What Georgia law requires
To be an effective advocate for gifted children — whether that’s supporting your own child’s education, or advocacy on a larger scale — it helps to know what Georgia law says about gifted education.
By law, all public schools in Georgia must offer gifted services to all students who have been identified as gifted. Details about how gifted education is to be delivered are in the Georgia Department of Education Resource Manual for Gifted Education.
This is in sharp contrast to states like New York, where for years parents have criticized a system that doesn’t have enough seats in its gifted schools for all the gifted kids who need them, and the seats that are available are doled out based on a high-stakes test the children take in preschool.
The state gives public school systems some flexibility in how they deliver gifted services. Students can be taught advanced academic material in a small group within their classroom, or they may go to a separate classroom and be taught material that doesn’t relate to a specific academic subject. Regardless of the method, gifted instruction must be delivered by a teacher who has earned their gifted endorsement by completing courses in how to teach gifted children.
The law requires that every gifted student receive “at least five segments per week (or the yearly equivalent) of gifted education services.” A segment is defined as one-sixth of an instructional day. That’s fairly easy to measure in middle school and high school; if a 7th grader is taking six classes, at least one of them should be providing a gifted curriculum. It’s a bit trickier in elementary school, where the school day may be divided into longer blocks of time. I asked the state gifted office for a rough definition of a segment, and they said it’s a minimum of 45 minutes. Multiply that by five, and the state requirement comes about 225 minutes of gifted education services per week.
Unfortunately, the law requiring that gifted students receive a minimum amount of gifted instruction no longer has any teeth. Years ago, the state of Georgia offered all public school systems the option to become “strategic waiver” or “charter” districts. Doing so would give them broad flexibility in how they operate, and would exempt them from following certain rules. Every school system in Georgia except two took this option. Because of this exempt status, they aren’t legally required to meet the five segments rule, nor are they held to the limits on class sizes — for gifted classes or otherwise.
The good news is that, despite the lack of an enforceable requirement, schools do still make an effort to serve gifted students. It’s to their economic advantage to do so, because they receive extra funding for any classroom time when gifted-identified students are being taught by gifted-endorsed teachers.
What all this means is, if you have a gifted student in a Georgia public school and you feel they aren’t getting enough gifted instruction, you have every right to speak to an administrator at your school about it. It may be that your child’s classroom teacher has gifted endorsement and is teaching the gifted students in a small group, which would qualify as gifted instruction. However, if the administrator can’t point to how your child is receiving gifted instruction, you can ask that they try to get closer to the five segments per week — so long as you understand this is not an enforceable law, and given that you don’t have much leverage, you should frame it as a request, not a demand nor a threat.
There’s one kind of accommodation Georgia doesn’t allow for gifted students: early entrance to kindergarten. Georgia law says a child must be 5 years old or older to begin kindergarten in a Georgia public school, and must be 6 or older to begin first grade.
None of these laws or regulations apply to private schools.
Public charter schools can choose not to offer gifted services, although I’ve never heard of that actually happening. The Georgia Department of Education issued a memo on this topic, which says charter schools that don’t identify and serve gifted students will lose their gifted funding.
This page was updated on August 27, 2023. If you find an error in the links or the information presented here, please submit a correction using the Contact page on this site. Thank you.
Gifted Atlanta 
Can homeschoolers access gifted services like other special Ed services?
That is a great question. I don’t know the answer. I know that under state law, public schools must provide gifted services. I know that private schools aren’t required to provide gifted services. From your question, I infer that if you are home schooling and your child has special needs, the state provides resources for special education. Is that correct?
Hi Dori, thanks for your reply. No, this child does not have special needs other than being gifted. I just know that homeschoolers do have access to special education services if they have a disability or learning delay and I wondered if we could also access gifted services in the same way. It sounds like that is not the case?
Sorry for the confusion. When I wrote “your child,” I didn’t literally mean YOUR child, I meant “a child.” What I was asking was exactly what you clarified — a child with special needs who is in home school has access to special ed services. I wasn’t familiar with that, although it makes sense. Let me reach out to someone at the Georgia Dept. of Education and see if I can get an answer about what resources are available for home schooled gifted students.
Here’s what I was able to find out. Special education is federally mandated. That’s why special education resources are available to home schooled students.
Gifted education is mandated by the state of Georgia, but local school districts have broad latitude in deciding how to deliver gifted services. Bottom line, local school districts are not required to provide gifted services for non-enrolled students.
Here are some things you might try, depending on your needs and your child’s age.
1. For a younger child, the flexible structure of home schooling gives you the opportunity to follow the child’s lead and spend school hours studying whatever interests them. This could include reading library books, watching videos, and taking outings. Gifted children often enjoy diving very deep into a single topic of interest. Enrichment like this, where students study a topic outside the standard curriculum, is typical in school-based gifted services. With home schooling, you can provide enrichment that’s tailored to your child’s particular interests.
2. Also for elementary-age children, you could visit the principal at your local public school to see if they would provide you some of the resources they’re using for gifted instruction. I’m not sure they would be agreeable to it, and again, they’re not required to provide it, but if you’re looking for something more formal, that might be a way to get a sense of what they’re doing.
3. If your child is learning above grade level, then as a home schooling parent, you can move them on to material that’s intended for children a year or two older. This sort of acceleration is another way public schools serve gifted children. In the public school environment, getting a child accelerated into the next grade level can be a long and complex process; as a home school parent, you can accelerate your child as the need presents itself.
4. For middle-school or high-school students, the Stanford online learning programs have an excellent reputation. Their online curriculum used to be known as the Educational Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY). Today, it’s called Stanford Online High School. Stanford offers classes for students in 7th grade and up. If you’re looking for a full curriculum for your child, taught at an advanced level, this is an option. Middle-school website: https://ohs.stanford.edu/middle-school High-school website: https://spcs.stanford.edu/stanford-online-high-school
I hope some of this is helpful.