Still Separate, Still Unequal? (The Case of Gifted and Talented Education)

[NOTE: I apologize for not getting this posted yesterday. I didn't expect to spend 9 hours in LaGuardia airport yesterday with shaky Internet access...I'll just push everything back a day.  My bad.]

[This is Part 3 in a series on race, schooling and educational opportunities. Part 1 can be found here, and Part 2 can be found here.]

Fifty-five years ago, the United States Supreme Court declared that providing “separate but equal” educational opportunities to students based on race denied students of color the equal protection of the law. Largely, the holding in the Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education has been examined with respect to equity of access to the institution of schooling generally. And, while much of the progress that was achieved by eliminating legally enforced (de jure) school segregation has been erased by de facto housing segregation patterns that beget de facto school segregation, it is also clear that students of color continue to be denied equal educational opportunities within the institution of schooling. That is, while the post-Brown focus was and continues to be between-school and between-district segregation by race, more subtle forms of racial discrimination have persisted and proliferated within schools and districts, even in the most “integrated” schools and districts.

As a second example of this “within-school” racial segregation, consider the underrepresentation of students of color in gifted education programs.  The case of special education about which I wrote yesterday is a little more complicated given a couple of factors.  First, for certain disability categories, the diagnostic processes are reasonably objective.  Second, as Ira Socol suggests in the comments, there are aspects of the special education system that are consistent with what I would want for any child.

The underrepresentation of children of color in gifted education classes and or programs is less complicated.  Here are some statistics on the underrepresentation of students of color in gifted and talented education programs.  [NOTE: much like the data on special education, the data on student assignment to gifted programs tend to be old as well.]

• In 1997, African-Americans made up 17.2% of the total student population, but only 8.40% of those assigned to gifted and talented classes or programs.
• Latina/o students comprised 15.6% of the student population, but 8.6% of the students designated for gifted and talented classes or programs.
• King, Kozleski and Landsdowne (2009) report that in California in 2007, 7.2% of the students enrolled in public education were African-American, yet only 4.13% of those enrolled in gifted and talented educational program were African-American.

In odds ratios terms, we see the same story: According to the National Research Council Committee on Minority Representation in Special Education, Asian/ Pacific Islanders are 1/3 more likely than white students to be in gifted programs, while African-American and Latina/o students are less than half as likely to be enrolled in gifted and talented educational classes and programs as Caucasian students.

Those odds did not change considerably between 1976 and 1998.

Why is this less complicated?  As vexing as it is to define what it means to be "disabled," many of the problems with the assignment of students to gifted education programs have to do with a lack of agreement and an overall subjectivity around defining giftedness.  Thus, the discrimination here is more evident and explicit.

I am a little out of my league here as gifted education is not at all an area of expertise.  But, I know enough to recognize that this is clearly an issue of definition and identification (which is driven by the definition).  In other words, unlike special education, there is no legal mandate to offer services to children identified as gifted and/or talented.  Decisions to offer gifted education are made locally and, therefore, implementation varies widely across and within states.  Local education agencies can decide if they are to offer "extra" or "different" services for students identified as gifted and talented.  The first step in that process, then, is defining that population of students.  Therefore, what's most troubling about the statistics above is that school systems are clearly defining "giftedness" in a way that privileges Caucasian children.

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SELECTED REFERENCES

• Castellano, J., & Diaz, E. (2002). Reaching new horizons. Gifted and talented education for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
• Donovan, M.S., & Cross, C.T. (2002). Minority students in special and gifted education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
• Ford, D., Harris, J., III, Tyson, C., & Trotman, M. (2002). Beyond deficit thinking: Providing access for gifted African American students. Roeper Review, 24, 52-58.
• Ford, D. (2004). Recruiting and retaining culturally diverse gifted students from diverse ethnic, cultural, and language groups. In J. Banks and C. A. Banks (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (5th ed., pp. 379-397). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
• Scott, M., Deuel, L. S., Jean-Francois, B., & Urbano, R. C. (1996). Identifying Cognitively Gifted Ethnic Minority Children. Gifted Child Quarterly, 40, 147-153.
• Sisk, D. (2003). Maximizing the high potential of minority economically disadvantaged students. In J.F. Smutny. Underserved gifted populations. Responding to their needs and abilities. (pp.239-260). New Jersey: Hampton Press, Inc.
• Sternberg, R. (2007). Cultural concepts of giftedness. Roeper Review, 29, 160-165.
• Tomlinson, C., Callahan, C., & Lelli, K. (1997). Challenging expectations: Case studies of high potential, culturally diverse young children. Gifted Child Quarterly, 41(2), 5-18.