L.A. Schools Go Hunting for the Gifted

As a second grader, Emariye Louden is extraordinary. He founded a botany club, and he’s taught his classmates how to pick ripe lemons. He has also been placed in a gifted class at 99^th Street Elementary School in Los Angeles.

That makes Emariye a lucky kid. Why? Because he’s African American. And African-American students are more likely to end up in lower-achieving academic tracks than in intellectually demanding gifted programs.

That situation is going to change, according to this story [2] in the Los Angeles Times. The Los Angeles Unified School District plans to test all second graders, a move that is expected to add more low-income and minority children to the district’s gifted programs. Right now, those programs include a disproportionate number of white and Asian students. They comprise roughly 8 percent and 3 percent of the district’s enrollment, respectively, but contribute 23 and 16 percent of the district’s gifted students.

Los Angeles reflects a national trend that educators have noted for years. In 1992, for instance, African Americans made up 21 percent of the national student population but only 12 percent of the students in gifted classes. Latinos made up 13 percent of the student population but only 8 percent of gifted students.

Helping gifted kids is itself a contentious issue. Many educators believe that gifted children need extra help, just as disabled students do. That is why at least seven states officially classify gifted children as having disabilities. However, helping these students can be done well or done badly. Programs that help keep gifted kids with their peers as much as possible are usually going in the right direction. These tend to help all students without thwarting the gifted.

But many schools rely on broad-brush ability grouping and tracking that simply remove the gifted students from their regular classes. In those cases, the gifted kids are too often given the best teachers and resources while other students get whatever’s left. And as Los Angeles’ recent past shows, many black and Latino kids are unjustifiably left behind.

It looks like Los Angeles has at least one part of the equation right—it is identifying all the kids who need special help. This new information is vital. You cannot teach a child properly until you understand where he or she is intellectually. But it remains to be seen if the district can set up programs that help all of the students to reach their full potential.

For more on how to do ability grouping, check out this Teaching Tolerance video [3]. (Note: You may not be able to see it if your school blocks YouTube.)

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