Educating Excellent Children
The Agate School District is committed to recognizing the unique talents, gifts, and abilities of its student population. We are committed to providing an environment which maximizes intellectual development of each student. We believe that gifted students:
- Have the potential for outstanding performance
- Exhibit identifiable patterns of behavior
- Have specific and significant needs
- Require appropriate programming options
- Benefit from a partnership shared by the school, the community, and the parents.
IDENTIFICATION
Efforts to refer and identify students for gifted programming will be made at each grade level. Multiple criteria shall be used for identification purposes.
Students as young as preschool through the second grade are screened for exceptional abilities by the classroom teacher and the district’s RTI Problem Solving Team.
In the spring of third and sixth grade, formal screening begins with the grade-wide administration of the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT). A test of aptitude, the CogAT will often reveal abilities of students who are not achieving in the classroom or on standardized achievement tests.
REFERRALS
A student may be referred by parent/guardian, staff member, counselor, school psychologist, or self-nomination.
A student may be referred for consideration based on any of the following:
- A student’s products of high quality
- Evidence of outstanding performance
- Standardized group achievement test scores in the 95th percentile or above
- Standardized aptitude test scores in the 95th percentile or above
- Behavior/Characteristics
Placement
When the evaluation team has completed collecting the information for the nominated student and that student has met the requirements for identification, the parents are informed and the student will then receive specific programming strategies for his/her area of strength that are based upon the area of identification.
Programming
A record of gifted and talented education programming services, options, and strategies used with individual students shall be made part of the student’s record and shall be considered in educational planning and decision-making concerning programming for that student. This Advanced Learning Plan (ALP) will be developed based on the students identification needs. It will be used as a planning guide for making instructional decisions about materials, programming options, and assessments for gifted and talented students based upon strengths, interests, learning characteristics, and social-emotional needs.
We are a part of East Central BOCES. Their Gifted Education website is found here: ECBOCES Gifted and Talented