833738

research-article2019
GCQXXX10.1177/0016986219833738Gifted Child QuarterlyPeters et al.

Article

Gifted Child Quarterly

Who Gets Served in Gifted Education?

2019, Vol. 63(4) 273­–287
© 2019 National Association for
Gifted Children
Demographic Representation and a Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions

Call for Action DOI: 10.1177/0016986219833738

https://doi.org/10.1177/0016986219833738
journals.sagepub.com/home/gcq

Scott J. Peters1 , Marcia Gentry2 , Gilman W. Whiting3,

and Matthew T. McBee4

Abstract
The disproportional representation of students from various demographic subgroups within identified gifted and talented
populations has long frustrated policy makers, education advocates, researchers practitioners within the field, and those
concerned with societal inequality in general. Despite the prevalence of articles in the media reporting on disproportional
representation, little research has been conducted to track whether (a) the representation of these student subgroups,
particularly students with limited English proficiency or students with disabilities, has changed over time or (b) states
with and without policies differ in proportional representation of students identified with gifts and talents. For example,
increasingly, gifted education advocates have pushed for mandates that all students be screened for gifted program
eligibility as a way to combat disproportionality, despite little evidence that such methods influence proportionality.
Therefore, this study sought to understand whether and how state and national gifted program demographics have
changed over time and how proportionality is correlated with state mandates for gifted education identification or
services. A preprint of this paper as well as additional figures are available at: https://osf.io/325m9/.

Keywords
equity, underrepresentation, assessment, gifted

Literature Review Sources of Disproportional Underrepresentation

For the past 50 years, the field of gifted education has recog-
nized and struggled to ameliorate underrepresentation of stu-
dents from non-European backgrounds in gifted education
programs. Specifically, African American, Latinx, and
Native American youth have been underrepresented in gifted
education services; whereas students from European
American and some Asian backgrounds have been well rep-
resented. As most American K–12 students now identify
with a demographic racial group other than European
American, the discrepancy in gifted education services is a
pressing matter (National Center for Education Statistics
[NCES], 2017). Although perfect proportionality of all sub-
groups may be unrealistic given the larger state of inequality
in the United States, progress (or lack thereof) is important to
investigate. Disparities in the identification of students who
have limited English proficiency (LEP) or who are served
under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
are also a growing problem due to these groups making up a
rapidly-growing percentage of the American student popula-
tion: currently 9.4% and 13% of American students, respec-
tively (NCES, 2016a, 2016b).
In a 2016 analysis, Peters and Engerrand classified the
research base surrounding the causes of underrepresentation
into two themes. The first theme presented the view that the
assessments commonly used to make gifted identification
decisions are inherently flawed or biased against certain
groups, thereby resulting in disproportional underrepresenta-
tion. This argument is best exemplified by the popularity of
“nontraditional” assessments such as nonverbal ability tests
or structured observation protocols (such as the Teacher
Observation of Potential in Students; Harradine, Coleman, &
Winn, 2014). Under this view, proportional identification
should be expected, and any observed underrepresentation is
1
University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, Whitewater, WI, USA
2
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
3
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
4
East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN, USA
Corresponding Author:
Scott J. Peters, Department of Educational Foundations, University of
Wisconsin, 800 West Main Street, Whitewater, WI 53190, USA.
Email: peterss@uww.edu
274 Gifted Child Quarterly 63(4)
due to flawed identification tools. If this is a valid claim, then
the call for “less-biased” assessments for identification
makes sense.
Peters and Engerrand (2016) identified a second theme,
suggesting that it is the ways in which students are identi-
fied, rather than with which particular assessments, that
causes underrepresentation. For example, teacher recom-
mendations as a tool might be an appropriate data source for
student identification, but if such a recommendation is man-
datory before any other data points are considered, then
their use could actually exacerbate disproportionality. In
2016, Grissom and Redding published an analysis of the
Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten cohort
(ECLS-K), examining the factors contributing to dispropor-
tionality in gifted education. A major finding was that
African American students were far more likely to be identi-
fied as gifted in reading if they had a teacher who was
African American (6.2% vs. 2.1% probability), even after
controlling for academic achievement, suggesting that
achievement tests themselves were not the source of the
problem. Instead, a teacher-related variable was at issue.
The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) State
of the States Report (2015) noted that teacher and parent
referrals are a common gate through which students must
pass before being further evaluated for gifted services. The
result of this two-phase identification process is that some
students who would meet the identification criteria are never
considered because they never receive the initial referral.
A growing body of research points to the use of poorly
designed two-phase identification systems as a contributor to
underrepresentation (e.g., Hamilton et al., 2017; McBee,
Peters, & Miller, 2016). Any time fewer than 100% of stu-
dents are considered for gifted services (universal consider-
ation), some process must be used to determine who is
considered and who is not. That process is always imperfect.
McBee et al. (2016) referred to this as a two-phase identifica-
tion system in which a student must first pass through a
screening phase to be formally considered in a confirmation
phase. In gifted education, the most common form of the ini-
tial screening phase is the teacher or parental referral (NAGC,
2015). If students cannot access program eligibility proce-
dures unless first being nominated by a teacher, then simply
improving the quality of the formal consideration phase will
never solve the problem, because many students who would
be identified will never make it passed the screening phase.
McBee et al. (2016) gave an example of a two-phase system
wherein students must score at the 90th percentile on the
Phase 1 assessment(s) to be given the Phase 2 assessment(s).
Students must then score at the 90th percentile in Phase 2 to
be identified. Even under high reliability assumptions (.95)
with a strong correlation between the phases (.90), approxi-
mately 20% more students are missed due to the existence of
the two-phase system because some students who would
have done well in Phase 2 were blocked by Phase 1. If the
two cut scores move to the 95th percentile, just under 30% of
students are missed, with the harm to system sensitivity fall-
ing disproportionately on students who are from traditionally
underrepresented populations.
Inequality
A factor that was not addressed as a cause of underrepre-
sentation by Peters and Engerrand (2016), which also con-
tributes to underrepresentation, is the large inequality of
educational access and opportunity in the United States.
When approaching the topic of equity in gifted education, it
is often implied that something close to perfect proportion-
ality should exist and that anything less results from flawed
identification methods (e.g., biased tests or two-phase iden-
tification systems), rather than from disparities in educa-
tional opportunity. Put simply, this is not a reasonable
assumption given the inequality in educational opportunity
in the United States. Exposure to learning opportunities
influences achievement (Lohman, 2005) and measured IQ
(Ritchie & Tucker-Drob, 2018) and, in the United States,
higher income families have greater access to high-quality
educational opportunities. This is true in many countries
but is especially problematic in the United States
(Chmielewski & Reardon, 2016; Finn & Wright, 2015).
In an analysis of wealthy Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations,
Chmielewski and Reardon (2016) found that the United
States had the largest levels of “poverty/inequality,” as well
as some of the largest income-related achievement gaps.
The United States also had the lowest parental support
index and the lowest social welfare policy index. What all
this means is that broad inequality in the United States per-
sists and is associated with large achievement differences
(Reardon, 2011). Higher family income comes with greater
access and opportunities during the preschool years, during
the school day, and outside of formal education. Further
exacerbating the effect of this inequality is that in 2015,
12% of European American children lived in poverty com-
pared to 36% of African American children, 34% of Native
American children, and 31% of Latinx children (Kids
Count Data Center, n.d.), creating an intersection of race
and poverty for students who have long been under identi-
fied in gifted education.
In a recent analysis of three states, Hamilton et al. (2017)
found even after controlling for achievement scores, individ-
ual- and school-level free or reduced-price lunch status were
negatively predictive of a student’s probability of being iden-
tified as gifted. Their results make clear that individual and
institutional poverty are negatively associated with the prob-
ability of a student being identified as gifted. To be clear, pov-
erty is not the only reason for racial/ethnic disproportionality
in gifted populations but in the United States, being African
American, Latinx, or Native American means one is far more
likely to be poor and also face additional institutional barriers
related to race/ethnicity. Thus, proportional representation in
Peters et al. 275

