His parents had been warned numerous times by the director of his Montessori school that his behavior was "violent and destructive". He would hit the other children in his class and knock over teaching materials for "no apparent reason", according to his teachers.

The preschool's director suggested that Jack's behavior was due to improper parenting or perhaps something even more sinister, like a psychological disorder or abuse. The school expelled Jack, saying he and, indeed, the entire family needed professional help.

Jack's parents, Anabelle* and Grant*, were stunned.

"We kept telling [Jack's teachers] that he wasn't violent at home and that something at school must be upsetting him," Anabelle says. "Not only didn't they listen to us, they said we were the problem."

Jack's parents didn't think there was anything "wrong" with him unless you'd classify "exceptionally bright" as an impediment. When he was 18-months-old, Jack knew more than 200 words and was speaking in full sentences; by age four, he could read at a second grade level. His mother suspected that he was gifted, but the preschool dismissed that suggestion.

On the eve of his preschool expulsion, however, Anabelle and her husband decided to have Jack tested by a professional. The results were nothing short of astounding: Jack's IQ was 146, which is in the high-genius range.

Jack's behavior was, indeed, a cry for help: he needed more stimulation, more individual attention, and more "grown-up" conversations than his preschool provided him.

It would be funny if it weren't so infuriating," Anabelle says of her son's experience at the preschool. " would have thought that, as teachers, they would be trained to recognize the signs of giftedness. But not only did they not recognize them, they ignored them and expelled him for being too smart.

Jack's experience is not uncommon; in fact, it is almost a textbook example of the problems gifted children experience in school.

[When gifted children use] complex words or phrases of complexity that other kids [their age] do not understand, that is going to have a social consequence, says Dr. James Delisle, a professor of education who specializes in giftedness at Kent State University. Other kids are going to look at you and say, Oh you are so smart' and you are going to look at the other kids and say, Why doesn't anyone get me? What is wrong with me?

Giftedness pervades a person's whole being, Dr. Delisle says. Gifted children not only see the world differently, they perceive concepts in a much more sophisticated and mature manner than other children their age. Most seven-year-olds, for example, wouldn't be interested in watching the news; a gifted seven-year-old, however, not only would watch, but would likely ask complicated questions about what was happening in the world, why it was allowed to happen, and what was being done about it.

Such sophistication can present problems in school. Gifted children will understand or even master a concept after one or two repetitions, while average children will need six-to-10 repetitions; this can cause a gifted child to become frustrated, bored, or uninterested. Often gifted children feel isolated and occasionally will try to dumb themselves down to fit in or, more appropriately, not stand out. Worse, few teachers recognize any of these as signs of giftedness.

Schools under-identify and under-serve all kinds of giftedness, says Dr. Richard Olenchak, a psychologist, professor and director of the Urban Talent Research Institute in the College of Education at the University of Houston. Students who are creative are often entirely overlooked or are branded as weird.

That's because public schools, and many private schools, don't really have a good way to measure giftedness. Most schools use test scores to identify gifted children, assuming that kids who score in the top one or two percent of their classes are gifted. But those who study giftedness say this is an inaccurate gauge.

The achievement tests that schools give don't really pick gifted children, says Dr. Delisle. What they do is pick high-achieving children, but a high-achieving child is not necessarily a gifted child.

Giftedness, he says, is not about understanding or mastering specific concepts, but rather abstractions. Certainly, some children are gifted in subjects that can be subjectively measured, such as math or reading. But children who are creatively gifted are inventive and innovative in virtually all aspects of their lives, something that is nearly impossible to discern on a standardized test.

A better method for spotting giftedness is parental assessment, says Donna Hulsey, founder of ACE Academy, a private school for gifted children in Austin. Because parents are with their child every day, far more than any teacher, they will notice little things that set their child apart, Ms. Hulsey says. When the child is young, his parents may notice that he reaches developmental milestones earlier than the other kids in his playgroup, or maybe doesn't sleep as much as his peers; when he's a preschooler, his parents may notice that he reads before his friends or is able to understand more complicated directions; when he's in school, his parents may discover that he masters concepts quickly and becomes bored equally quickly.

If parents suspect their child is gifted, a professional assessment by a psychologist skilled in identifying giftedness is a good idea. Psychologists normally will administer an IQ test, such as the Wechsler Intelligence Test, the Stanford-Binet Test or the Woodcock-Johnson Cognitive Battery, which measure the way a child thinks. (Many schools also utilize IQ tests to assess giftedness, but often the results are incorrect because such tests should not be administered in a group setting.) Along with identifying intelligence, these tests also will spot problems such as visual processing trouble something nearly 30% of profoundly gifted children have because their bodies can't keep up with their minds.

