The Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program supports unique opportunities for high-achieving and underachieving pupils who are identified as gifted and talented. By state definition, gifted students are pupils who possess a capacity for excellence far beyond that of their chronological peers. This capacity includes many and varied characteristics that require modifications of curriculum and instruction. These modifications form the basis of gifted and talented educational services.

• To provide for differentiation of content, process, product, and learning environment commensurate with abilities and talents of GATE students in order to create life-long learners.

• To foster participation in challenging capstone courses by introducing, in earlier grades, the skills, concepts and habits of mind needed for success in rigorous courses.

• To foster creativity, talent development, and self-generating, problem-solving abilities to expand each student's awareness of choices for satisfying contributions to society.

• To support the social and emotional needs of gifted students in order to help students develop healthy self-concepts, increase commitment to personal responsibility and responsibility towards others, and cultivate sensitivity and constructive ethical standards.

• To encourage and model respect for the full range of diversity among individuals with gifts and talents: cultural, socio-economic, language, and double-labeled.

• To address the needs of underachieving GATE students.

• To assure consistent participation of parents and community members in the planning and evaluation or programs for gifted students.

• To provide professional development opportunities related to gifted education to administrators, teachers, counselors, and GATE department staff to support and improve educational opportunities for gifted students.

• To establish formal and informal evaluation methods and instruments that assess the gifted program and performance of gifted students (which meet or exceed state content standards), and to use the results to improve gifted programs and gifted student performance.

• To provide an equitable, comprehensive, and ongoing identification process that adheres to the current state criteria.