Figure 1.  Representation index (RI) values 1978-2006. Reprinted, with permission, from Yoon and Gentry (2009).
Source: The Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the Elementary and Secondary School Survey, and the Civil Rights Data Collection.
Note: The dotted line indicates that Representation Index (RI) is 1.0. Error bars expanded to 95% confidence intervals.

the absence of proactive efforts to mitigate the effects of pov-
erty and racism on access is unlikely to occur.
Historical Disproportionality
In 2009, Yoon and Gentry published the most comprehensive
analysis to date of how gifted education proportionality rates
have changed over time. Their analyses included national
trends from 1978 to 2006 and subgroup comparisons by state
for 2002, 2004, and 2006. Their analyses relied on a represen-
tation index (RI) to present the degree to which a certain
group of students is represented in the gifted population com-
pared with the total student population. Computing an RI
requires the percentage of students identified as gifted who
come from a given demographic group as well as the percent-
age of students in an overall population from that same group.
students but the school’s population is 28% African
American, then the RI would be 0.50. An RI of 0.50 means
that African American students are represented half as fre-
quently in the gifted population as they are in the total popu-
lation. An RI of 1.0 translates to proportional representation.
Figure 1, reprinted from Yoon and Gentry (2009), shows the
racial/ethnic history of RI from 1978 to 2006.
As depicted by Figure 1, from 1978 to 2006, Asian
American and European American students were well repre-
sented; whereas African American, Latinx, and Native
American students were underrepresented. Although Yoon
and Gentry (2009) did not include language (LEP) or dis-
ability groups (IDEA), a review of the Office of Civil Rights
(OCR) data collection showed 2006 RIs of 0.23 RI for stu-
dents who had LEP and 0.16 RI for students identified as
served under IDEA.

