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Hope Deferred Again: Minority Students Underrepresented in Gifted Programs by J. John Harris III & Donna Y. Ford

Both authors are college professors rooted in educational psychology, with careers focused on gifted education since the early 1990s. The two authors haeve written a book together, in addition to this article, that was heavily cited and revered in their fields. Specifically, Donna Y. Ford is one of the leading names in research on minorities in gifted education.

This article discusses recruitment and retention of minority students in gifted education. It clearly and precisely lays out recommendations for recruitment that is congnizant of how giftedness is manifested in minorities. It lays out a great explanation of how giftedness shows itself in minorities, and where the disconnect in how teachers view these traits is. It discusses the importance of making retention plans prior to recruitment, so that the recruitment is worthwhile. It lays out a guide for methods to recruit and retain minorities in gifted education, organizing it in sets of categories and addressing a variety of problem areas, like family involvement, cultural sensitivity, and special training for teachers. This source is one of the pioneering articles in the fight towards fair, all-inclusive recruiting methods. It's been cited by every other article I'll be using for my recruitment subtopic. It was one of the first articles to explicitly set guidelins and criteria for how recruitment should be conducted.

http://eus.sagepub.com/content/31/2/225

Fourth-Grade Teachers’ Perceptions of Giftedness: Implications for Identifying and Serving Diverse Gifted Students

All of the authors involved in this manuscript are professors at Ball State University. A majority are professors in the Department of Educational Psychology, with the exception of a mathematical sciences professor and the director of a center for gifted education and talent development. All of the authors have an extensive history of work with gifted students and methods for recruitment.

This source really dives deep into the recruitment of students in gifted education. This study actually surveyed fourth grade teachers and their perceptions of giftedness. The results showed that traits that teachers identified as gifted did not include ones that minorities typically show, like oral tradition, movement and verve, and communalism. Further, traits that teachers did identify as gifted are not necessarily linked to giftedness, like self motivation and indepence; gifted students are not significantly more independent than non-gifted students. The teachers did not have a firm understanding of giftedness, and specifically, how it is manifested in minority or economically disadvantaged students. This aids the discussion on recruitment by shedding light on the fact that the very means by which students are identified (teachers' referrals) is inadequate and working against minorities. It provides evidence that supports the argument on flawed recruitment techniques.

http://jeg.sagepub.com/content/30/4/479.full.pdf+html

The Misrepresentation of Minorities in Gifted Education

Recruitment

Solutions

Testing

The Underrepresentation of Minority Students in Gifted Education: Problems and Promises in Recruitment and Retention by Donna Y. Ford

The author is a black woman with research focuses in gifted and special education at a few large universities, includong Vanderbilt and Ohio State University. She is one of the pioneers in research on minorities in gofted education.

The article is valuable because it contains an extensive analysis of factors contributing to the underrepresentation of minorities, and even breaks things down by minority (e.g. black students, Hispanic students). It also looks at the overrepresentation of minorities like Asian students, which many articles don't touch on. This article is from the late 1990s and is one of the first ones to actually explicitly outline the issues in recruitment of minorities in gifted education. The author goes into a detailed analysis of every form of recuitment used in the United States, and addresses the shortcomings of each. The information in this article is an excellent starting point. It really introduces the material to me, as the researcher. This article gives me the "what," while the other articles I'm using give me the "how" and "why." This article is often cited in other articles where the researcher is explaining issues or suggesting improvements to the representation of minorities in gifted and talented education.

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/249834018_The_Underrepresentation_of_Minority_Students_in_Gifted_Education_Problems_and_Promises_in_Recruitment_and_Retention

Minority Children in Gifted Education: A Problem and a Solution by Jack A. Naglieri

This author is a professor of psychology and director of the Center for Cognitive Development at a large, nearby university. He is trained as an educational and school psychologist, with a focus and specialization in the assessment of intelligence and cognitive processing.

