Gifted & Talented Education (GATE)

Philosophy

In keeping with our belief that all children should be challenged to meet their full potential, Encinitas Union School District commits to serving those students who have the potential to be gifted and talented in the full range of academic pursuits regardless of their linguistic, racial, ethnic, cultural, or socioeconomic subgroup.

We recognize that gifted students possess unique abilities and talents as individual as each student. The District’s GATE services are designed to meet those individual needs and encourage intellectual, social and emotional development.

The Encinitas Union School District supports the National Association of Gifted Children‘s definition of gifted and talented students as, “Children and youth with outstanding talent who perform or show the potential for performing at remarkably high levels of accomplishment when compared with others of their age, experience, or environment.”  We believe that gifted students will learn best when they have well-trained teachers who fully understand the affective and academic needs of gifted students and are provided high quality differentiated curriculum which extends student learning. All students, regardless of their school, must be provided equal access to trained teachers and the differentiated curriculum.

Goals

It is the district’s goal to provide equitable, high quality differentiated learning opportunities that are both rigorous and engaging so that our GATE identified students reach their full affective and academic potential. Once identified, we feel it is our responsibility to provide students with the necessary support and high quality differentiated learning opportunities, that exhibit acceleration, complexity, challenge, depth, and creativity, enabling each student to fully develop his/her unique individual potential.

Standards

Along with rigorous academic standards in the content areas, the state has developed new standards for the Gifted and Talented Education Program. Standards are directed in 8 areas:

  1. Program Design
  2. Identification of students
  3. Curriculum and Instruction
  4. Social and Emotional Development
  5. Professional Development
  6. Parent and Community Involvement
  7. Program Assessment
  8. Budgets

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