• Intellectual Peers. Students enjoy spending Saturdays with other students who love to learn.
• Powerful Instruction. Master teachers from the Chicagoland area are chosen for their content expertise, enthusiasm, creativity, and experience with gifted learners.
• Challenging Courses. Courses are designed to stimulate and stretch the academic skills of gifted learners.
• Exposure to New Academic Territory. Students are often exposed to courses and disciplines not traditionally covered in school.
• Acceleration and Enrichment. Students move at a pace more appropriate to their abilities and delve deeper into content traditionally covered in school.
• Courses for High School Credit. SEP offers several courses for high school credit to provide an opportunity for children to accelerate their learning.

(Go to Benefits Research)

Accreditation

The Center for Talent Development has been accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools as a special purpose school since April 1, 1994, which permits the center to grant credit for rigorous classes.

The acceptance of those credits at the student's receiving school depends upon that school's own institutional policy about the recognition of credit from outside schools. We strongly recommend that you discuss this issue with the school counselor or administrator before beginning the course.

What does it mean to be accredited?

It means that your child's school has joined a voluntary association that strives for continuous improvement and the school:

• Defines appropriate educational goals and provides educational programs to achieve them.
• Maintains a qualified faculty and an effective school organization.
• Regularly assesses the quality of the educational program.
• Responds to concerns of parents and needs of the school community.
• Provides for the continuity of quality programs.
• Describes with accuracy the content of its services and programs.
• Documents continual educational growth for its students.

What are the characteristics of an accredited school?

It is devoted to a mission. It has a clear understanding of what the results of its program should be for students. Since 1981, CTD has been a leader in the education of pre-collegiate gifted students, creating appropriate programming and heading research efforts in gifted education. As members of the gifted community have clamored for more services, CTD has evolved from a single focus on talent identification to a multi-faceted operation with four central foci: talent identification, talent development, research and advocacy.

• It is student-oriented. Its goals must express what it does for the whole student.
• It knows itself. The school operates from an examined vision of service to students, family and community.
• It is self-correcting. Accredited schools demonstrate a capacity to control their own quality.
• It keeps its promises. An accredited school delivers the programs and services that it advertises.
• It accepts objective evaluation. Outside evaluators who have no prior involvement with the school or its sponsoring authority provide periodic evaluation.
• It plans for its future. An accredited school continuously has plans that include strategies for improving its quality.
• It examines student success. Accredited schools obtain and analyze objective evidence on student growth and press for higher levels of learning for all students.
• It participates in the responsibilities of the academic profession. Accredited schools participate in the self-renewing activity of evaluation and accreditation.
• It is recognized. It cares enough about what it does to seek verification by a recognized accreditation authority. The Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement has served schools since 1895 and is recognized by the US Department of Education.