Administrative Challenges in Implementing Gifted Education in the Buffalo New York Area

This study aims to add to the current literature on the lack of gifted education for gifted children throughout the U.S. by examining within the Buffalo, New York area, the attitudes and beliefs of school administrators toward gifted education, as well as their perceptions of the administrative barriers to obtaining gifted education. The researcher aims to create a snapshot of the attitudes, beliefs and issues regarding the implementation of gifted programs in the Buffalo New York Public School District as well as, for comparison, one school in a Buffalo suburb that provides gifted education. The researcher will identify and rank the issues by prevalence and difficulty level, and also compare administrative approaches between the schools that provide gifted education and those that do not. The sample interviewed will be administrators in the Buffalo, New York, Public School District, as well as an administrator from a school that provides gifted programming in a neighboring suburb of Buffalo. Interviews will be semi-structured with responses recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Researcher expects to find agreement on the need for gifted programming, and common themes within the administrative barriers that prevent implementation. Researcher expects to compare and contrast the administrative differences between the identified school or schools that provide gifted programming with those that do not, and also expects to suggest policies and practices that will address the barriers to implementing gifted programming