I could hardly disagree more w/Ms Griggs. She's leaving out the other piece of the GT program--the T part, for Talented. Gifted children aren't just those with spectacular IQ's (and the hypothetical 170 IQ child she mentions is vanishingly rare--a program for 150+ IQ students would be tiny); gifted children are those who wait and wait while the others need to be taught something 5 times, and they got it the first time. Like Ms Hayutin (sp?) , I watched my children flourish when their needs were met in a GT environment, and their IQ's are in the Very Superior range, not the 140's. Ms Griggs lumps together IQ's from 105 to 130, which is a very inaccurate way to go about it--105 is normal, within the statistical plus-minus range, and 130 is in an entirely different category. Certainly gifted children need to be identified accurately: but aside from not meeting the needs of the 125-140 IQ child, a program designed to seine out only the extraordinary child who is a statistical outlier would serve so few children that it would be under constant threat from taxpayers who don't want programs which serve only a few children. So much money and resources go to special needs children at the other end of the developmental spectrum--let's keep the GT program open to the highly able students whose success is so critical to our nation's future--and whose failure would be an incalculable loss.