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Who Gets Served? The Demographic Representation of Gifted and Talented Populations
- Scott J. Peters
- Marcia Gentry
- Gilman W. Whiting
- Matthew McBee
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Description: The disproportional representation of students from certain racial, ethnic, language, and disability subgroups is a longstanding problem in gifted education. This paper presents population level gifted representation rates for student subgroups based on the census-level 2012, 2014, and 2016 Office of Civil Rights data collection, including data for race / ethnicity, English language proficiency, and disability for the country as a whole and disaggregated by state. These data show that African American, Latinx, and Native American students, as well as those identified as limited English proficient or as served under IDEA, are disproportionately underrepresented in identified gifted populations. European and Asian American students are overrepresented compared to their proportionality in the general student population. In response to these trends we highlight some states that have improved representation rates, and we offer suggestions from the scholarly literature for how educators might address disproportionality in gifted education.