A parent of a gifted child is always going to be their advocate, says Ms. Husley. [IQ test] scores help the parents know the child and how they think [so] they can go to the school and say: Here is evidence that my child is different from the average student and needs more.'

Traditionally and historically, just three percent of the U.S. population has been classified as gifted and talented. So how is it that 20% of the students at Fulmore Middle School in Austin ISD are gifted? Or 15% of children at Barton Creek Elementary School in Eanes ISD? Or 8-to-10% of all kids in Leander ISD?

They're either not measuring giftedness correctly or they've doctored the numbers, says Dr. Madeline Levine, a clinical psychologist and author of the book The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure And Material Advantage Are Creating A Generation Of Disconnected And Unhappy Kids.

Dr. Levine says such high figures go against the bell curve of human development. Yet local gifted and talented teachers point out that Austin has a high concentration of educated, driven people whose children might naturally follow in their parents' footsteps.

Throughout the country, we will find clusters of gifted populations because of the companies that hire those kinds of people, says Sherry Sniderman, the gifted specialist at Forest Trail Elementary School in Eanes ISD. In places like San Jose [and] Austin, there are clusters of gifted families. That's why we [at Forest Trail Elementary School] have a larger gifted population.

The principal at Murchison Middle School, where 14% of the student population has been identified as gifted, echoes that sentiment.

Many of our parents are computer engineers, physicians, professors at UT and so we would expect that the number [of gifted students] might be larger in our community, says Principal Donna Houser.

Such reasoning assumes that giftedness is genetic. But that isn't always the case; as well, repeated studies demonstrate that giftedness knows no boundaries in terms of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomics, says Dr. Olenchak.

I would not think that Austin would have more or less gifted and talented students than any other place, he says. I am so very weary of society priggishly equating talent with financial wealth.

Indeed, many gifted children with cultural or language barriers are not identified as gifted by their schools, says Dianne Hughes, executive director of the Texas Association for Gifted and Talented. As well, children with learning disabilities or behavior problems also are overlooked.

This is perhaps because schools make the mistake of assuming that bright and motivated is synonymous with gifted.

What's the difference?

While the bright child knows the answer, a gifted learner asks the question, says Carol Beckley, Gifted and Talented teacher at Valley View Elementary School in the Eanes ISD. A bright child is interested in what's going on in the classroom, but a gifted learner is highly curious; a bight child has good ideas but a gifted learner has wild, silly ideas; a gifted learner shows strong opinions, constructs abstractions, is intense, prefers adults to peers and not just absorbs information but manipulates it.

Helping parents understand the difference between gifted and bright can be tricky, says Michelle Swain, Round Rock ISD's director of gifted and advanced academic services. She tries to explain to parents that gifted children simply process information differently, and at a faster pace. But when that doesn't work, she gets personal.

I've got two little girls and I'm really hoping they are successful and advanced learners and that they are not gifted, says Ms. Swain. That's because giftedness brings with it all those social and emotional traumas associated with being at the far end of the bell curve.

Not to mention potential problems at school.

The truly creative student, largely, is not viewed very kindly by schools, says Dr. Olenchak. because he would inherently be the one to question traditions, walk to the beat of a different drummer, and otherwise seek novelty and exploration in nearly all aspects of life.

Given that, truly gifted kids need a radically different educational setting. Because while bright or high achieving children will enjoy whatever is given to them in a regular classroom, gifted children will demand moremore creativity, more license to explore, and more attention.

In general, Texas does a better-than-average job of identifying and educating gifted kids, says Dr. Delisle. If I had to give Texas a grade for its gifted program, I'd give it a B or B+ in allowing the flexibility to its school districts, he says.

That's because Texas, unlike many other states, allows teachers to nominate children for gifted and talented programs. For the most part, teachers in Texas are trained to spot gifted children and direct them to appropriate programs.

The Texas State Plan for the Gifted and Talented requires that school districts provide both a continuum of gifted services for grades K-12 as well as an array of learning opportunities that provide for students' interests and strengths, says Kathy Wood, the coordinator for gifted programs in the Leander ISD.

While commendable, it means that gifted and talented identification processes and programs can vary wildly from district to district.

