Emily Kircher-Morris: On the State of Gifted Education

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Multi-Health Systems Inc. (MHS, Inc.). The article has also been edited for clarity. 

In the heat of summer, Emily Kircher-Morris finds herself in Little Rock, Arkansas. She came to speak at the 2026 School-Based Mental Health Symposium, an event by the Arkansas Mental Health Access for Pediatric Primary Care that brought together educators and some clinicians (speech-language pathologists, nurses, counselors, etc.) for a day of pediatric mental health learning. Before that, she came from Fremont, Nebraska, where she connected with Nebraska’s Educational Service Unit 2 (ESU 2), a regional educational agency that supports local school districts. This string of commitments across American states is not random. Kircher-Morris, of course, is on the road, meeting and partnering with educators and clinicians on another round of neurodiversity-affirming initiatives. 

Kircher-Morris is a licensed professional counselor, former educator and school counselor, host of The Neurodiversity Podcast, and author of several books, including Neurodiversity-Affirming Schools: Transforming Practices So All Students Feel Accepted and Supported and Teaching Twice-Exceptional Learners in Today’s Classroom. Her work sits squarely at the intersection of gifted and talented education, mental health, and neurodiversity.  

MHS caught up with Kircher-Morris to ask how gifted education has changed, what could improve, and where parents and professionals could better support giftedness and twice-exceptional (2e) learners going forward. 

 

MHS: In 2025, during an opening sequence on your podcast, Dr. Jack Naglieri said, “In order to understand academic success and difficulties, life success and difficulties, we need to measure more than just this concept of general ability.” You’ve spoken about the need to look beyond general ability when trying to understand academic and life outcomes as well. How has that shaped your understanding of giftedness and twice-exceptional learners?

Kircher-Morris: When I started in education, I taught in a general education classroom, but I knew I wanted to work in gifted education. I had attended a gifted program growing up, and it had been a place where I felt successful. 

Once I began teaching gifted students, though, I noticed that learners were still really struggling. There was clearly a social and emotional component, but at the time, we were not talking much about twice-exceptionality. 

That led me back to school. My first master’s degree is in education with gifted education certification, and my second is in counseling. So, I worked as a school counselor and later built a mental health practice. I initially thought I would work primarily with gifted children dealing with perfectionism, anxiety, and maybe some ADHD. What happened instead is that almost all of my caseloads ended up being autistic individuals. 

Part of that reflects how diagnostic criteria and our understanding of neurodivergence have changed over the last 30 years. For example, Asperger’s Disorder, which is no longer a diagnosis, wasn’t even added to the [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder] DSM until 1994. So, when I started in gifted education, a lot of people didn’t really know about [this diagnosis]. Prior to that, individuals who were twice exceptional, who were in gifted programs, weren’t getting that diagnosis at all because the diagnostic criteria kind of excluded them from it. Research now shows that individuals who are diagnosed as having Autism Spectrum Disorder are 1.5 times more likely to score in the superior (IQ) range than students in the general population.¹  

What has happened, I think through a lot of [Dr. Jack Naglieri’s] work, specifically, and forces within the world of gifted education—is that gifted education over the last couple of decades has also been grappling with how we identify culturally and linguistically diverse learners. As schools move toward universal screening, they identify more students from populations that have traditionally been underrepresented in gifted programs. They also find twice-exceptional students who may never have been referred because they do not look like the typical “gifted kid.” As we start to see more of these twice-exceptional kids, this overlap, you recognize that general intelligence is like a blunt instrument: It is good for what it is good for, but if we do not examine the nuances of a student’s profile (e.g., the strengths alongside the struggles), we miss opportunities to understand how that student learns and how best to support them. 

MHS: Are twice-exceptional students still being viewed primarily through a deficit lens? 

Kircher-Morris: It depends on who is conducting the assessment. The larger issue we face when doing assessments is that people don’t always know how to contextualize psychological instruments alongside [a student’s] cognitive abilities. 