This source discusses testing, but also offers valuable insight on solutions to equalize the representation of minorities in gifted education. The main problem, according to the author, is the types of tests being used. The solution he proposes is to replace certain tests with more accurate ones, to supplement with nonverbal tests when possible, and to factor in known disadvantages that minorities encounter. For example, some minority students struggle with or even lack English language skills, so they are disadvantaged by verbal or written tests that look for proper use of things like grammar and spelling. Instead, nonverbal tests, testing with a proctor that can translate, or an option to test in the student's native language is a reliable alternative. The author is very clear about a student's ability to be gifted, but not proficient in English langauge.

https://tip.duke.edu/node/659

Minority Children in Gifted Education: A Problem and a Solution by Jack A. Naglieri

This author is a professor of psychology and director of the Center for Cognitive Development at a large, nearby university. He is trained as an educational and school psychologist, with a focus and specialization in the assessment of intelligence and cognitive processing.

This article discusses the different types of testing, and how they affect the process through which gifted students are selected. Though it is short, the information is extremely valuable. It summarizes the tests, compares/contrasts them, explores the limitations of them, and explicitly shows how the tests lead to underrepresentation. This source also works hand-in-hand with another subtopic of mine (Solutions) because it offers ways to adjust testing to better include minorities being underrepresented. This article really helps summarize and explain the different types of tests and different methods to administer entry tests for gifted programs. It's a great starting point for the discussion on testing and its effects on this issue. It lends great insight to my analysis on testing, and even combats other sources I'll be using that have opposing viewpoints.

https://tip.duke.edu/node/659

Push is on to expand gifted education to more minorities, poor by Leslie Postal

The author of this article is a news reporter, who frequently reports on education, specifically in Florida. She typically consults with experts in the field and includes quotes from those directly affected by the story she's reporting.

This article is a news report that discusses the progress of a current initiative to increase the presence of minorities in gifted education in the Miami-Dade County school system. The new program has increased enrollment and retention. By refining testing and creating uniform requirements for entry that diminsh bias against minorities, the number of minorities enrolled has increased significantly. Previously, more affluent families were hiring private psychologists to deem their children as gifted, thus getting them into the program without testing. Many minority families cannot afford this luxury, so they were not being included. The solutions offered by this program have worked so far, and have great potential to help this county's disparity. Further solutions suggest addressing the income disparity in the area to further close the gap.

http://search.proquest.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/docview/1324285547/fulltext?accountid=14780

Assessment Practices and the Underrepresentation of Minority Students in Gifted and Talented Education by Jesse O. Erwin and Frank C. Worrell

The authors are professors of school psychology at University of California, Berkeley. I don’t see where they have a long history of investigating minorities’ outcomes, though I see other publications from them on gifted and talented education (GATE) programs. While they may not be experts on the experiences of minorities in education, they have a sufficient experience in the field and are considered credible.

This source is a good one to evaluate, because it opposes my topic. It asserts that the testing is accurate and sound. The authors do not believe that minorities are underrepresented. Instead, they attribute it to the achievement gap that we see in education. The authors argue towards the idea that the testing used for GATE programs are pretty free of bias. They also discuss the idea of misrepresentation being okay, given the status of the achievement gap right now. However, they did say that equal representation is something we can work towards, as the achievement gap improves. But, we cannot have equal representation or improvement in representation without improvement of the achievement gap. This source heavily influences the discussion on minorities in gifted education, and specifically my discussion, because it offers a conflicting view. It serves as an alternative perspective and gives another argument to consider.

http://jpa.sagepub.com/content/30/1/74.full.pdf+html

Minority Students in Special and Gifted Education by The National Council of Research

The National Research Council is made up of the following committees: Committee on Minority Representation in Special Education, National Research Council, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, and the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences. It has a very thorough and inclusive representation of people who would be able to intellectually contribute to the discussion on minority students in special and gifted education.

This source is very thorough and very extensive. It is a book, so it’s pretty lengthy and contains a lot of information. It gives a focused overview, then examines factors like pregnancy conditions, psychology, testing, placement, improving outcomes, and recommendations. However, I'll be focusing on the testing aspect. The unique thing about this book is that it was written after the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, so it contains political insight on how that act negatively affected minority students being tested for gifted education. It talks about how testing changed the way giftedness was described. It became a competition on who could score the highest on state-sanctioned tests, and that often determined who was considered gifted. Testing changed the way giftedness was defined and identified. Further, the actual tests for entry into gifted programs changed as well. They began to test for things that inherently worked against minorities, instead of true indicators of giftedness. This source contributes to the discussion by offering a look into the changes that took place regarding testing. This information lends itself to comparisons to how testing was before No Child Left Behind, how it's progressed and changed, and how it aided and/or hurt the representation of minorities in gifted education.