% Gifted Method
RI =
% Total
The purposes of our analyses were threefold (1) to update the
For example, if a school’s identified population of students knowledge base on the national and state gifted education
with gifts and talents is made up of 14% African American representation rates by race/ethnicity and, for the first time,
276 Gifted Child Quarterly 63(4)
to do so for LEP and disability variables (2) to report state
trends for these groups over the three most-recent data col-
lections, and (3) to compare representation rates for those
states that do and do not mandate gifted identification or
gifted services.
To compute representation indices for student subgroups,
we downloaded raw, public data files from the OCR website.
These files include school-level variables on the number of
students identified with gifts and talents broken down by sex,
race/ethnicity, English proficiency (LEP), or whether or not
the students were served under IDEA. The first step was to
create a new variable representing total gifted enrollment at
each school and in each state. To do this, the number of male
and female students identified as gifted at each school was
totaled, and those values were aggregated within each state.
Next, we aggregated the total number of students from each
of the seven racial/ethnic subgroups identified as gifted from
each state. The total of each subgroup was divided by the
total state gifted population to arrive at the numerator for
each RI calculation. To calculate the denominator of each RI,
subgroup student enrollment in each school was aggregated
within each state. This was divided by the state’s total K–12
enrollment. The same process was followed for the 2013-
2014 and 2015-2016 data collections. This is an imperfect
method and an inherent limitation as it presumes that each
student subgroup is equally distributed across each grade
level. This is a limitation as, even if accurate, because the
identification of students as gifted and talented does not take
place across all grade levels (Siegle, McCoach, Gubbins,
Long, & Hamilton, 2018). When presenting data from 2009
to 2010 and 2011 to 2012 OCR data collections, we relied on
the “state and national estimates” provided by OCR, rather
than recalculating these from the raw data.
As a follow-up to the RI descriptive analyses of the most
recent national and state representation rates, we also evalu-
ated the differences between subgroup RIs across the two
most common state-level mandates that have been suggested
as ways to mitigate disproportionality. To do so, we asked the
following research questions:
Research Question 1: Do states with mandated identifi-
cation of students with gifts and talents show markedly
different subgroup proportionality?
Research Question 2: Do states with mandated gifted
and talented services show markedly different subgroup
proportionality?
To determine state-level policy related to gifted and tal-
ented education, we relied on a 2015 report by Plucker,
Giancola, Healey, Arndt, and Wang (2015). Among the vari-
ables included in this report were whether or not each state
mandated gifted identification or gifted education services in
schools. A major caveat to such generalizations is that some
states enforce their mandates with high fidelity, whereas oth-
ers have mandates that are less strictly enforced. For example,
one Midwestern state has a legal mandate for identification
and services, but in the past 20 years, no districts have been
penalized for noncompliance. Alternatively, a Western state
provides funding for mandated identification but only
releases that funding in response to a detailed plan for how
it will be used. Lumping both states into a single category,
“mandates identification,” does not capture these differ-
ences. To answer the two research questions, we computed
average RIs for each subgroup based on whether or not the
state mandated (1) identification of students with gifts and
talents or (2) gifted education services in schools. Because
of the large sample sizes involved in the OCR data set and
because these represent census-level data, we report descrip-
tive data (average RIs) without any inferential statistics
(McBee & Field, 2017).
Results
One of the first descriptive findings was that in 2016, 42.4%
of schools (n = 40,864) in the United States identified zero
students as gifted, thereby implying students had no access
to gifted services at those schools. This was the same in 2014
(42.4%; n = 40,532). The rate at which schools in each state
reported identifying zero students varied widely. In 2016 in
Georgia, only 13% of schools reported zero identified stu-
dents with gifts and talents, whereas in Michigan, 93% of
schools identified zero such students. It is probably not a
coincidence that Georgia has a strong state mandate for gifted
education services, whereas Michigan has none. Table 1 pres-
ents these data for each state with a notation for which states
mandate student identification.
With regard to subgroup proportionality, Figure 2 pres-
ents RI values from the last 4 years of the Yoon and Gentry
analyses (2000, 2002, 2004, 2006) as well as the most
recent 4 years of OCR data (2010, 2012, 2014, 2016). There
was no data collection in 2008. Table 2 presents the specific
RI values from 2006 and 2016 to allow for direct compari-
son between 2016 and the last year of the Yoon and Gentry
analysis.
Since the last data point from the Yoon and Gentry report
(2006), and in the years following, little has changed at the
national level. African American, Latinx, and Native
American students remain underrepresented (2016 RIs of
0.57, 0.70, and 0.87, respectively), and European American
and Asian American students remain well represented (RIs
of 1.18 and 2.01, respectively). In addition, students who
were classified as LEP or who received services under IDEA
were also underrepresented (0.27 and 0.21, respectively).
Despite the attention that gifted education disproportionality
has received in the scholarly literature (see Dai, Swanson, &
Cheng, 2011) and the fact that data are now collected from
and made available to all districts in the nation, little has
changed. Table 3 presents 2016 subgroup representation
rates for every state in the nation. We have posted these same
values from 2014 and 2012 for every state and for all seven
Peters et al. 277

