Achievement+GAP+in+Gifted

**FINISHED FOR GRADING! ( unless there are some pressing requests for major changes ).**
=**Achievement GAP in Gifted - by Sophie S.**=

This page develops on the inequalities among students regarding Gifted identification and availability of programs. It will investigate the possible causes and the visible effects of several factors including ethnicity and socio-economic status.

1.1 Definition.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achievement_gap_in_the_United_States) Most of this article will focus on the African-American population since there is no language barrier. Most of it can be transposed word for word for the Hispanic population once the language is factored in.
 * Achievement gap** refers to the observed disparity on a number of [|educational] measures between the performance of groups of students, especially groups defined by [|gender], [|race] , [|ethnicity] , and [|socioeconomic] status. The achievement gap can be observed on a variety of measures, including [|standardized test] scores, [|grade point average] , [|dropout] rates, and college-enrollment and -completion rates.

1.2 race/ethnicity - legacy of US segregation.
It's been about 50 years since the major revolution in legal, moral and social status of the African American community. And still, totally RACIST talk still exist such as "This leaves African Americans with a permanently low IQ with no hope of remediation, because IQ is not a function of education. " (I won't post the source ... this is SICK! unfortunately, it's not a single offbeat source) It seems that in America, there is still a group large enough to impact public policies and world view in general to maintain, propagate, sustain some racist argumentation. The [|Civil Rights Act of 1964] ended all state and local laws requiring segregation - but it was too late for many aspect of the existing segregation.

1.3 color blindness.
Dr Tiffany Anderson, the first African American assistant superintendent in Missouri, explains color blindness in an excellent manner. To her, **Color Blindness** is usually wrongly understood as "not differentiating according to skin color". This means a teacher should not give easier homework to an AA student and harder homework to an Asian student, thus must give the SAME homework to all students. In theory, it sounds "fair" and "nice" - however we can easily understand that refusing to differentiate is a very bad idea and is not fair at all.

If I get Dr Anderson's message correctly, fair education is based on two points. - **DIFFERENTIATION**: each child is challenged at his level and can learn the most. Differentiation comes from assessments of needs and mastery (providing the assessments are varied enough to give an opportunity for each child to shine in at least one area). - **SAME EXPECTATIONS**: each child is seen as a precious creature of God and can be tended to and should be given limitless opportunities, including college education opportunities, talent show (the science fair and the jazz concert alike, both being a spring board to shine with a gift/a talent), support and tutoring (tutoring is not just for struggling students), etc. //"To lower educational standards because of a student's poverty would serve only to perpetuate a vicious cycle and widen further the achievements gaps that he or she faces"// (Anderson, 2007)

1.4 poverty - economic status.
Changes in law are recent enough that population has not moved geographically as much as it could. The African American culture is not typically nomadic, and families have been known to stay generations in the same neighborhood. The housing bubble finally forced a little of cross integration, with AA families selling to live elsewhere, and not-AA families joining the local community. It also forced (with many problems) some re-habilitation of legacy downtown AA islands. Likewise, AA families are not always welcome to settle in more rural areas, slowing down the effort of desegregation started half a century ago. To this day, some zip codes are still equated to a specific ethnicity, and some railroads and highways are still literally splitting communities into "the right side and the wrong side". (eg AA gang and poverty prone East Palo Alto vs graduate white uberexpensive Palo Alto/Stanford) //"Hypersegregation is a form of racial segregation that consists of the geographical grouping of racial groups. Most often, this occurs in cities where the residents of the inner city are [|African Americans] and the suburbs surrounding this inner core are often white [|European American] residents."// ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States ) Furthermore: //"Data from the 2000 census shows that 29 metropolitan areas displayed __black-white hypersegregation__ in 2000. Two areas—Los Angeles and New York City—displayed __Hispanic-white hypersegregation__."//

