![]() ![]() These tests are rarely universal, meaning families have to ask even to take them, or must rely on teachers to nominate their children as candidates. In many places, moreover, admissions are based on standardized test scores, for which administrators set objective cutoffs-ironically, in the name of equity. Often such programs are concentrated in neighborhoods full of demanding upper-middle class parents. Third, even when school systems do offer gifted programs, they are often too small and limited to serve all students who might benefit from them, especially Black, Hispanic, and low-income children. So rich kids with lots of academic potential still get access to enrichment and acceleration-in their fancy suburban public schools, expensive private schools, or at home-whereas poor and minority kids in the city do not. But here’s the thing: Proponents of this fallacious view have long been more effective at shaming urban districts in deep-blue cities to eliminate gifted education than they have been with their affluent and suburban counterparts. Second, too many districts serving poor students and students of color have taken previous and misguided charges of racism to heart and eliminated their own gifted education programs, opting instead for the lure of “heterogeneous classrooms.” This jargon is based on the egalitarian but mistaken notion that letting some kids go faster than others, even go at their own speed, is inherently suspect. But the takeaway is simple: We make it far too difficult for these children to succeed. And then when they do attend school, it’s too often in crumbling buildings that lack adequate supplies, where they sit in crowded and unruly classrooms with less experienced teachers who are more likely to transfer or quit. Not only do they suffer from poverty, they have less access to healthcare, healthy food, safe streets, early childhood education, and much more. First, our country, communities, and schools have long done a poor job of maximizing the potential of students in low-income neighborhoods that are predominantly Black and Hispanic-regardless of their ability. And when Black and Brown students attend a school that offers International Baccalaureate courses, they are 62 percent and 51 percent less likely, respectively, to take part.īut the problem isn’t the idea of gifted education itself-which, far from being inherently racist, is simply the practice of grouping higher-achieving and higher-potential students together so that they can benefit from deeper and faster curricula that wouldn’t work well in regular classrooms, especially classrooms with lots of students struggling to reach grade level. Those latter student groups are also 49 and 23 percent less likely, respectively, to participate in Advanced Placement than their peers. A Fordham study in 2018 called Is There A Gifted Gap? found that White students constitute 47.9 percent of the student population but 55.2 percent of those enrolled in gifted programs, while the comparable figures for Black students are 15.0 and 10.0 percent, and for Hispanic students, 27.6 and 20.8 percent. To be sure, gifted education has a diversity problem, due in part to how school systems have historically designed these programs and other enrichment efforts. This has led to misguided questions like “ Is it even possible to make a concept that has racist origins more equitable?” in an essay published by the Hechinger Report, and moves that seek to replace gifted ed with toothless initiatives like “ schoolwide enrichment.” This is exactly the wrong approach. Yet tragically, instead of following that logic and expanding gifted services for Black, Brown, and other historically disadvantaged students, some insist that the anti-racist thing to do is eliminate them. To do that, we need to make sure that the most promising among them get enrichment and acceleration. And in line with the adage that college begins in kindergarten, many of these efforts eventually look at schools to better prepare more Black, Hispanic, and low-income children to excel academically and earn a shot at entering selective universities. As our country grapples with racial injustice, there are persistent calls to diversify elite institutions at all levels, from corporate and foundation boards to law schools and medical schools to undergraduate programs.
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