Who Gets Served? The Demographic Proportionality of Gifted and Talented Populations

• In Event: Underrepresented Groups in Gifted Education

Abstract

The underrepresentation of students from certain racial, ethnic, language, and disability subgroups has long been a problem in gifted education. This paper presents population level gifted population representation rates for various subgroups based on the 2013 – 2014 Office of Civil Rights data collection. We include data for sex, race / ethnicity, language proficiency, and disability both for the country as a whole as well as disaggregated by state. In the session we will also share success stories from particular groups in particular states. We end the paper with suggestions, based on the scholarly literature, for how schools might approach mitigating underrepresentation.

Authors

• Scott Joseph Peters, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater

• Marcia L. Gentry, Purdue University

• Gilman W. Whiting, Vanderbilt University