Remember the nasty note passed around at school or the mean graffiti scrawled on the bathroom wall? Bullies and mean girls are still in school classrooms, hallways, and playgrounds; they just can use new digital tools to be cruel now. Cyberbullying is the term most people use to describe bullying another person via e-mail, instant or text messaging, comments on webblogs or in online video games, or postings to Web sites or chat rooms. What’s different is that cyberbullying can be much crueler, often happens on public internet sites, and can spread virally.

Introduction

For more than four decades researchers have been interested in learning what happens to gifted students who drop out of high school. Estimates of the number of gifted learners who drop out differ widely, and a figure of 20 percent is often repeated despite the fact that there is little evidence to support it. Recent studies suggest that anywhere from 1 in 50 up to 1 in 200 academically gifted students fails to complete high school, depending on the criteria used to determine giftedness.