>A district analysis of the program found that more than 70 percent of students enrolled in the program were white and Asian, even though nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school students are Hispanic and Black.
>School Committee member Lorna Rivera said at a January meeting that she was disturbed by the findings, noting that nearly 60 percent of fourth graders in the program at the Ohrenberger school in West Roxbury are white even though most third graders enrolled at the school are Black and Hispanic.
>"This is just not acceptable," Rivera said
What the item the article doesn't spell out explicitly is that many (most?) "gifted" or "enhanced learning programs" participation is based on IQ test scores.[1][2]
To be clear, "gifted program" is often a different concept from "magnet school" with extra specialization courses such as music.
So not sure what Rivera is saying is unacceptable. Either:
a) advanced programs should continue but should not be using IQ tests as the bar for inclusion because intelligence tests underrepresent black students
b) misunderstand the gifted programs and doesn't know that IQ tests are involved and thinks the programs are just based on parent requests and teacher recommendations so some human beings are deliberately discriminating black children
I can't speak to Boston particularly, but I have never seen a gifted program based any art of IQ test or proxy. In fact, I am almost sure that a vast number of people I knew in gifted programs, including myself wouldn't have scored particularity high on an IQ test. In fact I distinctly recall one gifted student asking me if their ASVAB score (commonly claimed by HN users and other to be correlated with IQ) of 20 was good.
Interesting, I grew up in Georgia and was constantly in and out of gifted classes from elementary school through high school. The process was very similar except there were basically no tests involved. In high school I was bumped to a gifted class randomly in the middle of the year without any additional processes.
I suppose it’s possible that that could have changed since I was in school, but it wasn’t that long ago either.
>School Committee member Lorna Rivera said at a January meeting that she was disturbed by the findings, noting that nearly 60 percent of fourth graders in the program at the Ohrenberger school in West Roxbury are white even though most third graders enrolled at the school are Black and Hispanic.
>"This is just not acceptable," Rivera said
What the item the article doesn't spell out explicitly is that many (most?) "gifted" or "enhanced learning programs" participation is based on IQ test scores.[1][2]
To be clear, "gifted program" is often a different concept from "magnet school" with extra specialization courses such as music.
So not sure what Rivera is saying is unacceptable. Either:
a) advanced programs should continue but should not be using IQ tests as the bar for inclusion because intelligence tests underrepresent black students
b) misunderstand the gifted programs and doesn't know that IQ tests are involved and thinks the programs are just based on parent requests and teacher recommendations so some human beings are deliberately discriminating black children
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifted_education
[2] https://www.nber.org/digest/nov15/who-gets-gifted-and-talent...