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Many parents of talented and gifted kids, also known as TAG students, struggle with giving their children the appropriate levels of academic challenge and support. While public schools are striving to create greater TAG programs and courses, many parents are seeking out enrichment opportunities to supplement their child’s public school experience.

Parents looking for additional educational opportunities for TAG kids in public schools can take advantage of an array of community organizations, private institutions, events, and programs.

How Parents Can Support their TAG Child

As many TAG children may exhibit a greater desire for academic challenges and new opportunities, experts assert that parents should strive to balance a child’s academic activities with social ones. The balance will ensure that each student develops not only mentally, but personally and socially as well.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, most gifted kids generally benefit from spending time in settings amidst peers of similar abilities. Subsequently, many TAG children can benefit from skipping grades or engaging in accelerated classes. If TAG children stay in regular classrooms, they may need alternative opportunities to enhance their overall development.

TAG children require both mental stimulation and access to cognitively equal peer experiences. Therefore, parents, in addition to taking action with a child’s school, can also expose their child to alternative support opportunities as well.

This video from Raising Children's Network offers suggestions for supporting your talented and gifted child.

While nearly all public schools are required to provide specific programs to help support the needs of struggling students, many public school leaders and parents assert that students with gifted abilities should be entitled to the same opportunities.

With the success of these special needs programs, which include one-on-one support, smaller class sizes, and modified curriculum options, many public schools are beginning to apply the same approach for gifted children, creating programs and classes that are targeted to their unique needs and abilities. “TAG” programs, which stand for “Talented and Gifted,” are growing in popularity in public schools. Proponents believe that TAG programs will help gifted students to enhance their own diverse learning abilities.

This video explains what gifted education entails.

Who are “Gifted” Students?

Each TAG student possesses unique and diverse abilities, and subsequently, many public schools and states have their own forms of “gifted” assessments. For example, the adhere to a strict state-mandated law regarding the assessment and qualifications of TAG children. According to Des Moines Public Schools, TAG students are required to meet an array of criteria, including:

• Students who require classroom/curriculum modifications, including differentiation, advanced class placements, and/or accelerated pacing.
• Students who demonstrate a high potential for advanced learning.
• Student performance scores within the 95^th percentile on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, the Cognitive Abilities Test, and/or the

In recent decades, public schools find themselves facing the greater needs of diverse student populations, with varying cognitive abilities, maturity levels, and academic strengths and weaknesses. While most typical elementary, middle, and high school students find themselves immersed in a classroom of twenty to thirty peers with one lead teacher, most public schools also have “self-contained” classrooms to provide alternative settings for enhanced academic support for the children whose needs cannot be fully met in a general education classroom.

What are Self-Contained Classrooms?

Unlike standard classrooms with a large number of peers, self-contained classrooms are typically smaller settings with a fewer number of students. Created to help foster enhanced support for students with special needs or specific difficulties, self-contained rooms are generally comprised of about ten students with unique struggles who are most commonly instructed by a lead teacher with a certification in special education. Self-contained classrooms will also have at least one paraeducator who provides instructional support under the guidance of the classroom teacher.

Due to recent curriculum shifts, some self-contained rooms cater to the diverse needs of students, such as those coping with autism spectrum disorder. A lead teacher, who is highly trained to help support students with autism, is able to provide greater assistance than what these students would typically receive in a classroom with a larger student-to-teacher ratio. Other examples of students who may be enrolled in self-contained rooms include students with developmental issues, behavioral concerns, students with specific academic struggles (i.e. in math,

According to research and studies from the Centers for Disease Control, an average of 1 in 150 births results in a child who is diagnosed with autism. With this statistic, it is predicted that over 1.5 million Americans alone are potentially dealing with some form of disorder on the autism spectrum. While the cause is still unknown, autism is growing at a rate of an estimated 10-17 percent each year, as this disorder is now more prevalent and common than diabetes, pediatric cancer, and AIDS combined.

As Autism Spectrum Therapies explains, “Autism is a complex developmental disability […] (and) is considered a neurological disorder, though the specific cause is not known.” Today, medical experts and researchers can typically diagnose autism by a child’s second birthday; however, new breakthroughs are providing signs of autism in infants as early as just six months of age. As these medical breakthroughs continually advance, schools, parents, and the medical community are discovering new avenues for providing autistic children with full and inclusive support.

Public Schools and Encouraging Social Behavior

Since autism spectrum disorder is a neurological issue, each individual coping with autism expresses unique and different symptoms and indications. This condition is referred to as a “spectrum” because the degree and severity of each individual is subjectively specific. Most commonly, however, individuals suffering from autism spectrum disorder struggle with social and communicative skills, which are often most obviously realized once a child is exposed to social opportunities at school.

As Autism Spectrum

Gay Friendly Public Schools: Will New Program Ideas Decrease Violence and Tension?

According to National Public Radio’s (NPR) review of the new public school initiative to create gay-friendly public schools, the city of Chicago is instilling plans for “a new school where gay students and others wouldn't face the bullying and harassment they endure in other schools.”

As Chicago has surfaced as the focal point of this controversy, acting as one of the first cities in the country to widely support this public program shift, school and community leaders are caught in the middle of a national and heated debate.

The Background: Why Create Gay-Friendly Schools?

While Chicago is currently earning the most attention for its plan to create a gay-friendly school, cities across the country have implemented these programs in the past. Specifically, New York made the gay-friendly Harvey Milk School, while Milwaukee created the Alliance High School; both of these programs have been reported as inspirations for the up-and-coming Chicago school, which is intended to open in 2010.

As the CNN report, “Chicago May Get Gay-Friendly High School,” reveals, school and community officials in Chicago created the proposal for a gay-friendly high school so that students of all sexual preferences and identities could attend school without feeling harassed or in danger. William Greaves, Chicago’s liaison to the gay and lesbian community, is one of the advocates for the new school and is also a contributor to the school’s proposed design. According to