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Houston's Gifted Education Program Biased Against Blacks and Latinos
tiberus sends an NPR report investigating the fairness of gifted and talented programs in Houston schools. Analysts believe black and hispanic students are at put at a disadvantage because of the way in which the program is run. Quoting:
Donna Ford, at Vanderbilt University, thinks that put Isaac at a disadvantage. She's been researching gifted education for decades, and when it comes to Houston's program she says, "I think it's a clear case of segregation, gifted education being segregated by race and income." Houston school leaders asked Ford to take a close look at their enrollment in the program, and she gave it a failing grade. "Racial bias has to be operating, inequities are rampant. Discrimination does exist whether intentional or unintentional," she told the school board in May of this year. Ford found that both Hispanic and black students are underrepresented in gifted programs and that black students are missing out the most. She also found that about half the seats in those programs go to higher-income students, even though the majority of the district is poor.
I think all one needs to do is read up on the person quoted in the article. I'm sure she doesn't have an agenda:
http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/...
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Odd that the bias didn't extend to Asians or Indians or other minority groups. I wonder what can explain that?
>>>"Racial bias has to be operating, inequities are rampant. Discrimination does exist whether intentional or unintentional"
What if discrimination is genetic? That is, there are more gifted kids born to high-status high-income parents. If you want to re-define gifted to be more affirmative, then you will have to use different definitions of 'gifted' for each socioeconomic class.
Darwin taught us about selection for traits, why are we failing to notice obvious here?
This might be a controversial opinion, and I work in education so that's dangerous, but it's a purely mathematical one.
What if, the percentage of blacks, hispanics, and rich-kids that are able to achieve a particular set criteria (not based on anything but particular achievements to rigorously tested levels) is less than that of other groups?
Seriously. It doesn't have to be racism to show such a trend. In fact, the "rich-kid" portion is immensely telling in itself. Rich-kids are more likely to have a higher level of education than the average than poor kids? Really? Gosh, I'm shocked to my very core.
Now, I see nothing to suggest that any race is biologically intellectually inferior to any other, given the same set of circumstances (income, family support, encouragement from peers, etc.). If you draw a line, therefore, and the criteria aren't directly based on income, for example, the people who passed met a fair criteria and those that didn't couldn't meet that criteria. That there's a disproportionality in race, gender, sexual orientation, height, obesity or anything else doesn't warrant lowering the criteria piecemeal or case-by-case - if anything, it's a perfect social indicator of exactly what's going on.
But a program for gifted students WILL NOT reflect the perfect statistical averages that you desire. It won't. Nor will a driving test, or a test for astronauts ("Oh, no, we have had disproportionally less Chinese astronauts than Soviet, therefore we must be being racist! Quick, let's change the test so it doesn't matter if you spend your life throwing up in space, so long as the percentages are right!")/ It'll reflect those that are classed as - literally - above their peer average. That may only coincide with a perfect subsection through society in a completely perfect society.
Now, you could argue that we should adjust the gifted-program to take account of this. But that takes a specific set of levelled tests, not inherently biased against those groups, and modifies it based on the politics and economics of the day. It's that kind of shit that leads to immense watering down of qualifications. "Oh, because you had a cold on the exam day, you should be given higher marks than the guy who's better than you but didn't" - extreme exaggeration but that's basically the implication at play. Personally, I find "Oh, you are classed as gifted because although you did less well than this guy, you're black so we have to take that into account" INCREDIBLY offensive, to everyone and to common sense.
Or you could, you know, invest in programs specifically designed to get black, hispanic, poor, whatever kids the same quality of education and support as enjoyed by their peers. That's the goal, and that's what happens already, and that's the way forward. Not to single out groups and say "Aw, diddums, did we not pass the test? Okay, never mind, what's your skin colour, medical history, and all possible mitigating factors? We just fiddle the criteria so they don't apply to YOU."
If you set a fair criteria and someone doesn't meet it, you don't change the criteria, you identify the source problem (which may be as simple as economic disadvantage) and solve that instead if you want proportionality.
