The teachers were given professional development instruction solely to deal with students with special (remedial) needs. Teachers were told to identify the gifted and talented if they felt a student showed a unique aptitude but were not given specific instruction as to how to do so. For students who had tested as Advanced Proficient on the NJASK, teachers staid they did strive to make their instructional plan more challenging, enlightening, and intriguing to gifted and talented students. They said they tried to group students of similar ability together and give the gifted students more challenging work and when assigning individual projects such as reading novels and open-ended math problems. They said they gave the gifted work that was above grade level, in contrast to the student's peers.

While the teachers claimed to differentiate instruction and said that this was adequately met by in-class tracking, they also admitted to feeling overwhelmed by the differentiated needs of the students in their classroom, and had difficulty accommodating the needs of students above, at, and below grade level within one lesson plan.

Observational results

The lack of differentiated instruction was immediately obvious during the two walk-through observations conducted at the school. Students were not identified as gifted and talented during group activities, despite the fact that teachers said that this was done. When working in groups, all students were given the same amount and type of work. There was no evidence that gifted and talented were given more challenging work. Students who completed the work early often disrupted the class while the teacher was trying to assist others students. Even when working independently, students were not given differentiated materials to reflect their different levels of ability. Even when an inclusion teacher or other resource support was present, teachers focused more on encouraging the special needs students to perform at...

Their rankings as educators and the performance ratings of the schools depend upon standardized test performance. Thus, there is a great incentive to try to ensure that special education students perform to a higher standard, while students whose performance is expected to be strong are ignored. Balancing the differentiated needs of the gifted and special needs students is a seemingly impossible challenge.
The lack of information about what it means to be gifted and talented is also a barrier. Gifted and talented students are often operating on a higher and more abstract reasoning level then their peers. Even if teachers did give 'harder' books and math problems to gifted children, this does not fully satisfy the demand to make gifted and talented students better able to use critical thinking skills and to explore their creativity. The assignments observed in class tended to be of a 'rote' nature, and students who could easily complete the assignments frequently seemed bored and disrupted other children.

Teachers should not be 'blamed' for failing to accommodate the gifted in their classrooms given the message sent by the administration regarding this challenge. Teachers were given special needs instruction, but not instruction to deal with the specific, special needs of the gifted and talented. This communicates a clear message to teachers what their priorities should be as educators. Districts need to improve professional development in the field of gifted and talented education, and also provide teachers with additional resource support to deal with gifted students. Finally, learning about how to challenge gifted students with more open-ended assignments would not simply be enriching for the gifted and talented, but for all students who could benefit from a 'thinking out of the box' approach to education.