REFORM AND GIFTED BLACK-STUDENTS - PROMISING PRACTICES IN KENTUCKY

Gifted education has had altogether too little voice in the educational reform discourse. All too often, educators and policymakers who do not work directly with the gifted assume that gifted learners require no special attention to their needs. Despite considerable evidence that such problems as underachievement, lack of achievement motivation, and dropping out of school occur often and even disproportionately among the gifted, educators and policymakers rarely address the needs of gifted students directly in the reform reports, particularly those of the 1980s. More recently, however, reform movements at the state level have adopted components that appear, albeit indirectly, to address the needs of gifted learners. Accordingly, this article highlights some of the promising components of educational reform currently underway in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and discusses their implication for gifted students in general, and gifted Black students in particular.