1.5 segregation in schools
Most countries in the world have some system of geographic attendance area to assign children to a specific school, and assign schools to a geographically defined community. Historically, and in inheritance of the US segregation, there are sections of towns which are predominantly white, black, chinese, or latino. Housing has been built around the communities and communities have gathered around housing anchors. In July 1963, the ZIP codes were created and somewhat assigned around some preset socio economic markers - engraving in stone some specific boundaries, desirability of some neighborhoods and creating a segregation that was to stay. ZIP is still associated with a specific housing cost or price per square foot (rent and sell alike), so there is an obvious consequence of parallel behavior between the cost of housing and the performance of the local school. It's not so much one dragging the other down as the other ZIP propelling their performances up, leaving the others behind. School districts are only too happy to incorporate a very inconspicuous segregation into the assignment map, and the public is usually outraged when a district want to change a limit over another ZIP for fear of increased diversity in the school. The upside of the geographic segregation is that schools could be (if there was more public spending on education) targeted for additional support. Our school district has assigned a dozen or so schools to the "Superintendant Zone" with slightly more resources. Unfortunately, the effort is too recent and too restricted to see any improvement (we need one generation to finish a K-12 cycle to document the changes).

**1.6 social factor - education and employment of the parents**
The United States are a highly capitalist country, with monetary segregation. Some professional activities for the parents bring healthcare, childcare, college founds and other savings to benefit the children, and some activities don't. Since there is virtually no social services in America, there is no leveling factor to give a more equal chance to all the students. Grants and services might be available, but parents might not have the time, (sometime money), experience and willingness to fight yet another fight in advocating for their children. The results is that the same racist population is just too happy to *statisticalize* and frame what looks like a circle with no escape, from generation to generation. Economic segregation is also parallel with the eternal **public vs private** school question. In Chicago, by the academic year 2002–2003, 87 percent of public-school enrollment was black or Hispanic; less than 10 percent of children in the schools were white. In Washington, D.C., 94 percent of children were black or Hispanic; less than 5 percent were white. In St. Louis, 82 percent of the student population were black or Hispanic; in Philadelphia and Cleveland, 79 percent; in Los Angeles, 84 percent, in Detroit, 96 percent; in Baltimore, 89 percent. In New York City, nearly three quarters of the students were black or Hispanic.

2.1 The budget gap for schools
Public school districts are at the mercy of the quality of founding and advocacy. The less affluent the students, the less safeguards are touted against subfunding, substandard, subquality, subadvocacy, lack of services, lack of identification, and plain lack of care. Parents who send their children to private schools DON'T care about public schools and will complain about any raise in taxes toward education (with some reasons). Vice versa, a public school district with more affluent and educated parents will benefit from more advocacy, more willingness to raise taxes, and in general more support for the students such as smaller class sizes, which benefit all students, gifted and struggling alike. This creates a major funding gap in the overall budget per student (between schools, but most likely between districts), and more strain to find money - if any at all - for Gifted identification and support, while a high achieving district might welcome even more Gifted students, and receive even more support, taxes and advocacy for its super achieving GATE program.

2.2 setting standards: same expectations for all
School districts, administrators and teachers should hold the same expectation regarding Giftedness across the groups. The same effort of identification and remediation should be achieved regardless of the SES or color of the students. Schools on the wrong side of the track should develop the same standards of differentiation than the schools on the other side, each program being designed to fit seamlessly into the school and within its own culture and value system. One suggestion is to spend GATE money on training across the district, instead of focusing on a program for already identified students. The more trained teachers, the better identification, and the better outcome for all. One of the ideas could be to develop standards at the county level - not as limited as the district, but more focused than the state guidelines.

2.3 availability of testing resources (time and staffing)
Many school districts rely on school psychologists to conduct testing, when the identification cannot be done with a simple results on a state test. The same psychologists are usually stretched addressing the bottom 5 urgent issues, and to all in control of the psychologist time assignments, the bottom 5 usually takes precedence over the top 5. The same issue arises when the GATE coordinator - because it's a part time position - is also a support person for the bottom 5, such as a Resource Specialist person, a reading recovery person, a special education coordinator etc. Again, despite the best intentions, the bottom 5 will usually get more attention and more resources than the top 5. One of the safeguard is to assign the GATE coordinator position to a teacher who is relieved from his/her extended duties toward the bottom 5 (e.g. the cluster teacher), or to have a strong partnership with the GATE parent representative.

