study groups were active in their state, whether special training provisions were available, what the major deterrents to state action might be, and to what extent the states were currently using federal funds for education of gifted programs.

Forty-nine of the fifty states returned the Survey form. In those instances where additional information or clarification was required on the basis of the State Survey, a phone call was placed to the person who carried the major responsibility for the completion of the form and additional information was obtained and placed in the analysis. Oral Testimony. In the 12 sets of regional hearings (3 separate hearings were held in different parts of District X) verbatim transcripts containing all of the proceedings were obtained. (See Figure 1 for description of HEW Regions). Sample sets of the testimony were read by the staff, who had backgrounds in education and related areas, in order to gain a general feeling of the kinds of ideas expressed by the witnesses. A set of categories was developed based on these sample readings which allowed the readers to check the presence of various statements of needs and recommendations in the testimony. A copy of this analysis form is found in the Appendix of this report.

In general, the classification list helped to identify who the testifier was referring to when he discussed the term "gifted", what the educational needs of gifted youngsters were, and what major recommendations the testifier was making for education of gifted. The testimony of each witnesses was rated and notes made in the margin of the testimony. These notes were used to identify the particular category in the classification system. In some hearings a limited amount of time was allotted to each witness. Some witnesses, aware of these limitations, provided written testimony to supplement their short statement. The oral and written materials for one person were combined into one rating in such cases.

Several samples of testimony were then read and scored jointly by the analysis staff to establish a common reference based for the reader analysis. When the levels of agreement between judges reached a sat

isfactory level, the readers classified, item by item, the remainder of the testimony. These scores were then entered on IBM cards and a computer analysis summed the results of these classifications.

Written Testimony.-A voluminous body of written testimony was also presented at the time the hearings were held. In some cases, such written testimony continued to come in for a number of days after the hearings themselves. The staff members read the written testimony, using the same analysis checklist that was used for the oral testimony. Table 1 shows a total of 265 pieces of analyzed written testimony. The differences in solicitation for such testimony from region to region probably explains the wide differences in the number of submissions obtained. Published or prepared articles that were submitted for the record were not analyzed, however. Instead a list of these written. presentations was developed and can be seen in the Appendix.

The outpouring of responses came from parents of gifted students was impressive. Over 415 parents wrote to say that programs for gifted were needed, or to ask that such programs continue. The feeling tone was strong, but they gave little detail with regard to specific needs or recommendations so these letters were tabulated as one more indication of the hidden support that exists for action on this issue.

The results of these three sets of data; the State Survey form, the oral testimony, and written testimony may be seen in the following sec

tion.

ORAL AND WRITTEN TESTIMONY ANALYSIS

One of the most impressive features of the hearings held in 12 different cities throughout the country was the enthusiastic response of a wide range of persons to the opportunity to give oral testimony. A total of 295 persons; school administrators, teachers, parents, students, representatives of national organizations, all grasped the opportunity to say what they felt about the issue of educating gifted children in the United States. They presented their views on what the issues are and what the potential federal role might be. Many of these people had evidently been waiting a long time and have been concerned about the situation but had little chance for expressing their points of view. The group included a distinguished list of leading educators as well as ordinary citizens eager to have their say. A complete list of the witnesses are on file in the Office of Education.

In some instances the number of people wishing to testify was so great that those conducting the regional hearings had to limit the amount of time provided for any particular person to express his views. Knowing that, many people submitted written testimony to supplement their oral presentations. The written and oral testimony of those witnesses is combined to provide the fullest possible view of their attitudes.

While the statistics that were collected from the states are extremely informative, they do not convey the full intensity of feeling or the eloquence of expression of the various witnesses. Accordingly, the testimony analysts attempted to find particularly relevant or representative statements and extract those from the transcripts so that the various points made by the statistics would be given some degree of vitality and specificity.

Figure 2 indicates the type of person providing testimony. The greatest number of testifiers were administrators, representatives of national organizations and professors, all of whom have mobility to appear at such hearings. However, the number of parents, students, and interested citizens, school board members and legislators that took time out to appear was very impressive. The results of the oral testimony are presented in terms of answering some of the major questions raised by the testifiers themselves.

The witnesses referred most often to those gifted students in elementary and secondary school programs. However, 23% of the witnesses did mention the need for doing something specific for gifted youngsters early in their developmental period. This interest in preschool is significant, particularly in view of the fact that no state now provides special programs at the preschool level!

While two-thirds of the witnesses referred to the gifted in general terms without defining them or mentioning special subgroups, fully one-third did make special reference to specific subgroups of talented students needing special attention. Eighteen percent of the witnesses