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=q1iAnMzPbfsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=underrepresentation+of+minority+students+in+gifted+education&ots=Re6-NL8utA&sig=RYJdjI5YFNGMNOy_6Y8QUwbkZBg#v=onepage&q=underrepresentation%20of%20minority%20students%20in%20gifted%20education&f=false

Addressing under-representation of student populations in gifted programs by WA Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction

This report was written by Washington's superintendent's office, an office that directly deals with schoo programs and initiatives and has access to tons of data on schools in this area. Many reports are written each year to address problems, and this office is very experienced in doing so.

This report lays out solutions to the problem of underrepresentation. The points it lays out are very comprehensive and rooted in previusy conducted research. This source recognizes the importance of nonverbal testing, referrals that take into account cultural diversity and SES, ongoing identification, manifestation of traits in different groups, and many other important factors. The source also explains how and why each change is expected to emit progress. A unique aspect of this source is that it discusses how parents can be a part of the solution, whereas many other sources focused on the education system itself. While focusing on the methods and practices of the system is certainly important, the solution on the parents' behalf is extremely valuable as well.

http://www.k12.wa.us/HighlyCapable/pubdocs/2010/UnderRepresentationGiftedPrograms.pdf

Ford's solo article is a pioneering one that sets the stage for an all inclusive analysis on recruitment in gifted education. She goes into great detail as she critiques every popular method of recruitment in the United States. In her article written with Harris, the authors build on the first article, by further explaining why the methods of recruitment don't work effectively, specifically for black students, and shedding light on the misconceptions and biases that teachers and other school staff tend to have when analyzing traits that minority students tend to display, as compared to traits they think of as gifted. The last article in this series, on fourth grade teachers' perception of giftedness, the first two articles are really brought to life and exemplified. This study actually surveyed teachers on their ideas of gifted traits, and showed firsthand that teachers are recruiting students in a way that excludes minorities and excessively includes other students. It exposed the biased and inaccurate ideas that teachers have when recruiting, and the resulting misrepresentation.

Naglieri discusses the importance in using nonverbal tests, in conjunction with verbal and quantitative tests. He notes that many minority children do not have advanced language skills, or might even have very limited English language skills. Traditional verbal and quantitative admittance/identification tests routinely leave minorities out, thus Naglieri suggests using nonverbal testing as a supplement to verbal and quantitative. The National Council of Research discusses the shift in testing and how it has affected the education system's ideas on giftedness. It argues against the way that giftedness is defined via the current test, and how reliable the current testing measures are at accurately identifying as many gifted students as possible. On the other hand, Erwin and Worrell argue that testing is not biased and is merely a reflection of the current achievement gap in the United States right now. They assert that the way to have minorities accurately represented in gifted education is to first close the achievement gap. Based on the literature, it seems as though there is not a solid concensus among the intellectual community on which method of testing is best, or if testing is even a problem.

Naglieir's article focused on how to find a solution in testing methods, and how to introduce reform in a way that is specific to the testing methods, which also impacts the recruitment processess. His approach is very focused and narrow, but implies a domino effect where fixing testing can fix the system. Postal's article shows a case study where a solution was formulated and implemeneted in a way that made sense and actually showed progress and positive change. This approach focused on two aspects of the problem, and has a broader horzion tha the previous source discussed. However, the ideas were similar: target certain areas of the problem, and wait for improvements to influence other areas. The last source by the Washington superintendent's office contains a very broad, overall fix. It identifies all major problems and offers a potential solution to each one. It gives the "what," "why," and "how," to each problem-solution duo. It is quite comprehensive and actually builds on ideas in the first two sources. This section goes from a more focused look to a broader, more overall one, all of which are of equal importance.

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