The federal definition of giftedness, issued in the Marland Report in 1972, describes gifted students as those "Students, children, or youth who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities."
It should be noted that states are not required to use the federal definition in their programming and identification policies.

A more recent definition comes from The Columbus Group in 1991: "Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching, and counseling in order for them to develop optimally."
cited by Martha Morelock, "Giftedness: The View from Within" in Understanding Our Gifted, January, 1992.

Common Characteristics
Gifted students tend to share characteristics, which may vary from person to person and from topic to topic. Depending on the manner and degree to which each characteristic is expressed, many of these qualities can have both highly positive and negative results in traditional school settings.

Creativity
Students might make unexpected connections that others don't see.
Young students may not be able to articulate these connections clearly to caregivers, and may appear to be giving “wrong” answers. Older students may appear to be socially awkward or have a strange sense of humor, because their associations and interpretations might not be immediately obvious to most people.

Students may enjoy being different for the sake of being different, and may resist repetitive tasks in favor of new challenges. This often results in students who may have several projects going at once, who may not follow through or attend to details, and who may explore ways of doing things that are completely different than the assigned method. Teachers may perceive this as off-task behavior, an inability to understand directions, or defiance.

Perfectionism
High expectations, whether from teachers, parents, or self, can limit productivity, due to fear of not measuring up to expectations or an inability to match the “vision” to the reality, given existing restraints on time and/or materials. What may look like laziness may actually be a student who is overwhelmed by options, frozen by possibilities, or unable to finish because s/he is drowning in details. High expectations can also result in outstanding, creative work.

Some gifted students project their perfectionism on to others; they may be highly intolerant of errors and quick to point them out. Many gifted students are hardest on themselves, finding it hard to move past their own trivial mistakes that others quickly forget.

Sensitivity/Intensity
Gifted students may be highly emotional, and may worry about “big picture” world issues to extreme degrees. A bright student might learn about the destruction of rainforest habitats and resolve to recycle at home. A highly sensitive gifted student might hear a statistic about the destruction of rainforest habitats and calculate when they will be eradicated without intervention, and lie awake at night in tears over the inevitable extinction of various species.

Gifted students may feel responsible for others, including adults in their lives, and “shape-shift” to accommodate others’ needs and wishes. They may also be terribly concerned about justice and fairness, and are highly sensitive to criticism, especially if they feel it is unwarranted or mis-applied. The extraordinary capacity to worry is not limited to girls or to quieter people-pleasers; outspoken, outwardly confident students are often surprisingly capable of extreme worrying, based on a variety of imaginative possible outcomes.

Immersion in a particular topic of interest is common to gifted students. A typical student might have a favorite dinosaur book and know the names of different dinosaurs. A student with an intense interest might memorize an extensive dinosaur reference book and quibble with conflicting data s/he found in a different source.

The I.Q. Connection
I.Q. stands for "intelligence quotient." The first I.Q. test was developed by Alfred Binet, in order to detect French elementary students who were working below grade level. Reasonable people can certainly agree that intelligence tests, no matter how well-researched or administered, have flaws, much like grading systems and standardized tests. It is difficult to precisely quantify abstract entities, such as how quickly a person learns, or even exactly what a person knows. However, we use I.Q. tests to give us information about a student's gifted potential because they are the most reliable quantifiable tool available.

I.Q. and G.A.I.
Our district uses the WISC-IV I.Q. test, which is individually administered to students by the district psychometrist. This test involves a number of sub-tests designed to look at language and spatial ability, among others. A full-scale I.Q. score is calculated using all sub-tests. The G.A.I., or General Ability Index, calculates the I.Q. score without the working memory and processing speed sub-tests. While these sub-tests may detect students who struggle with memory and processing speed, they may not be reliable indicators of giftedness. When our district uses a student's I.Q. score to determine whether or not a student qualifies for the gifted program, we use either the full-scale or the G.A.I., whichever is higher.

I.Q. -- Basics About the Numbers
A person of average intelligence is said to have an I.Q. of 100. That is initially a bit counter-intuitive, because we tend to associate 100 with 100%, or a top grade. Traditionally, the standard deviation on the I.Q. test has been 15. An I.Q. score of 130 is two standard deviations above the mean, and the traditional "cut-off" point to indicate giftedness. It is very interesting to examine these numbers when you consider the range in a typical classroom. There might be students at two standard deviations below the mean (around 70), several in the middle, and a few around 130. There are people with IQ scores three or four standard deviations above the mean (145 or 160). The difference between a person with an I.Q. of 160 and 130 is equal to the difference between a person with an average I.Q. and an I.Q. of 70, yet both of the first two would be considered gifted. It can be heartbreaking to realize that a child with a 129 I.Q. doesn't qualify for a gifted program, because the difference between that child and one at 131 who does qualify might be negligible.

Levels of Giftedness
Some researchers have divided gifted students into categories of Moderately Gifted (I.Q. 130 - 144), Highly Gifted (145-159), and Profoundly Gifted (160+). In Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind, author Deborah Ruf describes five levels of giftedness, and profiles examples of child behavior at various ages at each level. Joe Renzulli's Schoolwide Enrichment Model is predicated on a theory of giftedness derived from an interaction between task commitment (which can vary between subjects and topics), creativity, and above average intelligence. He argues that giftedness can appear at certain times given certain circumstances, and advocates a "revolving door" gifted identification model that acknowledges variance within a given student from topic to topic and grade to grade.

It is possible to be "gifted" in some areas, but more "average" in others. This may be expressed in language arts, but not in math; it may be present in the performing arts, but not in visual/spatial domains; or a variety of combinations. It is also possible to be gifted and have a learning disability or processing difficulty, although both can be challenging to discern if the giftedness masks the disability (making a child's learning appear to be "average"), and if the disability limits the student's capacity to demonstrate gifted behaviors.

Asynchrony (mentioned in the Columbus Group definition of giftedness, above) has to do with a discrepancy between the apparent age-level ability in one domain and an exceptional ability in another domain. This is highly pronounced in exceptionally gifted young children, who may be able to comprehend physics principles and still cry if offered a green crayon instead of a red one. Asynchrony can make it difficult for adults to know how best to support a gifted child who speaks like an adult but has a child's worries and motor skills (handwriting is a very common example of this discrepancy in younger children). Older gifted children, with age-appropriate social concerns and advanced academic knowledge might mask their expertise to minimize differences between themselves and peers.

Giftedness should be distinguished from creative productivity, which often arises from highly motivated, socially aware people with above average intelligence. Gifted students may express high creative productivity, or they may under-achieve, or fall somewhere in between. Bright and motivated students who may not qualify for gifted programs are also certainly capable of creative productivity, and should be encouraged to develop their talents and interest areas whether or not they participate in formal gifted programs.

Here is a link to a comparison of bright and gifted characteristics.

Here is a link to a student survey about giftedness in our district.