Greetings!

My name is Meg Hines and I am a member of the Georgia Association for Gifted Children’s
Coalition for Access and Equity. Over the last three years, members of this special working
group have outlined fourteen projects to support the work towards more equitable access to
gifted and high ability programming in Georgia. If you would like more information about this
coalition, please feel free to email me at mhines@uga.edu. I am happy to share with you the
ways that you can become involved.

The reason for this email is to ask, as a gifted coordinator or designee for gifted education in
your district, for your participation in one of the projects that is being carried out around
instrumentation in Georgia. As you know, the underrepresentation of diverse students in gifted
and talented education programs is a national problem that has not yet been adequately
addressed. In order to address the disparities of gifted identification as it relates to culturally,
linguistically, and economically diverse students, we must begin by taking a critical look at the
assessment instruments utilized, as well as the methods and practices in place for gifted program
identification. I am writing on behalf of our working group to solicit your help in participating in
a survey.

By participating in this survey, you will receive the technical report that will be prepared with an
analysis of survey items. The end goal of this project is to help to inform practices that reduce
the underrepresentation of certain groups in gifted programs. This survey should take
approximately 20-25 minutes.

Responses in the survey will be completely anonymous. You will be directed at the end of the
survey to link to a different form to provide your name and district. This is so we are able to
know which districts participated in the survey only-it will be separate from your survey
answers. The information collected will be analyzed and distributed back to districts in a
technical report so that those districts can better understand and learn from the results to inform
their identification procedures. It is the coalition’s hope that each county can take part in this
endeavor, allowing for the distribution of the most current, relevant, and equitable procedures for
assessing gifted students.

This survey was created by a working group within the Georgia Association for Gifted
Children’s Coalition for Access and Equity, a group of educators dedicated to identifying and
removing barriers to ensure equitable access to challenging educational opportunities for
children. By participating in this survey, you are allowing the information shared about your
district to be used anonymously for a technical report prepared by the GAGC Coalition for
Access and Equity. This report will be distributed to all gifted education specialists in Georgia's
districts to be used in program improvement.
Our timeline for completion of this survey is by Friday, February 24th. We appreciate your
willingness to contribute to this important survey. If you have any questions, please feel free to
contact me at my email listed above. Thank you for your time and attention to improving our
gifted programs in Georgia!

Meg Hines, Karen Kraeger, Melissa Madsen, Laura Gary, and Angela Clayton
Resources Working Group Members

Link to survey:

https://tinyurl.com/mrxzy96f