Individuals often demonstrate their gifts and talents in many ways; one individual may possess exceptional academic talents and another may be an exceptional artist, musician, athlete, or performer. Plano Academic and Creative Education (PACE) is designed for the student who demonstrates the need for advanced academic challenges and for opportunities to develop his/her creative thinking. PACE may not meet the needs of students whose gifts and talents are in areas other than advanced academics. Accordingly, PISD is proud to offer high quality, challenging courses at the secondary level in the fields of visual arts, performing arts, and/or athletics. Participation in PACE is not a prerequisite for these courses.
Demonstrating academic gifts and talents often is developmental, so not all gifted and talented students exhibit the need for advanced academic challenges at the same point in their education. Furthermore, some gifted and talented students excel in one area yet require grade level instruction in other areas. The younger the student, the greater the possibility that his/her skills are developing at different rates in different subject areas. As the child ages, these differences often are minimized through instruction, life experiences, and/or maturity. It is possible that a young student does not develop the skills needed for success in the PACE program until later in his/her school experience, a relatively common occurrence among kindergarten and first graders. For these students, the issue may not necessarily be one of giftedness, but may be an issue of timing given general classroom performance and/or the expectations of the PACE program. Consequently, PISD allows students to be assessed for PACE at any grade level. Parents considering having their child assessed for PACE should reflect on their child’s overall educational needs, intellectual curiosity, degree of self-motivation, task commitment, willingness to work independently, awareness that tasks sometimes have more than one correct solution, and comfort with connections between language arts, history, science, and math.
