UALR Professor Ann Robinson, the president of the National Association of Gifted Children, made the case recently for advocating gifted and talented programs nationwide at the Hormel Foundation’s  Symposium on Gifted Education in Austin, Minn.

Robinson, director of UALR’s Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education, applauded the Hormel Foundation for supporting the symposium and the local school districts, community colleges, and the Minnesota Department of Education for working together to advance gifted education.

The collaboration, she said, “is not common.”

Robinson spoke about the perception that gifted and talented students could help themselves, but in reality weren’t getting nearly as much attention as they needed when lawmakers set the current No Child Left Behind standards.

She cited a study showing the progress of gifted and talented academic achievement from 2000 to 2007 was “languid,” while struggling students were making steady academic progress.

“A gifted kid tends not to be viewed as an emergency resuscitation case,” Robinson said.

But she is encouraged by national legislation for GT programming, and bills like the TALENT Act, a bipartisan bill in Congress. It seeks to put assessment and accountability programs for advanced learners in place, emphasize classroom programs with supporting evidence to back them up, focus on under-served, high-ability students, and fund more research on GT students and their educational experiences.