Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper examines the equitable and democratic nature of gifted and talented education in elementary and middle schools (urban, suburban, and rural) in the country. In 2018, the United States continues to display wide achievement gaps among student racial/ethnic groups despite decades of programs and policies meant to narrow them. Given these well-known gaps in academic achievement across racial/ethnic groups, gifted and talented education could either exacerbate or mitigate inequalities. The academic or opportunity gap phenomenon that exists among low-income and high-income students is largely due to disparities in resources and lack of quality educational services in low-income neighborhoods and schools. Policymakers and educators must ensure that all students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, have access to quality and challenging educational programs. The provision of gifted services to all students is not only equitable but also a democratic aim. Educational inequality undermines democratic values and engenders exclusion and civic incompetence.

To carry out the investigation, we conduct a national analysis of gifted and talented programs for all elementary and middle schools (urban, suburban, and rural) using data from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). We analyze the proportion of gifted students by race by dividing gifted enrollment by total school enrollment for each student racial/ethnic subgroup (White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian). Schools were grouped together by poverty level gauged by student participation in the free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL) program. We utilize NCES’s poverty classification which defines low-poverty schools as having no more than 25 percent of students on FRPL, middle-poverty schools between 25 and 75 percent, and high-poverty schools as those having 75 percent or more. Additionally, we use the 2015 NAEP fourth-grade results to show different performance across student subgroups and provide additional context around varying gifted enrollment rates.

A few notable findings come out of this research. For instance, we find that although high-poverty schools are as likely to have gifted programs as low-poverty schools, students in low-poverty schools participate in gifted programs at twice the rate of students in high-poverty schools. We also find that generally schools with a higher proportion of minority students are as likely to provide gifted education as schools with a lower proportion of minority students. Nationally, in elementary and middle schools, African-American and Hispanic students continue to be underrepresented in gifted programs compared to Asian and White students. We further show that while percentages of students who enroll in gifted programs and those who score advanced on NAEP math assessment are similar, they vary widely across racial and ethnic groups—with Hispanic and African-American students having lower proportions. These findings should signal to policymakers that new methods and processes of gifted identification ought to be implemented to foster equitable representation. Policy implications and recommendations are provided and discussed in the paper.