For example, many psychologists will use a continuous performance test when they are looking for ADHD. [A student] looks at a computer screen and depending on what pops up on the screen, either clicks a button or doesn’t. That can provide quantitative information on inattention and impulsiveness. However, [the psychologist] must also contextualize that within [a student’s] overall cognitive ability to interpret those scores because the normative data on the scores is based on the general population. It’s not based on individuals who also have intelligence in the superior range. 

You have to look at the child holistically to really understand what ends up happening. In many ways, a child can get by and may compensate for areas of difficulty with their overall intelligence. If we do not understand what that blend looks like, we may miss them entirely. 

Often, people do not start looking for an area of concern until a child is struggling a lot. With gifted students, it can be easy for a parent or teacher to say, “No, they’re not autistic. No, they don’t have ADHD. That’s just gifted quirkiness.” 

When we do that, we lose opportunities to help the child understand themselves. We also lose the chance to intervene proactively. 

MHS: What are adults most likely to misunderstand when gifted students begin showing signs of ADHD, autism, or another diagnosis? 

Kircher-Morris: There is so much stigma surrounding these diagnoses, particularly around autism and ADHD. 

If a child has already been identified as gifted and difficulties begin to emerge, it can feel more comfortable to explain everything through giftedness. A student might be inattentive in class, for example, and people say, “They’re just bored.” 

That might be the case, but gifted students who are simply a little bored can often still power through the work. With ADHD, you may see something different: the work does not get done, performance is highly inconsistent, or the difficulty starts creating significant problems. 

Sometimes it simply feels more comfortable to explain that through the lens of giftedness than through the lens of twice-exceptionality. 

MHS: Is that what we mean when we talk about “masking” in twice-exceptional students? 

Kircher-Morris: There is a masking effect, but it’s about how we interpret those things. Masking is used in different ways. Here’s the difference.  

Within the neurodiversity community and in the research masking* is a type of camouflaging (and it can be  conscious or unconscious). An individual can either suppress certain neurodivergent traits or develop behaviors that help conceal them. A twice-exceptional student who struggles to understand social cues, for example, may also be pretty good at recognizing patterns. They learn that saying a certain thing in a particular situation produces the expected response, so they script that behavior. That can help them get by without other individuals recognizing the underlying difficulty. 

In gifted education, individuals sometimes use masking differently. Imagine a student who is both gifted and dyslexic. Even if they struggle to read, they have so much background knowledge—enough to compensate while reading a passage. Their giftedness effectively supplements an area of difficulty, making dyslexia less visible [(i.e., a layering of effects and influences)]. 

Those are related ideas, but they are not exactly the same. What I’m talking about is actually where we see the trait, we see the area of difficulty for a student, but [as mentioned] we choose to explain it through the lens of giftedness as opposed to the lens of twice-exceptionality. 

*For some twice-exceptional individuals, masking is a form of camouflaging, a term used to describe conscious or unconscious strategies used to conceal or compensate for neurodivergent traits. 

MHS: Giftedness is not acquired through knowledge but reflects potential and aptitude. As identification practices become more inclusive, what changes are educators seeing in gifted programs? 

Kircher-Morris: Many educators and parents do not necessarily have a detailed understanding of one assessment compared with another. Sometimes, the people providing gifted services are not the people administering the assessments [(e.g., a school psychologist or psychological examiner)]. 

Where I do see a shift is when schools and districts begin using identification tests that try to minimize the influence of what a student has previously learned or been exposed to in their specific environment. Teachers are often surprised by the profile of the students who qualify for their programs are not the students they were expecting. 

They do not always fit the traditional stereotype of the gifted student—and that is a good thing. We need to push back on that stereotype. 

I remember working with teachers who said, “We don’t understand why we’re having [seeing] many more behaviors, why our gifted classrooms look so different than what they used to.” They were seeing more behavioral concerns and wondering why the population had changed. 

When you’re more inclusive in your identification process, you are going to find students who do not fit that stereotype or that mold. That may require teachers to adjust their teaching strategies, but it does not mean those students do not belong. 

