The role of race in gifted education.

The one factor that has done the most to shape and form the education of gifted students over the last two decades has been race. It became so prominent an influence that a National Academy of Science panel was assembled to investigate it. One issue that was being studied by that panel was why were there so few minority students in programs for gifted students?

First, was the proposition true? Yes, it was. There clearly were fewer minority students in programs for gifted than their proportion in the student body, except for Asian students. But what did that proportional difference mean? Because IQ scores were the predominant means of identification of gifted, that would mean that racial minority students score lower on our measures of intelligence than do the mainstream white students as a group. At the same time, we should remind conservatives that some of the minority students scored at the highest levels of these tests.

Because it would be difficult to think that such disproportion would represent a true state of affairs, a lack of intellectual equity among races, several searches for alternative explanations were initiated. First, the IQ tests were assumed to be culturally biased and we needed to find unbiased measures that would make the results come out even, from a racial viewpoint. These efforts did not turn out too well. No instruments that would predict meaningful academic performance could be found that did not show much of the same differences.

Second, programs for gifted students were seen by some critics as a clever way of resegregating the schools to keep the best education for the children of rich white parents and, once again, deny opportunity to black students. Teachers of the gifted would then be seen as the tools of those who stood in the way of true equality in education. Many political activists who would ordinarily support education initiatives turned against these programs for gifted students as continuing to propagate inequality in education. That is one of the reasons for less financial and political support for such programs.

But we do not have to believe in some vast political conspiracy to account for these results, nor to deep genetic differences between the races. Where does the truth lie? The truth seems to be that both measured intelligence and academic performance are a complex combination of cognitive inheritance plus opportunity and practice in the development of abstract language and thinking. If a subgroup in our society has limited opportunity, practice, or low motivation to master the development of abstract language in early childhood, then who should be surprised that such subgroups are later found to be not equal in academic achievement or IQ scores in comparison to more favored groups?

If we found a group somewhere in the world who bound the feet of their children for their first three years would we be surprised to find that those children did not run as fast or as well as other children when their feet were freed, and would we ascribe the subsequent group differences in running to genetic deficiencies?

These results do indicate a serious problem that we should not deny, however: the incomplete development of some students' potential abilities, it is a condition that cries out for a series of actions for those interested in education in general, and in education of gifted students in particular.

1. Identify talent early. In preschool programs such as Early Head Start, place the emphasis on learning abstractions and the language to describe them (Child: Are the trees dead? Teacher: The leaves are falling off the trees now because it is cold but the tree is not dead, it is only sleeping and will be leafy again in the Spring when it becomes warm again, etc.). Note should be taken particularly of those students who respond well to such interchanges. It is in the early use of language that the foundation is laid for future intellectual development!

2. Organize instruction to fit cultural differences. The special education field has a term called Universal Design for Learning (UDL) which means we can hold to the same curriculum goals for all children but may need to modify the presentation of the material to fit the needs of different children. Many important concepts can be taught through visual or auditory perception as well as through verbal methods. Problem based learning approaches appear to be an instructional strategy that benefits bright minority students, for example, and can even be used to identify special talents and abilities.

3. Honor intellectual performance. The schools should highlight high performance in academic tasks for minority subgroup members. Point out adult models from minority subgroups who manifest such superior performance in the arts, business and academia to counteract the notion that those students who do well academically are "Oreos" or "whiteys," acting against their own cultural group.

4. Road to Success. The path to success in academics follows the same rules as success in athletics. Hard work (110% effort), learning the skills necessary for success, and perseverance in the face of difficulties, all pay off. "When the going gets tough, the tough get going" is not just a slogan for football players.

Educators have a special responsibility to help students achieve their birthright, the full development of their inborn talents, and the society that allows that to happen, and helps that to happen, will flourish.