**2.4 prioritizing resources to the lowest achievers first**
The heart breaking aspect of the segregation translated in plain money difference is that most of the time, those same schools which get less support, resources and might have a higher than average low performing population. The children at risk are indeed a high priority to any administrator who cares, to any teacher who has the passion for his children. If there is any resource at all in such a school, it will be channeled with certainty toward the lower portion of the students, in an attempt of damage controle - hoping the best for the other students. The lucky scenario is when a Gifted child is identified early enough, and the teacher applies successfully for a full grant at a local high rated private school. My son lost an amazing black friend this year due to an extraordinary full scholarship into a top school (extraordinary, since in this economic context the board voted against full scholarship in general). Even in that case, the odds might be against the child if there are siblings, conflict of location, hours, after school programs etc. I do not have enough experience to address this part, but from the little I see, governmental help such as STAR schools with 10% more staff, lower class sizes, some district bullying such as a new strong handed principal might help the school in general. The downsize is that while a *military* action is organized to raise a school, little to no attention is devoted to anything which is not a problem - namely GATE students.

3. ethics of a double standard?
While researching, I found more and more abysmal gaps between schools. A district in NM touts its 26% rate of Gifted students in some middle schools while some schools barely reach the 1%. I come to question the ethics of a "pure" "academic" "legalistic" identification which comes handy for statistical purposes, but might not actually SERVE (as in "comes humbly to serve the children"). What are the goals of an identification? It we set aside ego, money, competitiveness, we see a need in emotional support, a need of differentiation in the classroom, a need of extra challenge for children who are otherwise bored and unchallenged.

If this is our actual code of ethics, then we ought to serve the 5% children in ANY class - whereas the average IQ of the 5% is in the 100 range for an overall IQ of the class in the 85, or whereas the average IQ of the 5% is in the 170 range for an overall IQ of the class in the 140. In both classes, both 5% are equally unfit within the classroom, both 5% have different emotional needs, both 5% equally need some differentiation.

If every classroom was equally screened for out of place children (within a recommended guideline of 3-10% for example), then there would be NO GAP in identification in ANY type of setting - from the lowest socioeconomic backgrounds to the embassies quartiers in DC - not forgetting EL students, LD students, special need children etc.

Paper documentation for further reading:
 * Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement among African-American Students by Theresa Perry, Claude Steele
 * Closing the Achievement Gap Reaching and Teaching High Poverty Learners: 101 Top Strategies to Help High Poverty Learners Succeed By Tiffany Anderson (also in eBook)
 * [|A Guide for Families of African American Gifted Learners by Joy L. Davis, Ed. D.]
 * Special Populations in Gifted Education: Understanding Our Most Able Students From Diverse Backgrounds by Jaime A. Castellano Ed.D., Andrea Dawn Frazier Ph.D.

Online documentation for further research:
 * Identifying and assessing gifted and talented bilingual hispanic students - Davidson Institute for Talent Development
 * Raising achievement and closing gaps in whole school systems: recent advances in research and practice - pdf - The Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University
 * Closing the Achievement Gap - viewed from Capitol Hill with states comparisons
 * Statistics of AA academic achievement by Dr T Anderson
 * What the state of California Board of Education has to say about the Achievement Gap.
 * The very extensive Hoagies Portal on Achievement Gap.
 * Something I have not talked about since I'm the last person to be able to talk about this: Gifted Black Males: Understanding and Decreasing Barriers to Achievement and Identity

Wiki pages
 * Cross-cultural Concerns for GATE by Luna Wong
 * Diversity and Giftedness by Andrea Juckniess-Kemerer
 * IQ and Testing - discussion on the testing bias against African American students.
 * Racism - a page that talks about even more subjects such as the Great Technological Divide