For instance, the Leander and Eanes school districts identify gifted children on the basis of general intellect and creativity and then place those children in special pull-out programs. The Round Rock and Austin ISDs, by contrast, use general intellectual ability and success in specific subject areas (for example, having a good memory or being well read) to identify gifted kids and then cater to them through a differentiated educational program.

There is great variability in the gifted services offered by school districts in Texas, [from] schools that offer extensive programming options to schools that offer few or even no services, says Dr. Olenchak. My observation is that there are precious few school districts that offer comprehensive programs to identify and nurture the wide range of talents and abilities that comprise the gifted and talented student population.

Part of the reason for this is that school districts are not rewarded for their compliance with the Texas State Plan for the Gifted and Talented indeed, they aren't even monitored to ensure they're doing anything at all: compliance visits ceased in 2003 because of limitations with the compliance monitoring law (TEA Code Section 7.0208).

To make matters more complicated, all school districts in Texas receive the same amount of money to educate their gifted students. The funding is based on a state average five-percent gifted rate. In other words, the state assumes that five percent of Texas kids are gifted, so each district receives enough money to provide gifted education to five-percent of its studentsregardless of whether the district has more or fewer gifted students.

The result is that, despite having one of the country's best plans for gifted and talented education, few Texas school districts actually implement it.

This is evidenced in the lackluster ratings of the various gifted and talented programs. The Texas State Plan for the Education of Gifted and Talented has three assessment levels to grade districts on their gifted and talented performance: acceptable, recognized and exemplary. Not one district in the state has achieved an exemplary grade, and only six have reached the recognized level none of them in Central Texas.

This isn't to say that public schools in Texas aren't doing their level best to meet the needs of gifted children. In fact, some teachers go above and beyond their job descriptions to do exactly that.

Last year, for instance, students in the gifted and talented program at West Ridge Middle School won a Destination Imagination award. As well, teacher Carol Reese led them in investing $100,000 of virtual money in the stock market an exercise that was sosuccessful that that Ms. Reese plans to create a stock market club for all students next semester.

At Fulmore Middle School, magnet program director Dr. Mary Anne Wilkinson encouraged gifted kids to design a lunar outpost model as part of an international project sponsored by NASA.

And Forest Trail Elementary School hired Sherry Sniderman to be a Passions Coordinator: any child with an academic passion may meet with Ms. Sniderman multiple times to explore and develop it. Ms. Sniderman also started an after-school robotics club for kids interested in technology.

At many schools, though, the spotty offerings for gifted students boil down to money as in, not enough of it.

As teachers, we are not able to solve our gifted children's individual needs without staffing, funding and time, despite trying our best, says Ms. Reese. It would be nice if funding existed for gifted students because they are really the ones who will go amazing places.

Some say that funding should come from the federal government as part of the No Child Left Behind Act.

There is a joke out there [that says] No child left behind and no child gets ahead,' says Ms. Swain of the Round Rock ISD. It means that we are trying to bring everyone down to the same level.

Parents of gifted children must be advocates not only for having their children identified as gifted, but also for devising educational plans that motivate and enrich their children. There is strength in numbers, so parents of gifted children would do well to join or start an organized parent advocacy group.

Parents are people with the strongest hand, says Kelly Callaway, director of advanced academics and gifted education at Texas Education Agency. When [parents] are active, knowledgeable and proactive, then they can make a huge difference. When there's a positive relationship between the school and a strong parent group, that's when you see the strongest services for gifted students.

Parents of special needs children learned this a long time ago, says Dr. Delisle: special education students received necessary assistance only after their parents demanded it and then worked closely with schools to implement it.

In the individualized educational process of the special education department, parents of every child with a disability have to meet with the school personnel [and] together they devise an educational plan, says Dr. Delisle.. Hello! Why can't we do this with gifted children as well?

Such close collaboration between teachers and parents could make a world of difference for gifted children not only in their school performance, but more importantly in their personal lives.

Jack's parents discovered this when they moved him to ACE Academy, the private school that focuses exclusively on gifted and talented children. Once Jack's intellectual needs were being met, he ceased any signs of violent behavior and, quite literally, blossomed.

The transformation has been huge, Anabelle says. "Jack loves going to school now and his teachers really understand his needs. His father and I also no longer feel like we are doing something wrong in our parenting, so the entire dynamic of our family has changed. I would never have thought to have my son tested for giftedness, and certainly not at such an early age, but in our case the positive outcome has been life-changing.