WHEREAS, Hawaii's gifted and talented students are children of great natural ability who have both special gifts and special needs; and

WHEREAS, gifted and talented students are characterized by outstanding abilities that make them capable of high performance, but these students are at risk of being bored and unchallenged in school; and

WHEREAS, the Department of Education website has a page of information on the identification, behavioral characteristics, and differentiation of gifted and talented students; and

WHEREAS, the Department of Education webpage describes experiences that gifted and talented students should have, and program standards for providing those experiences; and

WHEREAS, achievement of a significant school experience for the gifted student is difficult to measure adequately by current tests; and

WHEREAS, Hawaii's definition of giftedness states that gifted students are those who require services beyond those offered in the regular school program; and

WHEREAS, meaningful education for the gifted student requires that personal and administrative barriers must be overcome; and

WHEREAS, distance education is a means by which gifted and talented students in other jurisdictions may take challenging academic courses, working from their homes or schools while interacting online with an instructor and other students in a Web-based discussion system; and

WHEREAS, gifted and talented students engaged in online distance education obtain credit from their own schools for successful completion of courses offered by an accredited university; and

WHEREAS, an example of an accredited provider of online distance education courses is the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University; and

WHEREAS, conspicuously absent from the Department of Education's webpage on gifted and talented students is information concerning distance education; and

WHEREAS, the Department of Education appears to make no use of available online resources for distance education to enrich the curriculum available to Hawaii's gifted and talented students; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Twenty-third Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2006, that the Department of Education is requested to allow gifted and talented students to take demanding and engaging online distance education courses from an accredited university to supplement their classroom learning; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Department of Education is requested to develop a system for granting credit or placement toward the high school diploma of gifted and talented students who successfully complete approved online distance education courses as part of their curriculum of study; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Department of Education is requested to report to the Legislature its progress in complying with this Resolution at least twenty days before the convening of the Regular Session of 2007; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Resolution be transmitted to the Superintendent of Education and the Chairperson of the Board of Education.

Report Title:

Education; Gifted; Talented; Online