If educators were to teach students at their actual levels of achievement, rather than where we think they should be, much of the charges of elitism and other negative aspects of gifted or special education programming would simply vanish.

All members of the team should undertake the same challenge of �How can we assist this child in making achievement gains when the standard curriculum is not appropriate to do so?��whether it be a struggling child or a high-achieving child.

In the summer of 2009, Prufrock Press published a special issue of Gifted Child Today on the topic of Response to Intervention (RtI) and gifted education. This issue quickly became one of the most widely read issues in the peer-reviewed journal�s history. In fact, we had so many requests for additional copies of that issue, extra copies from the original press run were quickly sold out. It seems that many individuals, universities, and gifted education programs around the country were using the special issue for professional development purposes.

For gifted education, RtI represents many important opportunities and challenges. To help education professionals take a proactive look at the ways gifted education and the needs of gifted students fit within the RtI initiative, Gifted Child Today�s editor, Susan Johnsen, Ph.D., and the journal�s editorial board invited two prominent professors (Mary Ruth Coleman, Ph.D. and Claire E. Hughes, Ph.D.) to guest edit a special issue of GCT on the important topic of RtI and gifted child education.

To encourage the widest possible exposure of this important topic, I have made the decision to offer this issue of GCT free of charge as a downloadable PDF.

The free download of this important issue of GCT can be found here:

<http://www.prufrock.com/client/client_pages/gct/rti-gifted-education.cfm>

Joel