The Identification of Mentally Gifted, "Disadvantaged" Students at the Eighth Grade Level

Abstract

For as long as special funds have been provided for programs, these funds have gone largely to affluent schools, rarely to inner-city schools. One reason for this must be sought in the method of defining the gifted student. The criterion has generally been a score at or above the 98th percentile point on an individual intelligence test such as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) or the Stanford-Binet (i.e., an IQ score of about 130+). Thus, all students were evaluated against the same kind of yardstick, a test standardized on a white population and subject to cultural influence. Few inner-city students qualified as mentally gifted. Moreover, since few were expected to qualify, programs for students were rarely planned and counselor time and effort were directed elsewhere. The mentally students in ghetto schools were ignored. Recently, however, concern for mentally students has grown. In hearings on the conducted by the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, answers were sought to the question How can children be identified? In California a change in the State Code2 now allows up to 2 per cent of the culturally disadvantaged students in a school district to be designated mentally under separate criteria which do not require a full-scale score above 130.