This article helps you understand the many factors that may lead to underachievement in school for gifted students. Having a learning disability is only one of those factors. This article describes the problems in identifying the giftedness in youngsters with learning disabilities. The disability may depress scores on all types of assessments.
Most schools stop looking for exceptionalities once the learning disability is discovered.
The danger, therefore, is that all the school s attention will be on accommodating the disability, while never recognizing or accommodating the giftedness. The author presents lists of characteristics of gifted students with visual and hearing impairments, physical disabilities, and learning disabilities and Attention Deficit Disorders. She also calls attention to the situation in which a gifted child s boredom or frustration with school tasks that are too easy may lead to a mistaken diagnosis of learning disability. This very comprehensive document includes definitions of learning disabilities, giftedness, and the combination for twice exceptional learners. It discusses identification of these students, and proposes specific intervention strategies.