Table 1.  Percentage of Schools Reporting Gifted Students by student subgroups to this article’s Open Science Framework
State. page at https://osf.io/325m9/.
No gifted Yes gifted Total Although it is difficult to evaluate changes in state-level
State identification (%) identification (%) schools (n) representation rates, a few state-level comparisons between
data reported in Yoon and Gentry (2009) and the 2016 data
AKa 56 44 503 are worth mentioning. Between 2006 and 2016, some states
ALa 26 74 1,400 have made progress toward greater proportionality. For
ARa 15 85 1,092
example, in 2006, New Mexico (~2.5% African American
AZa 51 49 1,977
residents) had an RI for African American students of 0.79,
CA 44 56 10,138
which by 2016, had improved to 0.96, suggesting the identi-
COa 15 85 1,868
fication gap had been narrowed substantially. Not all states
CTa 72 28 1,238
DC 100 0 221
showed a positive change. Ohio (~12.8% African American
DE 68 32 235 residents) moved from 0.60 to 0.27 in the same time period.
FLa 23 77 3,952 Progress has been made in some states but improvement was
GAa 13 87 2,407 not consistent across the country. Maryland (~9.8% Latinx)
HIa 47 53 290 and Alaska (~7.0% Latinx) demonstrated narrowing Latinx
IAa 11 89 1,365 identification gaps, moving from RIs of 0.70 and 0.60,
ID 57 43 720 respectively, in 2006 to 0.83 and 0.91 in 2016. Conversely,
IL 79 21 4,081 states such as New York (~19% Latinx) showed increased
INa 19 81 1,879 disproportionality for Latinx students moving from just more
KSa 25 75 1,356 than 0.50 in 2006 to 0.42 in 2016.
KYa 12 88 1,407 It is challenging to look at changes in Native American and
LAa 21 79 1,367 Alaskan Native representation rates because the relatively
MA 96 4 1,873 small percentages in each state make the RIs less stable from
MDa 36 64 1,434 year to year. All aggregate racial/ethnic categorizations can
ME 30 70 589 have the negative side effect of making it appear as if these
MI 93 7 3,616 were homogenous populations, which is not the case. With
MNa 67 33 2,170 Native Americans this is especially true, because more than
MOa 46 54 2,372 500 different tribal cultural groups are often clustered in
MSa 32 68 978 regions around the country. For this reason, within-state
MTa 74 26 825
comparisons may be a more accurate indicator than national
NCa 12 88 2,618
comparisons over time as a metric of any change in represen-
ND 82 18 481
tation rates. The states of Alaska (~15.2%), Montana
NE 37 63 1,064
(~6.6%), New Mexico (~10.6%), Oklahoma (~9.2%), and
NH 92 8 483
NJa 49 51 2,577
South Dakota (~9.0%) have the largest Native American
NMa 30 70 880 populations as a percentage of their overall populations (U.S.
NV 26 74 658 Bureau of the Census, 2013). As with African American and
NY 90 10 4,916 Latinx students, changes in proportionality from 2006 to
OHa 37 63 3,631 2016 have been variable. Oklahoma and Alaska remained
OKa 13 87 1,815 relatively stable (0.95 and 0.19 to 0.98 and 0.19), New
ORa 29 71 1,283 Mexico made improvement toward proportionality (0.51 to
PAa 22 78 3,027 0.65), and Montana and South Dakota showed worsening
RI 98 2 308 disproportionality (0.44 and 0.30 to 0.35 and 0.21). As with
SCa 14 86 1,236 African American and Latinx representation rates, those for
SD 90 10 688 Native American students can best be described as variable
TNa 51 49 1,818 or inconsistent (see Table 3 as well as figures for each demo-
TXa 16 84 8,616 graphic group on the OSF site).
UT 71 29 1,009 Students with LEP or who are served under IDEA were not
VAa 10 90 1,971 included in the 2009 Yoon and Gentry analysis, but results
VT 98 2 306 presented in Table 3 make clear that students from these
WA 41 59 2,305 groups are the most disproportionately underrepresented.
WIa 51 49 2,232 These groups are unique when compared to racial/ethnic
WV 31 69 720 groups, in that some levels of English proficiency or specific
WYa 61 39 365
disabilities might prevent a student from benefitting from
Total 42 58 96,360
gifted education services, whereas others might not. For
a
Indicates a state with mandated identification. example, if a student is not proficient enough in English to
278 Gifted Child Quarterly 63(4)
Figure 2.  Representation rates by year and student subgroup: 2000-2016.
Note. There was no Office of Civil Rights data collection in 2008.
Table 2.  Representation Indices by Race/Ethnicity: 2006 and
2016.
Subgroup 2006a
African American 0.55
Asian American 1.90
European American 1.20
Latinx 0.65
Native American 0.75
a
Estimates based on Figure 1 from Yoon and Gentry (2009).
benefit from advanced math or science content instruction,
then it might make sense for that student to not be identified
at that point in time. However, if this is the case, then the
school should be doing more to support that student’s
strengths as well as his or her English-learning needs.
Regarding disabilities and giftedness, there is a body of litera-
ture about students who are twice exceptional—that is, they
have a disability and an identified gift (e.g., Baum, Schader,
& Owen, 2017; Webb et al., 2005). Students with learning
disabilities, behavioral disorders, attention deficits, dyslexia,
and physical disabilities, for example, can also have gifts and
talents (Baum et al., 2017; Baum & Olenchak, 2002).
However, they frequently go underidentified due to masking
effects—meaning the gift masks the disability, and the dis-
ability masks the gift (McCoach, Kehle, Bray, & Siegle,
2001). As a result, these students who are twice exceptional
are at risk of appearing typical in ability, when in fact they are
exceptional (Baum et al., 2017; Webb et al., 2005).
Looking at representation rates across the entire United
States is complicated by the fact that there are few Federal
policies regarding gifted education. In fact, most gifted
identification and programming policies are at the state
level, with some states mandating identification or ser-
2016
vices, as well as some partially or fully funding these man-
0.57 dates. It stands to reason that state laws, such as those to
2.01 identify and/or provide services to those identified, would
1.18 influence representation rates. Due to changes to state pol-
0.70 icy often being suggested as potential solutions to the prob-
0.87 lem of underrepresentation (e.g., Plucker et al., 2015), this
seemed a reasonable factor to investigate. Unfortunately,
the results regarding state policy in Research Questions 1
and 2 showed mixed differences between states that do and
do not have state mandates. Table 4 presents average RIs
by student subgroup for those states that mandate identifi-
cation, those states that mandate gifted education services,
and those states that mandate identification and services.
With regard to identification, there seems to be little
relationship between a state mandate and proportionality.
For example, Native American students were less repre-
sented in states that mandated student identification com-
pared with those that do not (0.77 vs. 0.87). Similarly,
students who were served as LEP and those concurrently
served as gifted and under IDEA were less represented in
states with mandated identification (LEP, 0.30 vs. 0.34;
IDEA, 0.25 vs. 0.38), although the differences were fairly
small. Alternatively, African American and Latinx students
were better represented in states that had an identification
mandate (0.66 vs. 0.48 and 0.60 vs. 0.58, respectively).
Table 4 shows no clear trend between mandated services
and proportionality. The five racial/ethnic groups were all
very similar regardless of service mandate (always within less
than a tenth of a point). Differences across service mandates
Peters et al. 279

Table 3.  State Representation Indices by Student Subgroup: 2015-2016 OCRD.

