Advocating for Gifted Students: Legal Rights, Education, and Support: The Legally Blind Justice Podcast: Episode 36

Advocating for Gifted Students: Legal Rights, Education, and Support

Welcome to another episode of Legally Blind Justice! Today, we’re tackling an important and often overlooked topic—advocating for gifted students and ensuring they receive the education and support they deserve.

Gifted education is more than just advanced coursework—it intersects with special education, legal protections, and the need for proper accommodations. Joining us are experts Dr. Taylor Ruiz and Crystal Ash, who will break down the legal rights of gifted students, the importance of early identification, and how families can advocate effectively within the education system.

If you have questions about education law, special education rights, or need legal support for your child’s educational needs, visit www.kaltmanlaw.com or call 516-788-5534. The team at K Altman Law is here to help you navigate the system and fight for the best possible outcome for your child.

Stay tuned for an insightful discussion, and don’t forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review if you find this episode helpful. Let’s get started! Unofficial Transcript:

Welcome to the Legally Blind Justice Podcast, where we break down legal rights, advocate for those in need,

and empower you with the knowledge to navigate the legal system. I'm your host, Tim Markley, and today we're diving into a critical, but often misunderstood area of education law, advocating for gifted students and ensuring they receive the support that they need. Gifted education isn't just about high achieving students. It's part of a special education system that too often gets overlooked. These students face unique challenges.

from misidentification to a lack of appropriate accommodations. And today, we'll explore how parents, educators, and advocates can fight for their rights. Joining us today are Dr. Taylor Ruiz, Senior Director of Special Education at K. Altman Law, and Crystal Ash, a dedicated advocate for gifted students. Together, we'll break down what it really means to be a gifted student, the myths surrounding giftedness,

and how the law plays a crucial role in securing the rights of educational support. So whether you're a parent fighting for your child and educator looking for guidance, or just someone interested in education law, stick around. You won't want to miss this episode. Thank you for joining us today to learn more about advocating for gifted children, understanding their rights as well as their educational needs.

My name is Dr. Taylor Ruiz and I am the Senior Director of Special Education here at K. Altman Law. And my co-presenter is Crystal Ash, who is an advocate who specializes in gifted education here at K. Altman Law. Just to talk a little bit about what we do here at K. Altman Law, our team works on advocacy. So what we do is we partner with families to ensure that students

have what they need to meet the IEP requirements for IDEA, FAPE, and other various education laws. We work in tandem with our educational attorneys to secure the best outcomes for our students and ensure that they're getting the accommodations that they need as well as appropriate placement. So today we're going to talk more about gifted students and how gifted education relates to special education.

So for this webinar, just to give you a little bit more detail on what we're looking at today, in terms of gifted education and special education, we're really focusing on gifted education as a tenant of special education and touching on some aspects of gifted education, gifted children, special education, and other aspects that you might not be aware of yet. I'm sure you've all heard of gifted education, right, because you're here, but gifted education really is

much more detailed. It has a lot more depth than you might realize. And so we really want to touch on the fact that gifted education is special education. And to do that, we're kind of breaking the webinar up into three different sections. First, we have our defined section. This is where we're really going to dig in what gifted education is and who our gifted students are. Then we're going to jump into debunking. So there are a lot of misconceptions and myths about gifted education.

what it looks like, who our gifted students are, and there are some misconceptions about what that looks like in the classroom and at home, what their characteristics are. So we want to debunk anything that you might've heard that is not quite accurate to what we actually see in the classroom. And then we'll be moving on to the develop stage, which is what you can do for your gifted students, either as a teacher, as an administrator, or even as a parent. To go into our introduction.

Here at Kaltman Law, we are advocates and we're all really devoted to special education. We come from all types of backgrounds. We have edu