ALL students needs and deserve an equal opportunity:

• to stretch their minds around new and difficult curriculum content, maximize their potential, and demand the use of higher-level thinking. Differentiation within classrooms is important. Gifted students need teachers who modify the curriculum to make it more intellectually demanding. Gifted students need a quicker pace, a greater depth, and more abstract processes. All students need a level of content slightly beyond their grasp, so they will apply higher-level thinking.

• to learn how to learn, which requires organization skills, study skills, and persistence. For gifted students, this occurs only when curriculum is challenging and they are held accountable.

• to feel part of a group and to learn together with intellectual peers for at least part of every school day. Gifted students need to feel connected with age mates, and also with other gifted students. Learning with others of similar ability makes them feel less isolated and more stimulated.

• to have their abilities recognized and challenged early. Any exceptionality requires early intervention to develop full potential. In primary grades, academic rigor is as important as socialization skills. Without appropriate academic challenge for young children, educators may unknowlingly ask children to deny who they are.

• to develop their uniqueness in a psychologically nurturing environment. Gifted students sense that their peers are impatient with the depth of their questions, the sophistication of their vocabulary, and the uniqueness of their interests. They need significant adults in their world to accept and assist with social/emotional issues that relate to self-understanding, peer relations, and family relations.

• to be fully engaged in the learning process. Because gifted students often come to class with a broad knowledge base, they wait a long time to learn something new. Professional development and stronger teacher certification requirements are needed for staff to be able to provide appropriate educational experiences that will engage gifted students. 

• to be free from discrimination based on intellect, gender, race, poverty or age. Meeting the needs of the gifted should not depend on the community one lives in, or traditional role expectations. For example, gifted students may need earlier access to school or curriculum levels. Gifted females may need encouragement to pursue accelerated math and/or science classes. Students in low socioeconomic areas should have equal access to gifted programming based on local standards.

• to experience the joy of learning and succeeding, a feeling with is contagious, and has life-long positive effects.

"Rights of Students" by Carol Morreale (Illinois Association for Gifted Children, 1993).​