Gifted Program

Who Are The Gifted?

Florida's Department of Education defines a gifted student as one who has superior intellectual development and is capable of high performance. Criteria for eligibility for the program includes:

• Need for special program
• Demonstration of a majority of characteristics for gifted students according  to a standard scale or checklist.
• Superior intellectual development as measured by an intelligence quotient of two standard deviations or more above the mean on an individually administered standardized test of intelligence.

Cognitive Characteristics

• Unusual retentiveness and the capacity to learn at faster rates; 
• Advanced comprehension;  ​
• Unusual capacity to manipulate;  
• Unusually varied interest and curiosity;  
• Advanced language development;  
• Accelerated pace of thought process;  
• Heightened capacity for seeing unusual and diverse relationships; 
• Ability to generate original ideas and solutions;  
• Early ability to generate original ideas and solutions;  
• Early ability to use and form conceptual frameworks;  
• Persistent, goal-directed behavior;  
• Increased ability to find, solve, and act on problem;  
• Early development of sophisticated thought process (e.g., thinking in alternatives, abstract terms, sensing consequences, making generalizations).

Affective Characteristics

• Unusual emotional depth and sensitivity; 
• Unusual sensitivity to expectations and feelings of others;  
• Keen sense of humor;  
• Heightened self-awareness accompanied by feelings of being different;  
• Idealism and strong sense of justice;  
• Early development of an inner focus of control;
• Advanced levels of moral judgment.

*Adapted from Barbara Clark in Growing Up Gifted