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The mission of the Open Doors Program is to target the special needs of intellectually gifted children and provide the necessary instructional modifications to increase intellectually gifted students' skills in and capacity for autonomous learning; creative/productive thinking; love of learning; metacognition; developing and maintaining healthy, positive, enriching relationships; and developing appropriate expectations for the understanding of the self. The instructional modifications include an environment that allows children of like ability to learn from one another, a curriculum that addresses the unique characteristics and needs of the gifted by balancing cognitive and affective instruction/experiences, and a delivery system that employs multiple instructional strategies to honor and accommodate individual learning differences.

                                                                                               
The identification process utilizes several different measures to identify gifted students. The process begins on the school level. A student can be referred for testing by an Open Doors teacher, a classroom teacher, a parent, or by him/herself. When a student has been referred his/her teachers fill out published checklists of gifted behaviors, standardized test scores are recorded, and a group intelligence test is given. Any student that meets the school level requirements moves on for individual IQ testing at the district level by a licensed psychologist/psychometrist. A score in the 90th percentile on an individual IQ test is required for entering the Open Doors Program.

                                                                      
The major emphasis of the Open Doors Program is the process of learning rather than content; divergent thinking rather than convergent; exploration of ideas thorough creative problem solving; and reasoning abilities. This is evidenced in the Open Doors curriculum.