See, and I don't view gifted as differing from highly intelligent in terms of a quantifiable thing.
The gifted/non-gifted classification is binary and thus less informative than an IQ. However, I do think defining intellectually gifted as IQ >= 130 is a reasonable definition. It's not worse than defining people age >= 18 as "adult" or age >= 65 as "old".
Yes and no. Mine both have IQ scores that qualify them as gifted per your definition and I do think that high IQ is likely necessary to be gifted in my definition of the word. However, I recognize that most people/kids have not been IQ tested and are not likely to be IQ tested and that our schools and parents are identifying kids as gifted without the benefit of those numbers. What winds up standing in place of IQ is usually the kids being above grade level in reading or testing highly on NCLB tests, etc. I don't think that is as useful when trying to distinguish btwn gifted and bright high achiever.
Assuming that we're going to have to id without giving everyone an IQ test, I'd look for those qualitative things to tell which kid is likely truly gifted.