It's incredibly offensive to suggest that the next five presidents should be of Asian descent, or female, just because there haven't been any of those yet so we're "misrepresenting". No. You put it to a vote and the person with the most votes wins. No matter their colour. But if none of the CANDIDATES are Asian, say, you don't take that as inherent racism... maybe no Asian people applied! Through chance, or not being eligible or whatever other reason.
I hate FORCED equality. It's reverse racism and that doesn't make it right either. "Sorry, you couldn't get this job because we HAVE to hire X amount of disabled people and you're not disabled." That's NOT how you put society on an equal footing.
You want to fix the problem - find out why kids from thos
A lot of gifted programs, and this one is no exception, only partially rely on a test for selection decisions. They also rely on teacher recommendations to a large extent. And while I'm sympathetic to the view that you have to be able to pass the test if it's reasonable, I would be shocked if there were no bias in the teacher recommendation process.
One of the biggest issues in education is always going to be how to characterize the educational potential for the children who go into the program. There are challenges for every gifted program:
*Are the tests written in such a way that there is a cultural bias?
*Are parents able to truly critically assess their children's intelligence or learning capacity *relative to the child's peers'?
*Is the program supposed to be about advanced training for children who meet certain standards, or is its supposed to be a program that is supposed to confer equal opportunity by conferring special programs on children.
Let's take Johnny. He's a smart kid, probably has the neurochemical make-up to be some sort of a genius. The problem is, he's retained less knowledge that can be used to adequately assess his raw intelligence through a common battery of questions. Why? He has no books or educational material. His parents aren't home enough to read to him or attend to his learning. They don't have money to ensure that he attends schools. How does someone test him fairly?
Let's take Suzie, she's not necessarily at the same level as Johnny, but her parents have been able to ensure that she has obtained skills and knowledge that are considered to be desirable. It is not a requirement for Suzie's parent's to be rich or white or asian, but those backgrounds make it a lot easier for Suzie to be exposed to knowledge that will be on that test because there is a higher overall income for those families. The parents have better jobs, they can spend money and time on their kids, on average. In some cases, there is also a huge cultural value placed on education.
The reality is: poor kids are not always going to fail to be seen as gifted, but there are huge challenges. Kids are tested young for their intelligence, and so parental involvement is huge at that point. It doesn't matter if I have Einstein's brain if that brain potential is underdeveloped. Brains aren't CPUs that you can hook up a hard drive to and then they produce at their capability.
In other words, if you want to run a program for children seen as gifted, you have to define what gifted *is*, and then test for that. If you're testing children who are more advanced in their skills at a certain point, the fact is, you're going to have more rich and racial privileged kids in there. And you're *not* going to be able to change that by simply being more "inclusive". You need to raise the level of skills of the less skilled kids. And the only way to do that is extra work.
On the other hand, if you want to find people who have pure, raw potential, irrespective of background, you're probably going to have to start testing brain chemistry, even looking at DNA. That may work, insofar as ensuring that there is a purely "potential" based criteria. But even then, if you want those children to actually retain skills and knowledge, you're going to need to make up for their lack of opportunity in the home for extra learning and discipline.
I would say behaviour learned from the parents is at least as important.
There is plenty of evidence that says you are wrong. The correlation between genetic siblings is strong (0.6). The correlation between unrelated adoptive siblings, raised by the same parents, is zero.
Being "gifted" is affected very little by what your parents do, but is strong affected by who your parents are. Many people find this hard to accept, because it doesn't seem "fair", but being politically incorrect isn't the same as being factually incorrect.
IQ is correlated with all sorts of things. Your own link says that kids raised in poor families who tested borderline mentally disabled were up to near normal IQ a few years after being adopted by high income families.
Academic success, which is more relevant to the present story than IQ, is also correlated with all sorts of things. Some of it IS genetic, but the major predictor is socioeconomic status of the family.
If the tests are too easy, the kids aren't "gifted."
If they don't pass the test, then they aren't "gifted."
