I don’t remember precisely when I first heard the word “gifted,” but it must have been in early elementary school. I do remember being pulled out of my first-grade class and led to the fifth-grade classroom, where a teacher told me to choose a chapter book that was “more at my level.”
I appreciated the chance to choose from all sorts of new books, but it marked an early example of what would eventually be both a privilege and a curse: my foray into being “set apart” academically from my fellow classmates.
By the time I reached middle school, the gifted and talented program in my district had taken wing. The timing makes sense: In 1998, many American schools were provided with official K-12 standards for so-called “gifted education” by the National Association of Gifted Children. While the NAGC first promoted advanced academic programming in the 1950s, its work in the late ’80s and ’90s represented a more structured approach to educating students who were found to be gifted.
K-12 gifted education standards were preceded by the passage of the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Act in 1988, which secured funding to “orchestrate a coordinated program of scientifically based research, demonstration projects, innovative strategies, and similar activities that build and enhance the ability of elementary and secondary schools to meet the special educational needs of gifted and talented students.”
