Jeanne H. Purcell is the consultant to the Connecticut State Depart�ment of Education for gifted and talented education. She is also director of UConn Mentor Connection, a nationally recognized summer mentorship program for talented teenagers that is part of the NEAG Center for Talent Development at the University of Con�necticut. Prior to her work at the State Department of Connecticut, she was an administrator for Rocky Hill Public Schools (CT); a pro�gram specialist with the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, where she worked collaboratively with other researchers on national issues related to high-achieving young people; an instructor of Teaching the Talented, a… graduate-level program in gifted education; and a staff developer to school districts across the country and Canada. She has been an En�glish teacher, community service coordinator, and teacher of the gifted, K-12, for 18 years in Connecticut school districts and has published many articles that have appeared in Educational Leadership, Gifted Child Quarterly, Roeper Review, Educa�tional and Psychological Measurement, National Association of Secondary School Principals' Bulletin , Our Children: The National PTA Magazine, Parenting for High Potential , and Journal for the Education of the Gifted . She is active in the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) and serves on the Awards Committee and the Curriculum Committee of NAGC, for which she is the co-chair for the annual Curriculum Awards Competition.Sandra N. Kaplan has been a teacher and administrator of gifted programs in an urban school district in California. Currently, she is clinical professor in learning and instruction at the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education. She has authored articles and books on the nature and scope of differenti�ated curriculum for gifted students. Her primary area of concern is modifying the core and differentiated curriculum to meet the needs of inner-city, urban, gifted learners. She is a past president of the California Association for the Gifted (CAG) and the National Asso�ciation for Gifted Children (NAGC). She has been nationally recognized for her con�tributions to gifted education.
Carol Ann Tomlinson 's career as an educator includes 21 years as a public school teacher. She taught in high school, preschool, and middle school, and worked with heterogeneous classes as well as special classes for students identified as gifted and students with learning difficulties. Her public school career also included 12 years as a program administrator of special services for advanced and struggling learners. She was Virginia's Teacher of the Year in 1974. She is professor of educational leadership, foundations, and pol�icy at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education; a researcher for the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented; a codirec�tor of the… University of Virginia's Summer Institute on Academic Diversity; and president of the National Association for Gifted Children. Special interests through�out her career have included curriculum and instruction for advanced learners and struggling learners, effective instruction in heterogeneous settings, and bridging the fields of general education and gifted education. She is author of over 100 articles, book chapters, books, and other professional development materials, including How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms, The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, Leadership for Differentiated Schools and Classrooms , the facilitator's guide for the video staff development sets called Differentiating Instruction , and At Work in the Differentiated Classroom , as well as a professional inquiry kit on differentiation. She works throughout the United States and abroad with teachers whose goal is to develop more responsive heterogeneous classrooms.