However, the disparities in rates of placement essentially disappear among Black students who have Black teachers.
These are among the findings published last week in AERA Open, a journal of the American Educational Research Association.
The study, conducted by Vanderbilt University researchers, was based on U.S. Department of Education data about more than 10,000 elementary students at public schools with gifted programs. Researchers focused on data collected in kindergarten and first, third and fifth grades, which are the junctures when most gifted students are identified, regardless of race.
Blacks are 66 percent less likely than Whites to be assigned to gifted education services, according to the researchers. No other minority population has the level of disparity as do Blacks.
“It is startling that two elementary school students, one Black and the other White, will have substantially different probabilities of assignment,” said Dr. Jason Grissom, a co-author of the study and a Vanderbilt associate professor of public policy and education. “This is troubling. The persistent effects of conditions outside student control raise serious concerns about whether the education system is providing equitable access to meet the needs of high-achieving students of color.”
The researchers concluded that most factors do not close the Black-White assignment gap. They examined a variety of factors, such as student gender, age, health, socioeconomic status, education of parents, whether the school was urban or suburban, the number of years of experience among teachers, the school’s average test performance and the rate of free- or reduced-price lunch program participation.
