Skip to main content

Mobile Navigation

  • National
    • Policy
      • High Expectations
      • Quality Choices
      • Personalized Pathways
    • Research
    • Commentary
      • Gadfly Newsletter
      • Gadfly Podcast
      • Flypaper Blog
      • Events
    • Covid-19
    • Scholars Program
  • Ohio
    • Policy
      • Priorities
      • Media & Testimony
    • Research
    • Commentary
      • Ohio Education Gadfly Biweekly
      • Ohio Gadfly Daily
  • Charter Authorizing
    • Application
    • Sponsored Schools
    • Resources
    • Our Work in Dayton
  • About
    • Mission
    • Board
    • Staff
    • Career
Home
Home
Advancing Educational Excellence

Main Navigation

  • National
  • Ohio
  • Charter Authorizing
  • About

National Menu

  • Topics
    • Accountability & Testing
    • Career & Technical Education
    • Charter Schools
    • Curriculum & Instruction
    • ESSA
    • Evidence-Based Learning
    • Facilities
    • Governance
    • High Achievers
    • Personalized Learning
    • Private School Choice
    • School Finance
    • Standards
    • Teachers & School Leaders
  • Research
  • Commentary
    • Gadfly Newsletter
    • Flypaper Blog
    • Gadfly Podcast
    • Events
  • COVID-19
  • Scholars Program
High Expectations

Is There a Gifted Gap? Gifted Education in High-Poverty Schools

Christopher YalumaAdam Tyner, Ph.D.
Foreword by:
Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.
Chester E. Finn, Jr.
1.31.2018
1.31.2018

Schools have long failed to cultivate the innate talents of many of their young people, particularly high-ability girls and boys from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds. This failure harms the economy, widens income gaps, arrests upward mobility, and exacerbates civic decay and political division.

To address these issues, researchers Christopher Yaluma and Adam Tyner examined the extent to which access to and participation in gifted programs vary for different groups of students nationally and in each state, particularly in high-poverty schools. Here’s what they found:

  • More than two-thirds of elementary and middle schools have gifted programs.
  • Overall, high-poverty schools are just as likely as low-poverty schools to have them.

  • Yet students in low-poverty schools are more than twice as likely to participate in such programs.

  • Even when black and Hispanic students have gifted programs in their elementary and middle schools, they participate at much lower rates than their peers. 

  • In schools with gifted programs, only Maryland, Kentucky, and New Hampshire enroll more than 10 percent of the state’s black and Hispanic students in those programs; in twenty-two states it’s less than 5 percent.

Increasing the participation of qualified yet underrepresented students in gifted programming in elementary and middle schools would change the trajectories of these children and gradually lessen social and economic inequality. We offer three recommendations to help on this front:

  1. Consider universal screening and other ways to streamline identification processes and make them more equitable.

  2. Identify students for gifted programs using local norms.

  3. Counter bias in identifying and serving minority gifted students.

For tomorrow’s leaders to reflect America’s diversity, today’s schools must cultivate able kids from every kind of background. Toward that end, first-rate gifted programming in high-poverty schools can contribute a great deal.


Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Topics:
Curriculum & Instruction
High Achievers
Teachers & School Leaders
DOWNLOAD PDF
Chris Yaluma is a research intern at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in education policy at Ohio State University. He has a Masters’ degree in transformative education with a concentration in leadership, policy, and research from Miami University, OH. Chris graduated with a physics degree from Berea College and spent two years teaching and tutoring high school math and physics in Boston…
View Full Bio

Adam Tyner is national research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where he develops, executes, and manages new research projects. Prior to joining Fordham, Dr. Tyner served as senior quantitative analyst at Hanover Research, where he executed data analysis projects and worked with school districts and other education stakeholders to design custom studies. He has also spent several years leading classrooms,…

View Full Bio

Related Resources

view
High Expectations

Exam Schools: Inside America's Most Selective Public High Schools

Chester E. Finn, Jr., Jessica Hockett 7.31.2012
NationalReport
view
High Expectations

Failing Our Brightest Kids: The Global Challenge of Educating High-Ability Students

Chester E. Finn, Jr., Brandon L. Wright 9.15.2015
NationalBook
view
High Expectations

Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude? Performance Trends of Top Students

Robert Theaker, Yun Xiang, Michael Dahlin, John Cronin, Sarah Durant 9.20.2011
NationalReport
Fordham Logo

© 2020 The Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Privacy Policy
Usage Agreement

National

1016 16th St NW, 8th Floor 
Washington, DC 20036

202.223.5452

[email protected]ute.org

  • <
Ohio

P.O. Box 82291
Columbus, OH 43202

614.223.1580

[email protected]

Sponsorship

130 West Second Street, Suite 410
Dayton, Ohio 45402

937.227.3368

[email protected]