Other students-including students with disabilities-may reach these levels, but not as soon and not as frequently. By definition, students with gifts or talents are capable of creative, committed work at levels that often approach talented adults. The key difference is in students’ potential. But it is also misleading to ignore obvious differences between exceptional giftedness and exceptional disabilities of other kinds. There is some logic to this way of thinking about their needs after all, they are quite exceptional, and they do require modifications of the usual school programs in order to reach their full potential. Often their needs are discussed, for example, in textbooks about special education, alongside discussions of students with intellectual disabilities, physical impairments, or major behavior disorders (Friend, 2008). Partly for these reasons, students who are gifted or talented have sometimes been regarded as the responsibility of special education, along with students with other sorts of disabilities. A kindergarten child who is precociously advanced in reading, for example, may make little further progress at reading if her teachers do not recognize and develop her skill her talent may effectively disappear from view as her peers gradually catch up to her initial level. Without accommodation to their unusual level of skill or knowledge, students who are gifted or talented can become bored by school, and eventually the boredom can even turn into behavior problems. Ironically, in spite of their obvious strengths as learners, such students often languish in school unless teachers can provide them with more than the challenges of the usual curriculum. They also come from all economic and cultural groups.
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