On the back of Sarah's completed worksheets, the just-turned 7-year-old had written the lyrics to every S Club 7 song she knew.

"I said 'Sarah, when do you have time to do this?' " Murphy said, "and she said, 'When I finish my work.' "

After the family moved here in October, Sarah started first grade at Shelby County's Crosswind Elementary.

Frustrated at reading "baby books" and the tiny spelling words she'd mastered in kindergarten, Sarah began to protest, lounging too long in her pajamas and complaining about school.

Things are better now.

Sarah joins a third-grade class for reading, spelling and language arts as part of the school's program for gifted students.

On her last test, she spelled "Massachusetts," and she does book reports along with her older classmates.

"Now she's ready to go to school," Murphy said. "She's up early and ready to go."

But Murphy and other parents of gifted children in Memphis and Shelby County schools worry that the programs that challenge their children could be in danger.

A group of special education administrators hopes to file legislation in the next few days that would shift responsibility for intellectually gifted children from school systems' special education departments to the general education curriculum.

Similar legislation filed last year failed.

Parents here have joined a group called the Tennessee Initiative for Gifted Education Reform, or TIGER, to block the bill.

The special education classification sounds like the technicality it is - but it's an important one.

Special education covers nearly every conceivable disability, from attention problems to retardation to physical ailments.

The label affords students an individual education plan and academic rights that the average student doesn't get.

Gifted students just don't fit under the same umbrella as other special-needs students, some special education administrators say.

"No one likes to lose services," said Steve Ramsey, a Weakley County special education supervisor. "But if you have a child in the fifth grade, with a high IQ, making all A's and scoring in the 99th percentile - does that child really need extra protection?"

While gifted students need attention, some say other kids need it more.

State taxpayers contribute to gifted students' education, although federal law doesn't say they must.

The state doesn't provide special education funds, however, for disabled 3- and 4-year-olds - even though both state and federal laws insist they get extra help.

"I would leave anybody to decide which of those groups should get the funds," Ramsey said. "It's not a complicated issue."

But advocates for gifted students say leaving super-smart kids in average-Joe classrooms is an equally sad proposition.

Typically, about 2 percent of a school system's students are deemed gifted. In the city schools, about 2,700 students are classified as gifted, while Shelby County Schools consider more than 2,500 as gifted.

Richland Elementary principal Kevin McCarthy dropped in on the sixth-grade gifted class Thursday, where students were studying Shakespeare - typically a high school rite of passage.

"They're putting on little mini-plays that are absolutely - wow, what did I just watch?"

- Mickie Anderson: 529-6510

January 11, 2002