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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.
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.
In other words she is so full of crap. Maybe the kids that are in the program are better than other kids because of things like their parents care enough to insure the kid is doing their homework, is responsible etc.
This whole institutional racism crap is just that crap. If she had evidence that a school or teacher blatantly excluded kids of a minority group that would be different but what she is spouting is SJW at its finest.
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.
There is no way coming from a higher income home that can provide a healthy environment and extracurricular education tools and opportunites could have a bearing on the ability of the child to rate higher than those coming from poor households.
How is it unfair or racist by default if you only look at the demographic data. Only the test scores should matter.
Odd that the bias didn't extend to Asians or Indians or other minority groups. I wonder what can explain that?
Donna Ford immediately leaps to the conclusion that the issue is racism. More probing would probably indicate that the majority of the minority households in that area are probably single parent households, possibly with parents working low paying jobs, and\or working more than one job to make ends meet. This means that the parent is not fully invested in the upbringing of their child - probably not for lack of caring, but for lack of time or understanding about what education means to advancing yourself in society. The result is that the kid spends more time with friends and is heavily influenced by the dumb-assed decisions that all kids make.
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.
A lot depends on how you're testing for giftedness.
Unfortunately if you don't have money or education yourself, your kids are much less likely to, so someone from a poverty-stricken background or with parents who aren't formally educated are on average going to do much worse on tests. They may also tend to be non-white. That's not racism, but it does create a systemic bias where you place people based on the money and education of their parents.
What we really need is enrichment programs designed to counteract that starting from a young age. A giftedness program isn't that unless we *make* it that.
But if we do use a giftedness program for that, we should be explicit about it--state whether the goal is to be representative of the population or to take the highest-scorers, for example.
The underlying assumption of this, and of "tech employee representation" being that any given subgroup retains all the demographics and characteristics of the larger group and any deviation from that is an anomaly.
Get back to me when there is outrage that men are only 10% of the population in teaching and nursing careers. Why aren't we channeling funding to make teaching and nursing careers appealing to male students? Oh, because male students get to choose careers while minorities and female students are weak and unable to pursue the repressed interests that statistics say they must secretly harbor.
Hmmm ... kind of by definition that's not "genetic", but socioeconomic.
Basically it becomes the circular argument of we define "gifted" as the children of parents who can afford to give these children early advantages and exhibit the traits being measured ... and then you can't claim those children who have had additional advantages are "gifted", but "lucky enough to come from privileged backgrounds".
The selection of traits is one thing, the ability to afford to cause the conditions for those traits isn't natural selection.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The article does not provide sufficient information to support meaningful discussion or criticism. The article does not provide justification or data, only high-level conclusions. Those conclusions only apply to a particular implementation of a program in a particular state, so no generalizations are made. It does not provide any links to information about he program or the research. Unless someone wants to do that research and provide it in the summary, there is simply nothing to see here.
If we back away from simply looking at gifted programs and look at the entire school experience, including English Language Learners (where English is a second language) or supplemental reading programs and even free and reduced price lunches, we find that all kids are getting their fair share of unbiased attention. Also, being in a gifted program is tough. Kids will shy away from the tough classes if they are concerned that it will negatively affect their GPA and possibly a scholarship. As a school board member, I just had a debate with middle and high school students about this very issue. GPA is king at college admissions and risking it just to say you were in a gifted class doesn't appeal to many students.
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
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.
Ford found that both Hispanic and black students are underrepresented in gifted programs and that black students are missing out the most.
That is NOT the same as saying the program is "biased against Hispanic and black students" or discriminatory.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I attended elementary school in HISD and middle/high in SBISD. The article doesn't quite get to the root of the issue. The issue is that the programs tend to be targeted towards long time residents with a lot of cultural and political capital. These are the people that can make or break the career of a school administrator, so they get deference. This can happen because information about the programs are not publicized much. It's also expensive to run GT programs and the system doesn't want too many kids qualifying. As a result, the kids who end up in GT programs are those whose parents know all about the program (from knowing other parents with kids in the program) and have the wherewithal to lobby teachers to recommend their kids for testing and advocate that the kid get put in the appropriate program.
To illustrate how this works: my parents were not from Houston, but settled in the town shortly before I was born. They knew to get me tested, and I scored at a level that qualified me for any of HISD's gifted programs. However, what my parents were not told (and what could not easily be found out in a pre-internet age), was that there were actually multiple levels of gifted program. While I qualified for the higher tier program, nobody told my parents about it, and I ended up in the lower-tier program by default. My local school wanted it that way because I was a guaranteed pass on state standardized tests and the higher-tier program would have involved a transfer to a gifted magnet school. By the time my parents figured it out, we were moving to a nearby district that had a completely different system.
As far as the test being biased, it may be, but only to the extent IQ tests are biased. As far as I know, they are still using a version of an IQ test for selection, with certain additional diversity points available for kids on the margin. For a young child, providing some familiarity with the test could be helpful, so there's probably some benefit to savvy parents prepping. But I doubt any tweaks to testing procedures would make up for the cultural capital factor.
Obviously all the questions you posed are culturally biased because they all ask for knowledge (partially even of cultural norms).
IQ test do not ask for knowledge but the ability to process knowledge. I.e. they normally provide all the information you need. See e.g. http://www.intelligencetest.co... .
Surely, one can train to be good at such test (simply doing them once or twice will probably enormously help as one then has some basic understanding on how they work). So there will be a bias towards parents who care enough to run their child through them at least once, which tend to be the middle-class and up.
But it has nothing to do with your made up questions.
Look up Donna Ford's bio at Vanderbilt and you get this as her "Research Area":
Gifted with emphasis on minority children and youth; recruitment and retention of diverse students in gifted education; underachievement among diverse students; equity issues in testing and assessment; multicultural education; issues in urban education.
So basically Ford's entire area of expertise depends on FINDING bias in these programs. Perhaps she should acquaint herself with Confirmation Bias. If you look hard enough for anything, you'll find it whether it's there or not.
Further, the bias is explained by Ford as a fault of the gifted program, but she completely neglects CULTURAL FACTORS that also bias gifted involvement. There is, generally speaking, a cultural bias in the black community AGAINST academic excellence. It even has a name: "acting white." Blacks who use proper spelling and grammar are called "Oreo's," a derogatory term indicating they're "black on the outside but white on the inside." This is especially bad in poorer neighborhoods where "leaving the hood" is considered akin to being a racial traitor. Act like a thug, dress like a thug, eschew education in favor of "hanging out" and you're accepted. Anything else and you're ostracized.
Don't believe it? Ask around. It's common knowledge. Nobody wants to say it but everyone knows it's going on.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
While what you say is quite nice in the abstract, the nurture aspect is very strong in this concrete case.
If kids go hungry, if shots are fired next door each day, if they have to travel hours to get to a school that can only hire teachers that have failed to get jobs elsewhere, then "nature" doesn't even have a chance of entering the door, it's all nurture. You have to be extremely motivated and disciplined in such an environment to even stand a chance of gaining a normal education, let alone enroll in a gifted program.
Another point I'd like to make is that the tests aren't all that capable of predicting success.
In The Netherlands, the disparity in living conditions is much lower - our "slums" are suburbs compared to a lot of other countries. The tests correlate much better with real ability - and even there we see a rather unnerving percentage of kids where the tests actually go off by a wide margin, so much so that it is now the law (new since last year) that the advice from the kids teachers is the one that has to be followed, and tests can only cause a lower advice to be changed to a higher one, not a high advice to be lowered. The main reason for this was that the teachers advice was correlating much better with academic success than the IQ tests.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)