African Asian European Native

State American American American Latinx American LEP IDEA
Alabamaa 0.48 1.69 1.33 0.61 1.50 0.46 0.16
Alaskaa 0.89 1.27 1.35 0.91 0.19 0.13 0.23
Arizonaa 0.56 2.01 1.39 0.68 0.44 0.11 0.22
Arkansasa 0.80 1.64 1.13 0.62 0.99 0.42 0.17
California 0.64 1.94 1.18 0.75 0.76 0.19 0.23
Coloradoa 0.57 1.77 1.25 0.55 0.71 0.31 0.25
Connecticuta 0.60 2.20 1.17 0.50 0.78 0.30 0.15
Delaware 0.60 2.60 1.27 0.58 2.28 0.17 0.22
Floridaa 0.43 2.42 1.31 0.88 1.02 0.07 0.05
Georgiaa 0.49 2.49 1.47 0.51 1.15 0.13 0.15
Hawaiia 0.77 1.34 1.73 0.54 1.47 0.73 0.15
Idaho 0.60 2.53 1.11 0.42 0.60 0.17 0.16
Illinois 0.52 2.74 1.17 0.60 0.79 0.11 0.23
Indianaa 0.41 1.74 1.15 0.60 0.89 0.38 0.21
Iowaa 0.40 1.59 1.10 0.51 0.64 0.09 0.10
Kansasa 0.42 2.60 1.14 0.43 0.86 0.18 0.61
Kentuckya 0.39 1.56 1.11 0.50 0.88 0.19 0.27
Louisianaa 0.54 3.56 1.35 0.87 0.98 0.29 0.01
Mainea 0.60 2.13 1.00 0.80 0.59 0.16 0.25
Marylanda 0.64 2.34 1.15 0.83 0.74 0.15 0.30
Massachusetts 1.68 1.71 0.82 1.03 1.15 0.36 0.26
Michigan 0.60 2.33 1.12 0.45 0.75 0.16 0.13
Minnesotaa 0.76 1.97 0.93 0.71 0.40 0.63 0.31
Mississippia 0.58 2.03 1.45 0.95 0.78 0.66 0.27
Missouria 0.50 3.00 1.07 0.69 1.04 0.36 0.27
Montanaa 0.71 2.32 1.10 0.66 0.35 0.00 0.23
Nebraska 0.56 1.65 1.15 0.54 0.40 0.07 0.22
Nevada 0.46 1.71 1.35 0.70 0.74 0.33 0.33
New Hampshire 0.48 1.97 1.00 0.47 0.25 0.23 0.31
New Jerseya 0.51 2.15 1.17 0.54 0.78 0.10 0.19
New Mexicoa 0.96 3.11 1.74 0.69 0.65 0.38 0.44
New York 0.63 2.22 1.21 0.42 0.97 0.18 0.19
North Carolinaa 0.40 1.95 1.43 0.47 0.65 0.04 0.13
North Dakota 0.61 2.54 0.97 0.53 1.38 0.15 0.25
Ohioa 0.27 2.28 1.17 0.51 0.80 0.20 0.14
Oklahomaa 0.58 1.89 1.18 0.62 0.98 0.21 0.24
Oregona 0.55 2.89 1.09 0.40 0.54 0.09 0.28
Pennsylvaniaa 0.27 2.51 1.17 0.39 0.72 0.05 0.39
Rhode Island 0.00 0.40 1.53 0.16 1.62 0.00 0.18
South Carolinaa 0.49 1.92 1.38 0.59 0.81 0.45 0.17
South Dakota 0.57 2.48 1.14 0.36 0.21 0.07 0.29
Tennesseea 0.42 3.71 1.18 0.49 0.91 0.33 1.19
Texasa 0.53 2.48 1.35 0.78 1.05 0.41 0.18
Utah 1.22 2.94 0.99 0.87 0.66 1.61 0.21
Vermont 1.24 2.34 0.98 0.00 0.00 1.54 0.41
Virginiaa 0.51 1.87 1.19 0.63 0.96 0.27 0.28
Washington 0.47 2.00 1.15 0.42 0.54 0.10 0.22
West Virginia 0.64 5.33 0.98 0.68 0.91 1.38 2.30
Wisconsina 0.67 1.45 1.07 0.74 0.45 0.29 0.26
Wyominga 0.62 1.84 1.13 0.40 0.47 0.21 0.41