Gifted education is not a privilege that a student earns. It is meeting students’ needs as far as they are—how they’re learning and approaching things. 

MHS: Does that changing population require a different framework for gifted education? 

Kircher-Morris: I think there is a real shift happening. More people are starting to understand that many students who are identified as gifted are also twice-exceptional. 

As neuro-affirming strategies in education are more broadly embraced through general education, special education, and gifted education, we are beginning to recognize that surface-level behaviors once interpreted as laziness, defiance, or lack of motivation may reflect how different neurotypes process information. That might be the behavior we see externally; it might be the thing we observe, but there may be much more happening underneath. 

Then, when you start tying in Universal Design for Learning (UDL),* you have the opportunities to really build strategies, tools, and techniques into the learning environment, so students are able to be successful. 

The thing I love about gifted education is that gifted education classrooms are uniquely equipped for universal design. They often have more curricular flexibility, different ways of presenting information, and sometimes smaller class sizes. So, it’s really a great opportunity to give children a chance to feel successful in those environments. 

*UDL is a conceptual framework to improve and optimize teaching by considering the contexts, skills and learning needs of students through multiple ways for learning, since no two brains are similar. 

MHS: Given the limitations of labels, do terms such as “gifted,” “twice-exceptionality,” “ADHD,” or “autistic” still represent an inclusive narrative? 

Kircher-Morris: Yes and no. In an ideal utopian society—in a utopian educational system—we would simply look at each child, understand their traits and needs, and meet them where they are. 

Yet, we do not [always] have the tools, strategies, staffing, or resources to operate that way. Schools are constantly in this push and pull. Identifications become shorthand for determining what services a student may need. In many cases, labels are also tied to access and funding. There is still a usefulness to [them] in gifted education. 

There is always a conversation about whether we should continue using the word gifted. I understand why people find it problematic. At the same time, whatever term replaces it may eventually develop its own problems. I do not know if there is a clear solution. 

I like to approach it from a practical standpoint: How does this [identification] help us serve this particular child? 

Parents sometimes tell me they hesitate to have their child assessed because they do not want them labeled. But society is already labeling them. The labels might be “lazy,” “uncaring,” “rude,” or something else. 

I would much rather a young person have an accurate way to understand how their brain works, why they experience the world in a certain way, or why they react the way they do than internalize those other messages about themselves. 

MHS: What should schools prioritize to better support the social, emotional, and academic development of these students? 

Kircher-Morris: That’s a big question, haha. If I had to simplify it, we need opportunity for explicit instruction and guidance around areas like executive functioning and emotional regulation. 

I always come back to this: What is good for neurodivergent kids is good for all kids. 

Some children develop these skills intuitively. Others need the concepts broken down and need someone to coach them through the process. But, ultimately, giving all students a clearer understanding of how executive functioning, emotional regulation, and social relationships work is not going to hurt the students who might otherwise figure it out on their own. 

I think there is a great need for it because if you cannot self-regulate those areas, you can’t self-regulate to learn. That’s the foundational piece; if learning is the goal, we have to have those other pieces as well. 

 

Morris’ observations reflect a shift in gifted education where access is moving towards fairness and expanded identification practices. Beyond traditional definitions of giftedness, twice-exceptionality or, for example, the individual behind a score, educators can better recognize students whose strengths and challenges may otherwise be overlooked when they broaden the conversation around behavioral, social, emotional, and academic functioning, including emotional regulation. This commitment to fair identification and science-informed decision-making mirrors MHS’ support for giftedness and meeting all learners where they learn. Hear directly from Morris on her podcast, The Neurodiversity Podcast.  

Learn more about MHS’ Gifted and Talented solutions.  

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Reference 

¹Billeiter, K. B., & Froiland, J. M. (2023). Diversity of intelligence is the norm within the autism spectrum: Full scale intelligence scores among children with ASD. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 54(4), 1094–1101. doi:10.1007/s10578-021-01300-9.