Still Underrepresented: Minoritized Students With Gifts And Talents

Abstract

To what extent do Black/African American (Black), Hispanic/Latinx (Latinx), and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander (NHPI) students have access to being identified with gifts and talents? In places where they have access to identification, how equitably are they identified? And, to what extent are they missing from identification with gifts and talents due to lack of access or underidentification? This study used the Civil Rights Data Collection for the years 2000, 2011–2012, 2013–2014, and 2015–2016 to investigate underrepresentation of Black, Latinx, and NHPI youth with gifts and talents, nationally and by state. The data in these years were census data, meaning data from every child who attends public school is included. Data were also examined by Title I and Non-Title I school status and by locale (i.e., City, Suburb, Town, Rural) to determine how school poverty concentration and/or school locale affect identification of Black, Latinx, and NHPI youth. All states were analyzed for Black and Latinx youth, but due to the small NHPI student populations in some states this analysis was limited to a 20 state sample. Nationally, and in 37, 31, and all 20 states analyzed, respectively, lack of access to identification was not a major contributing factor to underrepresentation. The disparity in identification percentages between schools by Title I status showed 45% fewer Black students, 21% fewer Latinx students, and 15% fewer NHPI students were identified in Title I schools. Additionally, in every state and setting, Black, Latinx, and NHPI youth were underidentified with 92%, 92%, and 67%, respectively, of the equity ratios and 92%, 93%, and 61%, respectively, of the representation indices less than the minimum criterion of 0.80. In 2015-2016, there were 276,840 Black students with gifts and talents identified with an estimated 469,213 (62.89%) to 771,728 (73.60%) missing from identification; 588,891 Latinx students with gifts and talents identified with an estimated 658,544 (52.79%) to 1,164,363 (66.41%) missing from gifted identification; and among the 20 state sample, 6,594 NHPI students with gifts and talents identified with an estimated 7,236 (52.32%) to 9,253 (58.39%) missing from gifted identification.