Program Evaluation in Gifted Education

The expert guide to the major issues, the chief trends, and the most effective models of program evaluation in gifted education!

The readings in this ready-reference report on specific program evaluations, offer critical guidance in the development and utilization of instruments for assessing gifted and talented programs, and are designed to stimulate the discussion of issues surrounding the evaluation of gifted programs.

Key features include:

• Carolyn M. Callahan′s comprehensive and insightful examination of the past, present, and hopeful future of gifted program evaluation
• Research-informed theories, practical guidelines, and successful models of evaluation
• Recommendations for future exploration

Program evaluation has been considered an important, but neglected component of gifted education for the last three decades. Program Evaluation in Gifted Education provides much needed direction to program developers and practitioners who desire to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their gifted programs.

The ERGE Series:

The National Association for Gifted Children series Essential Readings in Gifted Education is a 12-volume collection of seminal articles from Gifted Child Quarterly. Put the knowledge and power of more than 25 years of research on giftedness and talent into your hands with the leading theories, studies, and findings the experts in the field have to offer.

Carolyn M. Callahan received her Ph.D. in the area of Educational Psychology with an emphasis in gifted educa-tion from the University of Connecticut. Since that time she has been on the faculty of the University of Virginia where she has developed the graduate program in gifted education, the Summer and Saturday Program for gifted students, and has been the director of the University of Virginia National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented for the past 12 years. She has done research across a broad range of topics in gifted education including the areas of the identification of gifted students, the evaluation of gifted programs, the development of performance assessments, and gifted program options. In collaboration with the other staff of the University of Virginia program, she has developed and delivered the highly successful annual Summer Institute on Academic Diversity for the past 5 years. Further, she was one of the editors of Aiming for Excellence: Gifted Program Standards, which is now widely used as the framework of criteria against which gifted programs are judged. As part of her work outside the university, Dr. Callahan has worked with over 300 public school districts across nearly every state in the development of program designs, curriculum, and evaluations. Finally, Dr. Callahan has received recognition as Outstanding Faculty Member in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Outstanding Professor of the Curry School of Education, Distinguished Higher Education Alumnae of the University of Connecticut, and was awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Association for Gifted Children. She is a past president of The Association for the Gifted and the National Association for Gifted Children. She also sits on the editorial boards of Gifted Child Quarterly, Journal for the Education of the Gifted, and Roeper Review. 


Sally M. Reis is a professor and the department head of the Educational Psychology Department at the University of Connecticut where she also serves as principal investigator of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. She was a teacher for 15 years, 11 of which were spent working with gifted students on the elementary, junior high, and high school levels. She has authored more than 130 articles, 9 books, 40 book chapters, and numerous monographs and technical reports.  Her research interests are related to special populations of gifted and tal-ented students, including: students with learning disabilities, gifted females and diverse groups of talented students. She is also interested in extensions of the Schoolwide Enrichment Model for both gifted and talented students and as a way to expand offerings and provide general enrichment to identify talents and potentials in students who have not been previously identified as gifted. She has traveled extensively conducting workshops and providing profes-sional development for school districts on gifted education, enrichment programs, and talent development programs. She is co-author of The Schoolwide Enrichment Model, The Secondary Triad Model, Dilemmas in Talent Development in the Middle Years, and a book published in 1998 about women’s talent development titled Work Left Undone: Choices and Compromises of Talented Females. Sally serves on several editorial boards, including the Gifted Child Quarterly, and is a past president of the National Association for Gifted Children.