Note. OCRD = Office of Civil Rights data; LEP = limited English proficiency; IDEA = Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (Students with
disabilities).
a
Indicates a state with mandated identification.
280 Gifted Child Quarterly 63(4)
Table 4.  Representation Indices by State Mandates: 2015-2016 OCRDC.
African Asian
American American
No identification mandate 0.48 2.21
Identification mandate 0.66 2.23
No service mandate 0.59 2.18
Service mandate 0.60 2.25
Mandate both 0.61 2.22
Note. OCRDC = Office of Civil Rights data collection; LEP = limited English proficiency; IDEA = Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (Students
with disabilities).
were only slightly larger for LEP and IDEA, in both cases
students were better represented in states with no service
mandate. States that mandated both services and identifica-
tion showed nearly identical numbers to either individual
mandate. All this suggests either state mandates have little
influence on proportionality or the relationship is more
complicated.
Discussion and Call to Action
There are three main takeaways from our research. The first
is that past trends in disproportionality have continued with a
few state-level exceptions. Second, simply having state man-
dates does not appear to translate to proportionality—the
relationship can best be described as variable or inconsistent.
Finally, a number of potential interventions exist to mitigate
disproportionality, but most require additional large-scale
study if past trends in underrepresentation are to be
interrupted.
With regard to state mandates, Table 4 suggests no clear
pattern. Although these data are purely descriptive in
nature, the lack of any clear pattern between policy and
proportionality suggests state-mandated gifted identifica-
tion or services do not guarantee proportionality, and in
some cases, are associated with even worse disproportion-
ality. When states “mandate” gifted identification in all
schools, underlying score differences, existing due to edu-
cational and opportunistic inequality, may result in dispro-
portionality. In other words—mandated universal
consideration could result in disproportional gifted popu-
lations because some groups have greater access to educa-
tional opportunities and, as such, perform higher on
identification measures. It is also possible that even with
identification or service “mandates,” the districts that
implement with high fidelity are those that serve more
advantaged groups, again resulting is disproportional rep-
resentation (e.g., Fertig & Lewis, 2015). Finally, it is also
possible that even when states do mandate identification,
they leave so much control up to individual districts, the
problems described in the literature review continue to act
as barriers for students from traditionally underrepresented
populations. A deeper policy evaluation is needed.
European Native
American Latinx American LEP IDEA
1.24 0.58 0.87 0.34 0.38
1.18 0.60 0.77 0.30 0.25
1.19 0.57 0.80 0.41 0.39
1.21 0.60 0.81 0.25 0.23
1.20 0.59 0.76 0.23 0.25
Before outlining steps that schools or states might take
to mitigate disproportionality, it is important to note a pre-
requisite for any valid identification process: identification
must be aligned to the programs and services provided to
those identified students. This presumes that the goal of
identification of students with gifts and talents is to locate
students who have a need for, and would benefit from, a
particular service. If this presumption is true, then align-
ment between the skills and abilities measured by the iden-
tification process and fostered in the resulting services must
be maintained. If a district modifies its identification pro-
cess to mitigate disproportionality but does so at the
expense of no longer measuring skills needed for program
success, then little has been gained (for a lengthier discus-
sion of this issue, see Plucker & Peters, 2016). If the iden-
tification process is going to be differentiated to more
proportionally identify students from certain subgroups,
then services must be differentiated as well to ensure stu-
dent success. Simply labeling a larger number of students is
not the goal of gifted education. Instead, the goal is to
develop the talents of and meet the learning needs of all
students, some who require “gifted” or advanced educa-
tional interventions to have their needs met. Thus, the fol-
lowing set of interventions or policy changes have been
suggested in the literature to improve the diversity of popu-
lations identified with gifts and talents.
1. Nominate and assess a larger number of students:
Whatever the process is to determine eligibility, if you
want to miss fewer students, formally evaluate as many as
possible.
Across the country, the most common way to identify stu-
dents as gifted and talented is through a two-stage process
(NAGC, 2015). In such systems, students must first pass
through a screening phase, and those who “qualify” are given
a confirmation assessment to determine if they are eligible
for gifted services. In addition to always harming the quality
of the resulting identification system sensitivity (see McBee
et al., 2016), this approach also disproportionately harms stu-
dents from underrepresented populations. Some students
who could pass the confirmation assessment are missed if
Peters et al. 281
they are not nominated (Card & Giuliano, 2016; Grissom &
Redding, 2016).
While a 2018 report from the National Center for Research
on Gifted Education (Gubbins et al., 2018) listed the adop-
tion of universal consideration policies as its first recommen-
dation for improving the identification of students with gifts
and talents who are also English language learners, this
approach is needlessly costly if the giftedness assessments
are not part of the ordinary testing regime. Nominating the
top 50% of students yields almost all the benefits of univer-
sal screening at a half the assessment cost. Nominating the
top 30% of students represents a good compromise between
assessment cost and identification system sensitivity in most
realistic scenarios. Lowering the threshold necessary to be
formally tested for program entry does not lower the evalua-
tion/identification standards, it simply lowers the threshold
necessary to be formally considered. In their 2016 article,
McBee et al. showed that typical two-phase systems, in
which only a small percentage of students are nominated,
can miss the majority of students they are designed to find. A
well-designed two-phase system, which nominates a rela-
tively large proportion of students on the basis of character-
istics closely related to what will be measured in the
confirmatory testing phase, can be nearly as effective as uni-
versal consideration, and at a much lower cost.
2. Use local building norms: Instead of comparing student
scores to the rest of the nation, compare them to the scores
of other students at the same school.
When using national normative scores, the question asked
