Question: What score a child have to gain in order to be admitted to a Gifted Program?

Answer: There is no a certain score for admittance to a gifted program in the school. These programs in fact weren’t always developed for gifted children by definition. What School staff understands as giftedness is more achievement then abilities. Sometimes a child has both features, but often those two characteristics don’t coincide. That means that sometimes gifted children show not very high results at school. Giftedness is rather relative. There in no single definition on it. Some of them include high motivation and achievement at school; others define gifted children as those who work on higher level then their peers. That why a child can be recognized as “gifted” in one school system, but in other one he will be considered an average student.
Each school chooses its own criteria to define gifted students. It depends on the size of the class for gifted children. If, for example, there is only one teacher for gifted children in the school, they will use criteria, which will help them to choose the needed number of students.

Question: Is there an exact definition of "gifted"?

Answer: Yes. The formal federal definition of gifted students for USA was developed in the 1972 Marland Report to Congress. The current definition is: Students, children, or youth who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities.  It should be mentioned, that this definition is located in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Some states have its own definition of gifted student, which are often based on the federal definition.

Question: How many children in the U.S are considered as gifted ones?

Answer: It is about 6 % of the student population in the U.S (3 million gifted children in grades K-12). This statistic was taken from the 1972 Marland Report to Congress since there in no formal statistic for such students nowadays. The number of gifted students constantly increases and it depends on the number of formal categories of giftedness.

Question: Who decides about gifted students' experiences in school?

Answer: All decisions about gifted students’ education are taken by state and local authorities. But very often the ultimate hopes of such student are attentive teachers, good and responsible parents or a young school principal. It’s them who help the gifted to get adequate knowledge in the classroom or during special classes.