151. Is There a Gifted Gap? Gifted Education in High-Poverty Schools
- Author
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Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Yaluma, Christopher B., and Tyner, Adam
- Abstract
In 2018, the United States continues to see wide and worrying achievement gaps among student groups, despite decades of programs and policies meant to narrow them. Many factors inside and outside the education system contribute to these gaps, but researchers have consistently shown that black, Hispanic, and low-income students tend to enter school far behind their peers, and are then less likely to have access to quality education programming. A related issue is the wide variation in the achievement level of students in any given classroom, school, or grade. A recent study found a range of more than eleven grade levels among fourth graders in a small group of diverse elementary schools. Without differentiated programs for these different students, those who lag behind will miss out on the attention they need to catch up while students who are ahead will become bored and disengaged. Gifted-and-talented programs are a key source of enriched and accelerated academic opportunities for this latter group: the students who are performing--or could perform--well beyond their peers. When high-achieving poor and minority students have less access to these special programs than do their peers, gifted education may exacerbate existing inequalities. To better understand the state of gifted education in the United States today and investigate the extent to which access and participation in gifted programs vary for different students, this report uses federal data to answer three key questions: (1) To what extent do high-poverty schools offer gifted-and-talented programs? (2) What proportion of students in such schools participates in those programs? and (3) How does student participation in those programs vary by race within schools, particularly high-poverty schools? The authors analyze the representation and participation of gifted students using school-level data at the state and national levels. After briefly describing the approach, the authors examine the extent to which schools report offering any gifted programming, analyzing schools by their poverty level and racial and ethnic composition. Next, they turn to student participation and representation, again with an eye toward the school's poverty level as well as student race and ethnicity. Although the emphasis is on high-poverty schools, the authors show national results at all poverty levels and break down the availability and participation in gifted programming by state. These comparisons show the prevalence of such programs in high-poverty schools and the extent of black and Hispanic participation in them. Finally, the authors describe gifted programming in detail for each state via a series of customized profiles. [Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Amber M. Northern.]
- Published
- 2018