If the test uses words they don't understand, then what words would the researcher suggest the tests use that aren't "culturally biased?" Using three letter words well isn't a sign of ability.
No the entire program is bullshit designed to reduce funding and weed out people, all while being couched in terms of "special education". I am going to assume that Houston's school district is similar to where I live elsewhere in Texas, but possibly less well funded. First, to get your kid in "TAG" requires him to be "identified", this means a teacher or a parent must first request him to be tested. A teacher will almost never do this, almost every person who worked with my son, except his teacher told us about the program and said we need to get him in it, but his teachers never said a word, all while they were saying his math and reading were so high they could not "max him out". So as a parent you must get involved and make it happen, easier for me as a relatively high income person with a flexible job. Not easy if you have to work fixed hours.
Then, you have to know the TAG testing schedule, at least where I am that's November, meaning if you have a Kindergarten student you want in. It's not frequently well advertised and you have to know that "TAG" means "Talented and Gifted", which is not always as well known. If you miss the deadline your child is apparently not gifted. Then you have some questions to fill out, of the free-form variety, where you describe the ways in which your child is gifted. You have to use the proper words, taken from the paperwork, most of which consists of terms I am fairly certain psychology ditched decades ago. You see they want a "gifted child" not merely a child who "is hard working". You have to make it clear your child is gifted, even though, as far as I'm concerned if your hard working child looks and acts the same as a gifted one, what's the biggie? Also, by the way, once your child is in the program he IS in fact going to be put (after 2nd grade) on an accelerated program for Math & Science that will culminate in him being far ahead of his peers, and will have considerable extra project load some of which will involve parental involvement, so honestly he better be willing to work and stick to it. But hey, this is all just funding pillow talk baby, let's play the game. You must write free form prose, not so hard for well educated people, but it might be really hard if your own education is poor, definitely this favors those who work in certain environments or get lots of practice writing lengthy essays.
Then in January, children whose parents properly jumped hoops get to take a 4-day long test which allegedly assesses the child's giftedness in a way that can't be prepared for. Of course they don't really believe that either, so they don't tell you what test he will be taking, nor do you get to help prepare your possibly very gifted but also possibly immature child for a long ordeal. So now you send your little 5-yo in for a "nationally normed" standardized test which allegeldy assesses his IQ based on these topics: Math, Science, Reading/English & Social Studies. Now as far as I know, ones IQ is independent of academic subjects, but this is what they say the test will divine. Did I mention that there are private programs available for people with money to prepare kids for this test? There are, if you can afford it.
Then there is the selection phase. So you've done all this work, your child has taken a test whose results you never saw, and they decide whether to admit him or not. Good News: there are only X spots available per grade level, so while your child may be certifiably gifted there may not be enough space for him and thus he is not gifted anymore because he can't also be gifted along with the other gifted kids. He doesn't get in? Good news, you can take the test again every 2 years, because giftedness c
My gifted (formally tested) child was in a 'normal' school. The neighborhood school. Enrichment is not what he needed. The teachers tried enrichment. He was bullied constantly because he was socially different (Think "Sheldon" of "Big Bang Theory") and had no friends. School was torture... Just as it was for his mother and I when we went to grade school. School administration had no ability to help this kid and everything they did just made the situation worse. Penalizing the bullies led to them bullying him at home while he was playing in the yard. Isolating the bullies resulted in retaliation off school grounds.
Long story short, we had him tested and discovered he was gifted. We knew he was a bright kid but thought that was it. We tried to get him into a gifted school and the wait list was huge. By sheer luck, he made it in... The first day at that school, he came home and said "Mom! I've found my people!!". This is his 5th year at that school... The school is full of weirdos just like him... He has a ton of friends and is thriving...
No way no how was he going to survive at that school. When I was in similar situation in grade school, I considered suicide multiple times in my early teens.
There are some gifted children who do well in a normal school but given the size of the wait-list at this school, there is a sizable portion of the school-age population that do not and can not thrive in a school with normals.... At least not at a young age...