Black Children Are Far More Likely to Be Identified as Gifted If They Have a Black Teacher

children-progress-in-our-schoolsResearchers at Indiana University and Vanderbilt University in Nashville recently published a study that found that African American children with Black elementary school teachers were three times as likely to be identified for gifted education programs than African American children with White elementary school teachers.

The research also found that Black students are 54 percent less likely to be identified as eligible for gifted education programs than White students even after adjusting for differences in standardized test scores, demographic factors and school and teacher characteristics.

Th authors conclude that there is “some evidence that the classroom teacher effect is partially driven by teachers’ more positive views of own-race students.”

The study, “Disentangling the Causal Mechanisms of Representative Bureaucracy: Evidence From Assignment of Students to Gifted Programs,” was published on the website of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. It may be accessed here.

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2 COMMENTS

  1. I think that the prejudiced attitude of teachers in ethnic-racial groups distinct black children, according to a non-recognition of black children as super gifted, removing them the opportunity to be in developmentally appropriate learning programs. In Brazil, the institutional racism has shown that both in education, as in health the african-Brazilian population has been subjected to racial discrimination.

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