Millions of students could be in gifted classes, but aren’t || NCTR E-Blast 12.04.19

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Associate Program Director Rosemary Baker will deliver a presentation entitled “Building Teacher Leaders Through District-Serving Teacher Residency Programs” at the Learning Forward conference in St. Louis this week. Erica and Rosemary will outline the residency model, NCTR’s work, standards, and impact. They will feature partners at the Saint Paul Urban Teacher Residency and the Minneapolis Special Education Teacher Residency and show how these programs define the mentor role and how they use data to develop and refine mentor professional development.

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s fifth annual Educator Confidence Report finds teachers are less optimistic about their profession than they were a year ago. The survey of more than 1,300 educators found only about a third (34 percent) reported feeling optimistic, down from half who reported feeling positive about their profession in last year’s survey. Nearly all administrators and teachers surveyed said students need more social and emotional support.

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Millions of students could be in gifted classes, but aren’t

As many as 3.6 million students in public schools could be learning in accelerated or so-called “gifted” programs but aren’t, and the majority of those students attend under-resourced or high-need schools. Black, Latino, and American Indian/Alaska Native students are disproportionately affected.

About 56 percent of non-Title I schools screen students for gifted and talented programs, and approximately 13 percent of students at those schools were identified as eligible for services. At Title I schools, however, less than 8 percent of students were found eligible, even though 61 percent of those schools conducted screenings, according to a report from Purdue University’s Gifted Education Research and Resource Institute.

Researchers used statewide eligibility averages and statistical modeling to develop a measure they called “missingness,” which they defined as students who could have or should have been identified as eligible for gifted services, but were not.

“Nationally, in 2015–2016, 3.3 million students were identified with gifts and talents, but between 2 million and 3.6 million were missing either because they attended a school that did not identify any children, or because they were a member of a group underidentified in schools that do identify students,” the report states.

When broken down by race, these missing students come largely from underrepresented groups. For example, 63 percent to 74 percent of Black youth are missing from gifted identification.

The report’s authors recommend state policymakers ensure that all schools identify students with gifts and talents, and that they examine and improve rates of programming and identification in Title I schools. The report also calls for states to put into place “equitable identification procedures” and programming designed to develop and reveal talents among all children, and especially those that have been underserved for generations.