The variety of programs offered in the county is designed to compliment the diverse individual characteristics displayed by gifted students in the school setting. The purposes of this brochure are to provide an overview of the gifted program, a description of the identification process, characteristics of the gifted student, the program design for gifted students in Pittsylvania County Schools, and answers to questions often asked about the gifted program. They are students who give evidence of high performance capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, leadership capacity or specific academic fields. All schools within the Pittsylvania County School System follow the same procedure for identifying gifted students in grades kindergarten through twelve.
Identification is a way to determine which students require different educational opportunities.
At this time, the county identifies intellectually and academically gifted students at the elementary level. Students may be nominated for the gifted program at any time during their school careers by a teacher, parent, community person, peer or by the student. In order to identify gifted students many types of information are gathered. A point system using multiple criteria is used. If these are not available, then the Peabody Individual Achievement Test and the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test will be administered by the gifted resource teacher at the student s school after parents have given written permission.