The (Conference) Room Where it Happens - Explaining Disproportional Representation in Gifted and Talented Education

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious

Study examines whether disproportional representation in gifted and talented education can be explained by mean assessment-score differences across racial and socioeconomic (SES) groups using comprehensive data from a large school district. After controlling for nonverbal ability, cognitive ability, math and reading achievement, and teacher ratings of gifted behaviors, Black, Hispanic, and low-income students remain more likely to be identified than similarly scoring Asian American or higher-SES peers. Findings highlight underrepresentation within gifted populations and inform equitable delivery of advanced learning opportunities.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages21

Reading Time53 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Evidence and core debate on disproportional representation

Method and Findings

Controlling for ability, achievement, and teacher ratings

Identification likelihood across groups

Implications

AERA Open January-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1 pp. 1–21 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584251369849 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) The (Conference) Room Where it Happens: Explaining Disproportional Representation in Gifted and Talented Education Dante D. Dixson Michigan State University Scott J. Peters NWEA Jonathan A. Plucker Johns Hopkins University Carolyn M. Callahan University of Virginia The current study leveraged comprehensive data from a large school district to better understand the degree to which disproportional representation in gifted education can be explained by mean assessment score differences across racial and socioeconomic (SES) groups. The findings indicate that after controlling for nonverbal ability, cognitive ability, math achievement, reading achievement, and teacher ratings of gifted behaviors, Black students, Hispanic students, and students from lowincome backgrounds are 1.3x to 5.4x more likely to be identified for gifted services than their similarly scoring Asian American or higher-SES peers. These results were found despite Black, Hispanic, and low-income students still being underrepresented within the gifted student population. This study has important implications for understanding and improving the equitable delivery of advanced learning opportunities. Keywords: Achievement gap, equity, gifted education, high stakes testing, regression analyses The disproportional underrepresentation of students from minoritized and low-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds within advanced education programs (e.g., gifted and talented, accelerated, enrichment, dual enrollment, advanced placement, and international baccalaureate programs) across the United States is one of the most persistent challenges facing the field ofK–12 education (Worrell et al., 2019) . One of America’s greatest areas of economic, cultural, and educational potential lies in recognizing and fostering the academic talent of students from historically underrepresented groups at all levels of education and in all types of advanced learning opportunities (Card & Giuliano, 2015; Olszewski-Kubilius & Steenbergen-Hu, 2017; Wai et al., 2024) . Realizing the full potential of these students can greatly increase and diversify the intellectual and creative talent driving America’s progress forward across almost all major areas of life (e.g., Gomez & Bernet, 2019; Olszewski-Kubilius & Steenbergen-Hu, 2017) . There is little disagreement that disproportional representation exists in K–12 gifted and talented programs and services. However, despite substantial research on the root causes of this disproportional representation (e.g., Peters, 2022), the question of “why” remains. Is disproportional representation due to flawed, unfair, or biased identification procedures? Or is it due to larger societal inequality preventing certain groups of students from developing their academic potential and, as a result, being identified for such programs at a significantly lower rate? Likely, the answer is a little of both or more nuanced than such a dichotomous framing might suggest. Although both positions acknowledge that students are identified for gifted and talented services at rates that differ from their representation within the K–12 population, there is a key difference between these two positions. The first perspective asserts that disproportional representation itself is ipso facto definitive evidence that the Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the wor

FAQs

What was the study’s main goal regarding gifted identification?

To determine whether disproportional representation in gifted education can be explained by mean assessment-score differences across racial and socioeconomic (SES) groups.

Which factors were controlled for in the analysis?

Nonverbal ability, cognitive ability, math achievement, reading achievement, and teacher ratings of gifted behaviors.

What did the results show about identification likelihood after controls?

Black, Hispanic, and low-income students were found to be 1.3x to 5.4x more likely to be identified for gifted services than similarly scoring Asian American or higher-SES peers.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious