Black Minds Matter: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Persistent Underrepresentation of Black Students in Gifted Education Programs

Gifted education programs have facilitated educational segregation since their inception and recent research has determined these programs to be "the" most inequitable in the field. Although a substantial body of research has established that racial inequities in gifted placement practices exist, there is an existing gap in the research around how discriminatory placement trends have evolved over time. The present study examines longitudinal gifted program enrollment data from the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) between 2011 and 2018 to compare participation rates between White and Black students over time. The analysis revealed that White students have consistently participated in gifted programs at a significantly higher rate than their Black peers over this timeframe. Moreover, despite a tendency to assume that although equity in gifted education programs has not yet been achieved, it is slowly becoming more equitable over time, the analysis also revealed that Black students have become even less likely to participate than their White peers since 2011. The need to adopt and widely implement effective approaches to diversify gifted education programs has become more dire over time, and this study serves as a call to action to ensure that educational opportunity is equitably distributed to students regardless of race.