Distance Gifted Education Programs

The concept to enrichment for gifted children has been around as long as formal schooling has existed. In the one-room schoolhouse setting, teachers simply gave advanced children work that was multiple grades ahead of their age. In the 1920s and 1930s it was common for gifted children to be accellerated through grades--"skipped" ahead as far as was needed. Graduating from high school at fifteen or sixteen was not the oddity that it is now; it was understood by educators that acceleration was the best way to manage highly advanced children, and the goal of education was the educate--not socialize or keep children in chronological age groups for policy reasons.

Gifted education has shifted over the years from acceleration to enrichment--keeping kids in their chronological grade but adding extra work, or replacing grade-level work in some subjects with higher-grade work. This is where online gifted programs come in. Most gifted programs in schools are "pull-out" programs--a gifted and talented coordinator or teacher takes the gifted children out of regular classtime for a few hours a week to work on higher-grade work, or a completely different subject (foreign languages, a branch of mathematics or science, or for specialized field trips). Distance programs are quickly filling the need for individualized instruction for more advanced students.

Two major research universities currently offer programs by distance education for children ages 5 through 18: Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University. These programs are designed to meet a need that many public, private, and homeschooled children have: work that is challenging and that meets them where they are intellectually, taking them further. Stanford University's education Program for Gifted Youth began in the mid-1980s as part of an experiment in computer-based training. Working with math programs designed to help children learn computation and critical mathematics concepts, the program evolved into a distance-based learning program for advanced students. The Education Program for Gifted Youth offers online courses in math, language arts, computer science, music, and science. In addition, Stanford now offers a fully-accredited, online high school for grades 10-12. Advanced Placement courses are offered, and the program is self-aced; students finish courses at their own rate, and if they finish high school early, certain college courses are offered online (mostly in math and science) so that accelerated learners can complete part of college before they graduate high school.

Acceptance into Stanford's EPGY program depends on a number of factors. Children who apply must score in the 95th percentile or higher in at least one area of academics that Stanford offers. The minimum age is 5. A child who scores in the 80th percentile for language arts but 99th percentile for math, for instance, could qualify for EPGY's math program. Application information is available at the EPGY website. Courses are designed to run in two ways: semester or year-long, or self-paced. For self-paced courses, the parent or school district buys 3-month slots of time; however much material the child completes in those 3 months is dependent on the child. The average gifted child in the EPGY program can complete one grade of material in 3 months, though individual results vary. Children earn transcripts for their work, though EPGY courses do not offer grades until the high school level (see their website for more details). These transcripts can be used by homeschoolers to demonstrate work progress.

Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth offers programs for kids in grades 2 through graduation. Entrance into CTY is a bit more complicated than Stanford. Students are generally nominated to compete for entrance into CTY by teachers or, in some cases, by parents. Again, the child must score in the 95th percentile or higher. To gain entrance to the Johns Hopkins program for grades 2-4, the child must take a standardized computerized test, called the School College Abilities Test (SCAT). This test involves two 55-question sections (one quantitative, one qualitative), and is a test of reasoning skills. Each section is 22 minutes long. Students are compared with students two grades above them; in other words, a second grader must score very well when compared to fourth graders. Students in grades 5 and up take other tests; at the time of this writing the program requirements were changing. Students in grades 7 and up take the SAT for entrance into the CTY programs.

If the student is accepted, it means the child is in the 99th percentile for his or her grade. CTY acceptance is rare, and considered a sign of achievement later in life when applying to college. Johns Hopkins has been offering gifted summer camps across the country for years; the distance courses offered vary from math, science, writing, Chinese, AP Government and Politics--the list goes on. The program is slightly more expensive than Stanford's program, but the course offerings are far more varied and detailed. In addition, CTY is accredited for grades 5-12; in other words, come school districts will accept these courses as complete replacements for courses offered at their school.

Both programs fill a growing need: a way to enrich children. As schools in the U.S. struggle with No Child Left Behind regulations, and as school budgets tighten, EPGY and CTY offer accelerated children an opportunity to have their academic needs met in a flexible manner.