Do you know a student who demonstrates a dramatic strength in some area of learning, but who also clearly shows one or more equally dramatic learning weaknesses in other subjects or courses? Can you visualize a student who can tell you a lot of information about an area in which she has a passionate interest, but "refuses" to write anything down and has failed to turn in numerous assignments over time?

Is that same student messy and forgetful, frequently describing various reasons why the absence of this or that assignment is not his or her fault? Such students are called "twice exceptional."

To understand this label, please picture a bell curve.

The large "bump" in the middle of the figure represents students whose learning behaviors fall somewhere in the "normal" range of a particular grade level.

The flatter areas on both ends represent students whose performance is farthest away from average on both ends of the continuum. They are called "exceptional" because their ability and/or performance is outside the "normal" parameters for that grade level.

Students represented on the far left of the figure have significant learning difficulties. Students on the right have been called "gifted" or "advanced" learners.

Most "exceptional" students exhibit learning behaviors in only one of the ends of the bell curve continuum. However, there is a small group of students who show some learning behaviors from both sides of the curve, and that is why we call them "twice exceptional," which is abbreviated as "2e."

These 2e students rarely receive educational services for both their exceptionalities. Teachers and administrators often decide to pay much less attention to their strength areas, reasoning that their "gift" will allow them to experience learning success without much formal teaching.

In most schools, success is defined as high scores on standards-based assessments, usually given once each year.

The fallacy to this reasoning is that all students are entitled to "learn" while they attend school by making measurable forward progress from their own "entry level" during each school year from their own entry level to a year-end level that documents one year’s academic growth.

However, the norms used to assess school progress are related to a student's chronological age. Gifted or advanced learners often make only tiny gains in standardized test scores since they entered a particular school year already scoring at or above average before the school year even began. There is little concern from educators about this situation since everyone seems to be happy when kids make high scores on high stakes tests.

The challenge is that these students are "stuck" with curriculum designed for typical learners at a certain age. Yet, to be considered gifted or advanced, a student should be able to handle standards in one or more areas of learning that were designed for older students.

When this same student has learning challenges in other school subjects, the system chooses to focus on these areas only and may even take some time away from 2e students in their strength areas to create more learning time in their areas of weakness. These kids are not happy about this situation, and appreciate teachers being sensitive to understanding their angst.

The sad price often exacted in these situations is that students quickly lose interest in material that is too easy for them, and instead get into power struggles with adults who believe that it is perfectly fair to insist that all 10-year-olds be responsible for documenting mastery of all fifth-grade standards during the year they are in fifth grade.

Due to boredom and frustration at having their learning time wasted, many of these kids just don’t do "their work," but are mysteriously able to demonstrate content mastery on related assessments. In most cases, a grade of "A" will not be offered because so much of the assigned written work has not yet been completed.

I once asked an eighth-grade teacher who had to continuously deal with this problem with two of his students, "Why do you assign all the work you expect your students to do?"

His answer was swift, "So the students will learn the standards!"

When I pointed out that a particular student demonstrated on the designated assessment that he had learned the content without doing the assignments, the teacher’s response was something akin to, “ It would not be fair to the other students if this one person “got away with getting an ‘A’ without doing the work!”

My next statement is usually ineffective, when I point out that it is not actually the student’s work he or she is refusing to do. It is the teacher’s work!

There is also much frustration as students who have shown advanced learning ability with some content demonstrate an apparent inability to learn grade-level standards on other subjects. Teachers and parents might conclude that this kid is simply “being lazy” and could do much better “if she only applied herself.”

Based on my experience with such learners, I am convinced that these problematic learning scenarios can often disappear when teachers are willing to discard methods that aren’t working and replace them with methods that are much more likely to lead to student’s learning success!

Subsequent articles will explain highly successful interventions that can create much more learning satisfaction and outcomes for 2e students in both their strength and challenge areas. Using these strategies facilitates much better learning outcomes for 2e learners and other students.