Grissom’s research didn’t investigate which of these hypotheses are correct. That’s work for future scholars. Another possibility is that black parents feel more comfortable advocating for their child with a black teacher, demanding that their child be screened for giftedness.Īnd finally it’s possible that black children perform better for a black teacher, and are more likely to demonstrate how brainy they are in these classrooms. Parents also play a big role in lobbying for their children to enter these programs. Still, even when gifted placements are decided entirely by test scores, teachers often play a big role in identifying which students should take the test in the first place. Perhaps black teachers are more likely to recognize brilliance in a black student and suggest that the student be screened for giftedness. In many school districts, it’s decided entirely by test scores. Teachers often have a limited role in deciding who should be in a gifted-and-talented classroom. In these cases, of course, teachers’ own racial biases could influence who gets tapped.īut it’s not clear that white teachers are biased against black students, Grissom cautioned in an interview. In some schools, principals also factor in a student’s classroom performance, creativity or demonstrated leadership skills. The researchers found that some students who scored as low as the 75th percentile on the federal study’s assessments had been assigned to gifted classrooms). (Interestingly, what constitutes a “gifted” child varies a lot around the country. Others get assigned as late as fifth grade. The process for deciding which students get assigned to gifted-and-talented classrooms varies by state and school district, but generally involves some sort of academic aptitude test. Some get reassigned to a gifted classroom during that first kindergarten year.
In school systems that offer separate instruction for gifted students, children generally begin their schooling in a regular kindergarten classroom of mixed abilities. They were equally likely to get assigned to a gifted program regardless of the race of their teacher.
White students were unaffected by the race of their teacher. There was no longer a black-white “giftedness gap.” When high-achieving black children were taught by a black teacher, they were just as likely to get assigned to a gifted program as similar high-achieving white children. Then they finally found a possible answer: the race of the teacher. Perhaps delaying kindergarten entry, which is more popular among white families, could explain things, for example. But there was still a mysterious “giftedness gap” between black and white children They looked at health, socioeconomic status and the child’s exact age. The researchers searched for other reasons to explain why high-achieving black children are getting passed over for gifted placement. “This is especially troubling since previous studies have linked participation in gifted programs to improved academic performance, improvements in student motivation and engagement, less overall stress and other positive outcomes,” said Jason Grissom, one of the co-authors of the paper, “ Discretion and Disproportionality: Explaining the Underrepresentation of High-Achieving Students of Color in Gifted Programs.” Even between children with the same math and reading scores, a white student was twice as likely as a black student to get assigned to a gifted-and-talented program. 19, 2016 in the journal, AERA Open, a peer-reviewed online journal of the American Educational Research Association. So the reason for the white-Hispanic “giftedness” gap is that more white children were able to hit the high achievement thresholds.īut a shockingly different result was found for black students in research published today, Jan. When white and Hispanic students had the same scores, they were equally likely to get placed in a gifted program. The researchers looked at the math and reading tests that all these students took - not a giftedness test, but a test administered to every child in a federal study - and compared students who had the same scores. Two Vanderbilt University researchers tried to answer this question by studying more than 10,000 elementary-school students who have a gifted program inside their schools.
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