Despite Wake’s efforts, still ‘not enough’ Black, Hispanic students in gifted program
Wake County is still only adding a small number of Black and Hispanic students to its academically gifted program, despite changes designed to make the program more diverse.
The Wake County school system switched from relying on test scores to a portfolio approach that looked at multiple sources of data for identifying third-grade students for academically gifted services. But data presented this week showed Black students only made up 6.4% of the newly identified gifted students and Hispanic students only accounted for 6.7% — both well below their respective shares of the district’s total enrollment.
School administrators said the new numbers, while disproportionately low, are still a slight improvement over what they’d been in past years.
“Certainly we like to see the needle move in any positive direction,” Drew Cook, assistant superintendent for academics, told school board members this week. “But I think the reality is you know it’s not enough.
“I think that progress is something that sometimes comes painfully slow, and I think we recognize and acknowledge that there remains work to be done here.”
Wake and other school districts in North Carolina and nationally are confronting the long-standing issue of how Black, Hispanic and low-income students are under-represented when it comes to receiving academically gifted services.
N&O/Observer series highlights inequities in access
A News & Observer and Charlotte Observer series in 2017 showed that thousands of bright, low-income North Carolina students were being excluded from advanced classes.
“Counted Out” showed that as bright children from low-income families start fourth grade, they are much more likely to be excluded from the more rigorous classes than their peers from families with higher incomes.
State lawmakers credited the series with them passing a law in 2018 requiring high-scoring math students to be placed in advanced courses.
School officials say the students from these historically under-represented groups are just as gifted as other children and that the problem is a failure to properly identify them as being bright.
“Everyone should look at this and realize that is not a problem with children,” said school board member Heather Scott, chairwoman of the board’s student achievement committee. “This is on our shoulders. This is our responsibility. “
Wake’s new portfolio approach looks at things such as test data, work samples and a Gifted Rating Scale for third-grade students instead of relying on one piece of data. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Wake will also screen all fourth-grade students next school year to make sure they didn’t miss any children for AIG placement.
Black students underrepresented for gifted services
La’ Kesha Spruill-Roberts, director of Intervention and Advanced Learning, said teachers have credited the new approach for helping them identify more students of color and more students who speak a second language.
But the new data presented to the student achievement committee continued to show wide racial and ethnic disparities among the 2,278 newly identified gifted students this year:
▪ White students accounted for 59.4% of the new gifted students while making up 44.5% of Wake’s enrollment.
▪ Asian students accounted for 22.5% of the new gifted students while making up 10.4% of Wake’s enrollment.
▪ Hispanic students accounted for 6.7% of the new gifted students while making up 18.6% of Wake’s enrollment.
▪ Black students accounted for 6.4% of the new gifted students while making up 22.4% of Wake’s enrollment.
“I really really struggle seeing Black students only representing 6.4% of our newly identified AIG students.,” Scott said. “What are we doing? Where is this disconnect? I’d like to know how the district is trying to address this.”
Shining light on problem
Spruill-Roberts and Cook said the data is slightly better than in prior years.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” Spruill-Roberts said. “It is very promising that we had some of these gains in a pandemic”
Spruill-Roberts said Wake and the state are training teachers to identify giftedness from students that don’t look like typically gifted students.
Both administrators stressed that it’s a national problem and that shining a light on the issue is the first step.
“It’s clear that we’re going to remain committed to addressing the issue and putting the data out for everybody to see even though it’s not data that we’re necessarily happy with,” Cook said. “We’re pleased with any progress, but we’re certainly not satisfied with where we are.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2021 at 8:00 AM.
