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Houston's Gifted Education Program Biased Against Blacks and Latinos

Posted by Soulskill on from the rooting-it-out dept.

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.

8 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. Bias? Or reality? by mveloso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Bias? Or reality? by VorpalRodent · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The article gives little indication on how the program is run, other than that it is "point based", and that tutorials and testing materials are available online for purchase.

      This, unfortunately, biases the program towards those who have the resources available to spend on their child, regardless of race. There's mention of some sort of "selection criteria" prior to being tested, so some bias could definitely be introduced there, but in the end, the tests themselves (provided they're valid and administered properly) should provide valid results.

      That being said, the kid in the story is 8 years old. At that age, kids will show up all over the place on testing depending on how things are going at home. It mentioned that his dad never gets to see him because he's always either working or finishing his degree. It's unfortunate, but it's a catch-22 - the father sounds for all intents and purposes like he's doing a great job improving things for his family, but this is bound to have an impact in the short term on the kid.

      I realize I'm a horrible human being for saying so, but perhaps this isn't so much a sign that the Gifted and Talented program is biased, but rather that a program intended to nurture talented individuals will, by necessity, be biased towards those individuals who by virtue of their environment are allowed to develop more talents.

      We have a separate program where we take kids who have the potential to have talents but haven't yet realized them and attempt to nurture them into actual skills...it's called school.

      --
      Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
    2. Re:Bias? Or reality? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      can't they just test for potential?

      That sounds nice, but it will NOT fix the problem. Like it or not, intelligence is heritable and being dumb is highly correlated with being poor.

      No he doesn't understand how to read or math but he has the potential to be gifted if given a chance.

      Except they have been given a chance. The gifted program starts in third grade. That means they already have 3 years of free education. If they failed to learn the basics of reading and mathematics, then they are not "gifted", regardless of what their mothers think.

      If the program enrollment is limited, there are two choices:
      1. Have a gifted program that is skewed by income and race.
      2. Use quotas.

      Personally, I think the best solution is to expand the gifted program so any willing child can participate. My local school has a GATE (gifted and talented enrichment) program, and I have helped out as a parent volunteer. It costs almost nothing to run. Unpaid parents do most of the work. We use computers, and Mindstorms kits that the school already has. The kids do things like dissecting cow eyeballs, which cost less than $1 each, or experiments with soap bubbles and wire loops. There is no good reason that any kid that is willing to stay after school for a couple hours should be excluded.

    3. Re: Bias? Or reality? by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You can also blame moms who picked crappy men to father their children. I think this is something parents need to drill into the heads of their daughters when they're young: don't pick assholes or morons to date, because if you get pregnant by them, you're now stuck with a relationship with this deadbeat, and a kid you have to take care of, probably alone, after he takes off, and now not many other men will want to date you since you're stuck with someone else's kid and a relationship with the father.

    4. Re:Bias? Or reality? by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 5, Interesting


      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

  2. Barf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. It's useful to consider the source. by prisoner-of-enigma · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  4. Re:Racism v. Bias v. Intelligence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm Asian and my parents neither pushed nor helped me in schooling. In fact, they were downright unhelpful. By the complaints of people saying that programs are racist, I should have been an underperformer in school. I was not. Without even trying, I was put into the gifted programs and such.

    Why can't people just acknowledge that intelligence is very heavily influenced by heredity (hence the preponderance of Ashkenazy Jews in most fields) instead of playing the tiresome racist card?

    At least with blacks, I can see how they could have a legitimate claim of generational racism. But Hispanics? Are Asians somehow "whiter" than Hispanics despite the fact that Hispanics (meaning from the Ibernian peninsula) have European blood in them? Why didn't the racist policies of this country put Asians at the bottom of the economic and academic ladder?