Academic Performance of Local vs. State-Identified Female Gifted Students in South Carolina

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the academic performance of locally and state-identified female gifted students from a small rural district located in the Low Country of South Carolina. While the participants for the study are current sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students, their third grade SC Ready Reading and Math scores were used as the main source of data. When comparing the overall means from each assessment, state-identified gifted students outperformed locally identified gifted students on the SC Ready Reading assessment, and locally identified students outperformed state-identified students on the SC Ready Math assessment. The results from this study found no statistical significant differences between the academic performance of the two subgroups. These findings will contribute to gifted literature and yield further exploration of the gifted identification process as well as the academic performance of gifted students.