Eileen McFarren's son catches on quickly, so he's sometimes asked to help teach his fourth-grade classmates when they don't understand. His mother wishes much more for him: a classroom where he is challenged every day. But his Severna Park elementary school doesn't have an extensive program for gifted children.

Unlike most states, Maryland does not have regulations that require school districts to identify gifted students or provide them services. As a result, while some school systems have model gifted programs, others have done the minimum. They offer gifted students an hour or two a week outside their regular classroom, a practice advocates say is inadequate.

"We have an amazing resource we are squandering," says Joyce VanTassel-Baska, director of the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. "If we were doing more to stimulate these students early on, we would have many more of them."

For more than 20 years, Baltimore, Howard and Montgomery counties have been identifying gifted students, grouping them together and providing advanced curriculum from the early elementary grades through high school.

But the majority of school systems in Maryland do not have comprehensive programs for gifted students. Anne Arundel and Carroll counties and Baltimore City are only in the beginning stages of organizing gifted and talented programs in all schools.

Federal law has made school systems focus on low-performing students, but advocates say schools need to give gifted students the same attention. "We spend so much time talking about the underachieving," says Maryland's school chief Nancy S. Grasmick. "We don't commit the resources to these high-potential students."

One impediment to overcome, national and state experts say, is the perception that gifted students will do just fine if left alone. Research has shown that gifted children who aren't given demanding work in the earliest grades will learn to skate by, doing just enough to earn A's, said Sally M. Reis, a professor at the University of Connecticut's Neag School of Education.

Eventually, they will encounter work they find difficult -- it might be in middle school or as late as high school -- and often they will stumble because they haven't developed the self-discipline to do the work, Reis said. They might decide they are stupid and drop out, or just fall further and further behind and never take the most challenging classes in high school.

Lisa Short, whose 13-year-old son is at Anne Arundel County's Chesapeake Middle School, says he finishes his homework in 10 minutes. When she asked for more challenging courses, the school suggested classes at a community college, but she believes he's too young. The danger, she said, is that her son will start acting out. "He is the kind of kid who, if he isn't engaged, is going to get in trouble," she said.

Educators define "gifted" in a variety of ways. Truly gifted students are considered the top 1 percent of students in the nation, those for whom skipping a grade or two, doing calculus in sixth grade or attending college at age 16 are possibilities. Those students are rare, and schools must be flexible and creative in helping support them, said Linda Brody of the Center for Talented Youth at the Johns Hopkins University.

In Baltimore County, for instance, officials say a truly gifted third-grader might be placed in a fifth-grade math class. If the student gobbles up all the math a school has to offer, a teacher will come to the school twice a week or so to tutor him or her in middle school math.

But most gifted programs are aimed at a much larger audience -- the very bright students who make up as much as 20 percent of the school population. These students can easily handle advanced material, sometimes in one or more subjects. In Baltimore and Howard counties, such students are grouped as early as third grade into homogenous classrooms where they can cover material in greater depth and at a faster pace. Gifted math students take Algebra I in seventh grade and have gotten to Advanced Placement calculus by 11th grade.

Another model, used in Montgomery County, is to group high-achieving students in separate schools beginning in the early grades.

Rena Bezilla, a gifted and talented coordinator at Howard County's Wilde Lake High School, said gifted students don't always get straight A's. What they share is intelligence, curiosity and a passion for learning.

Bezilla's job is to break down classroom barriers and allow gifted students the freedom to explore new fields through independent research or mentoring opportunities. She oversees students such as Calum Spicer, 17, who loves music, math and science.

After taking a music theory class earlier in high school, Calum became fascinated by the structure of different types of music. He's now studying the similarities between classic bagpipe music and the Japanese music of Buddhist meditation. His goal is to play the music on his bagpipes by the end of the year. "Last year I spent the year studying Baroque and why is a Bach piece not a Debussy piece," he said.

Nina Duncan, another 17-year-old at Wilde Lake, began trying to teach herself Portuguese a few years ago. With her Spanish teacher as a mentor, she is picking apart the differences between Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese while she also takes an Advanced Placement Spanish V class.

Duncan and Spicer are not necessarily thinking of careers in music or languages; they see those interests as avocations. Spicer thinks he will study math, he hopes at Hopkins or Carnegie Mellon University. Duncan is thinking of medicine, again at a top-tier university.

Howard County's independent study, available in all high schools, is used by 100 students at Wilde Lake. "It is everything for me because I have always had a passion about languages. It made me so happy," Duncan said.

Despite the bright spots in Maryland, educators say much more can be done to help students. Grasmick said the state is looking "very seriously" at adding regulations to identify students and mandate services.

Some options don't cost money.

For instance, many schools in Baltimore County group by ability from third grade on, which does not require additional teachers.

The county has spent some resources in the past five years to put a gifted and talented coordinator in every elementary school with a large percentage of poor children to be sure gifted students are identified. The initiative has increased participation in gifted classes from 7 percent to 15 percent in those 37 high-poverty schools.

One study that followed low income students found that only 50 percent of those identified as gifted in elementary school were taking Advanced Placement or top-level courses in high school.

"We have to realize that many children are being held back, and many of them are invisible because they come from lower-income households without the resources to make up for the support that those high-potential students may miss in school," said Jeanne Paynter, specialist for gifted and talented education at the state Department of Education.

"We can't afford this waste," she said.

VanTassel-Baska points out that federal law requires special-education students to receive services to fit their needs, even when it means sending them to expensive schools or providing an aide. State and federal policies have stressed improving education for minorities and the poor, but rarely are gifted students mentioned.

While the culture celebrates athletic and artistic talents, she says, it does not place the same value on intellectual pursuits. "I think when it comes to academic giftedness we are very, very ambivalent," she said.

liz.bowie@baltsun.com