is which students in this school scored higher than X% of
other students in the nation? Moving to a building normative
comparison changes the question to which students in this
school are the most advanced compared to their peers in the
same grade in the same school, therefore most likely in need
of supplementary services?
One reason for underrepresentation is the segregation of
schools combined with the use of national norms. Students
of similar racial and income groups are increasingly attend-
ing schools where they are in the majority (Reardon,
Robinson, & Weathers, 2015). Students affected by poverty
also tend to score lower on tests of academic achievement or
ability, which in turn leads to large numbers of schools domi-
nated by traditionally underrepresented groups with few stu-
dents identified as gifted and talented (Yaluma & Tyner,
2018). When national normative criteria are used for identi-
fication of students with gifts and talents, this often leaves
some schools with few identified students and others with
nearly 100% of students identified for gifted education.
A 2005 monograph from the National Research Center on
the Gifted and Talented (Lohman) put it simply: national
norms will disproportionately over-identify students at high-
achieving schools and underidentify students in schools with
overall low student achievement. Because students from
underrepresented racial/ethnic groups and those from fami-
lies with low incomes are more likely to attend schools in
which achievement is low, the result is underrepresentation
at the aggregate level (i.e., state or nation). Instead of taking
the top X% of students based on a national norm, every
school should seek to identify its top X% of students as
gifted. Carman, Walther, and Bartsch (2018) showed that
using local building norms all but eliminated identification
disproportionality in one of the largest districts in the coun-
try. Building norms have the added benefit of making logical
sense. Instead of saying that the top 5% nationally are always
in need of special services (national norms), using building
norms support the claim that the most advanced kids in every
school, regardless of their level of achievement, are those
most likely to be underchallenged in that school.
3. Use group-specific norms or criteria: Compare stu-
dents only to those who have had similar opportunities to
develop the skills being tested.
Using a building norm addresses the question: Which stu-
dents in my school are the most advanced compared with
their peers in the same grade in the same school? Using a
building norm plus a group-specific norm addresses the same
question but does so while trying to control for access and
opportunity. In a recent analysis of one state’s data, research-
ers from the National Center for Research on Gifted
Education found that modified identification criteria in the
form of lower cut scores for students with LEP or from low-
income families substantially closed the identification gap
(Siegle et al., 2018). Similarly, a large Florida school district
used universal screening plus a form of group-specific norms
and substantially narrowed their identification gaps (Card &
Giuliano, 2016).
Any time a national or local norm is used, children are
typically compared to other children the same age or in same
grade level. The rational for this is that “grade level” stands
in as a proxy for opportunity. The challenge is that two stu-
dents in the same grade level, even within the same school
district, could have had vastly different educational experi-
ences, both before and since they started school. Some may
have had excellent preschool experiences, whereas others
had none. Instead of comparing kids based on age or grade,
another option to mitigate disproportionality is to compare
each child to others of similar opportunity to learn. The fed-
eral definition of “giftedness” describes this as comparing
students to others of similar age, experience, and environ-
ment (U.S. Department of Education, 1993). In other words,
instead of comparing a Grade 3 student from a high-income
family who had multiple years of preschool followed by 3
years of high-quality education to a student who had no pre-
school and a more average education, identification systems
should compare each of these children to peers who have had
similar opportunity to learn. In practice, this can translate to
comparing low-income students only to other low-income
282 Gifted Child Quarterly 63(4)
students. This is not a politically easy thing to implement or
explain to families because it can come across as penalizing
students who are not from disadvantaged groups, but it
would help mitigate disproportionality (Carman et al., 2018;
Peters & Engerrand, 2016). The other important caveat is
that in diversifying the population of identified students,
group-specific norms will also result in a gifted student pop-
ulation with a wider range of learning needs. This may
require a broader range of services or even support structures
to assure the newly identified students are successful.
4. Implement multiple pathways: Multiple opportunities
will always result in larger numbers of identified
students.
The “multiple pathways” identification process can also
be called the “or” combination rule because a student must
meet only one of several criteria to be identified. For exam-
ple, a student might qualify based on a test score, or on the
basis of self-nomination, or through an alternative pathway,
such as a portfolio. Any one of these pathways allows a stu-
dent to access services (“or”) compared with earlier exam-
ples in which several criteria had to be met (“and”).
Additionally, identification should begin early, and the pro-
cess should continue throughout a child’s educational career.
Finding students early, before they fall further behind
(Wyner, Bridgeland, & Diiulio, 2007), can help ensure that
their talents are recognized and nurtured. If identification is
delayed, students miss out on opportunities to develop poten-
tial, further exacerbating achievement and identification dis-
parities. Similarly, identification needs to be repeated as
often as services are available. If gifted services exist in
grades K–12, then annual, proactive identification should
take place.
There are two important considerations to the “multiple
pathway” option. First, it will identify additional students
from all subgroups—not just those that were previously
underrepresented—potentially negating any mitigation of
disproportionality. This is a place where two methods can be
combined: implement an additional pathway (“or” rule), but
only for groups that have had fewer opportunities to develop
their talents (alternative criteria for a target group). McBee,
Shaunessy, and Matthews (2012) found that doing so miti-
gated underrepresentation in Florida, and Gubbins et al.
(2018) recommended alternative pathways in addition to
universal consideration as a way to increase the identifica-
tion rate of gifted English language learners. Second, as with
group-specific norms, an “or” rule will identify students with
a wider range of learning needs than will an “and” rule or a
single-pathway identification system. This wider range of
learning needs and readiness may necessitate a wider range
of services.
5. Diversify the teaching workforce: Students need teach-
ers who look like them.
In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education detailed the
racial diversity of teachers and students in the United
States. In every state, the percentage of students of color
exceeds that of the teachers who are, across the country,
82% White. Diversifying the teaching force can help close
achievement gaps (Egalite, Kisida, & Winters, 2015),
improve academic outcomes, and provide students with
strong role models (Klopfenstein, 2008). With regard to
gifted education disproportionality, as long as teachers
remain a data point in student identification, diversifying
the teaching force could support greater equity in gifted
education. As noted by Grissom and Redding (2016), stu-
dents from African American families are far more likely to
be identified if they have same-race teachers. As long as
teachers are still a substantial component in the identifica-
tion process, a potential pathway to better racial/ethnic rep-
resentation in gifted education is to have a teacher workforce
the better mirrors the student population. A new program,
Pathways to Teaching (Goings & Bianco, 2016), has shown
promise for recruiting and retaining teachers of color,
through working with high school students who are African
American, Latinx, and Native American to encourage them
to explore careers in teaching.
6. Proactively mitigate unequal opportunity: Schools can
help mitigate the unequal access and opportunity that is
the root cause of disproportionality.
The United States has the dubious honor of having some
of the largest income-based achievement gaps in the world
(Chmielewski & Reardon, 2016), and poverty is also pre-
dictive of gifted identification (Hamilton et al., 2017; Siegle
et al., 2018). Students who have had the greatest access to
early educational opportunities, both in and out of school,
are also the most likely to be identified as gifted. One solu-
tion to the problem of disproportionality is to mitigate the
effect that family income has on educational opportunities.
If all students, regardless of financial capacity, can have
their strengths, interests, and talents developed, then the
influence of family resources can be mitigated. This
involves placing gifted services in the 42% of schools in the
United States that have no such programs, staffing those
programs with knowledgeable, skilled, culturally compe-
tent teachers, and ensuring early talent development ser-
vices are in place. These efforts should include high-quality,
universal, early-childhood educational programs, some of
which have been shown to mitigate achievement and hon-
ors enrollment gaps even into middle school (Gormley,
Phillips, & Anderson, 2018).
Several approaches have shown promise in addressing dis-
proportionality via frontloading educational opportunities for
larger numbers of students from underserved subgroups
(Plucker & Peters, 2016). In their 2018 review of the litera-
ture and exploratory study related to gifted English language
learners, Gubbins et al. described such efforts: “Establish a
Peters et al. 283
preparation program prior to formal identification procedures
that provides students with learning opportunities to enhance
knowledge and academic skills necessary for a student to be
recognized” (p. 21). Mitigating inequality of opportunity is
always preferable to any kind of alternative identification
after the fact. The primary downside is that mitigating unequal
educational opportunities is guaranteed to cost more money
and require more staff than some of the other efforts described
above (e.g., building norms). Despite this challenge, below
we highlight a sample of some promising practices that, if
more widely implemented, could serve to mitigate
disproportionality.
Scholar Identity Model™ and Institute
The scholar identity model (SIM: Whiting, 2006, 2014) is a
psychosocial total cognitive change theory process. Through
the mastery of the SIM’s nine constructs: Self Efficacy
(Bandura, 1977), Future Orientation (Eccles & Wigfield,
2002; Grantham, 2004), Willing to Make Sacrifices (Dweck,
2000; Maehr, 1984), Internal Locus of Control (Rotter,
1966), Self-Awareness (Cooley & Ayres, 1988), Achievement
> Affiliation (McClelland, 1961), Academic Self Confidence
(Hrabowski, Maton, & Greif, 1998), Race Consciousness
(Worrell, Cross, & Vandiver, 2001), and Masculinity/Gender
Issues (Majors & Billson, 1993; Whiting & Lewis, 2008) and
by engaging its four supporting pillars (family, school, com-
munity, and mentoring), students’ academic self-efficacy and
engagement are taught, developed, nurtured, and supported.
The SIM’s flexibility is ideal for assisting high potential chil-
dren who are African American, Latinx, or Native American,
all of whom often discuss feelings of isolation as the “only
one” in gifted and talented services. Whether embedded in
the curriculum or through the more deliberate Scholar
Identity Institute, the outcomes include greater resiliency and
engagement (Whiting, 2009, 2012).
Total School Cluster Grouping
Originally developed by researchers with the National
Research Center for the Gifted and Talented (Gentry, 1999),
the total school cluster grouping model offers a whole-school
approach with early and continual identification of students,
with the express purpose of helping all students achieve at
higher levels, simultaneously supporting all teachers to use
gifted education strategies with their students as they main-
tain high expectations (Gentry, 2014). This approach results
in increased student achievement, more students being iden-
tified as high achieving, fewer students being identified as
low achieving, and better proportions of students from
underserved populations achieving at advanced levels.
Research on this model has shown an increase in the num-
bers of students from traditionally underrepresented popula-
tions identified as gifted (Brulles, Cohn, & Saunders, 2010;
Brulles, Peters, & Saunders, 2012; Collins & Gan, 2013;
Matthews, Ritchotte, & McBee, 2013; Pierce et al., 2011), in
part because it combines many of the actions described
above: universal screening, multiple pathways, and proac-
tive, early talent development.
STEM Starters+
In a recent, multiyear study funded by the Federal Javits pro-
gram, Robinson, Adelson, Kidd, and Cunningham (2018)
investigated the use of frontloaded engineering curricula on
the achievement and gifted identification rate of first-grade
students from low-income families. Although the work is
ongoing, results to date are promising. They include increased
science achievement and engineering knowledge of treat-
ment students; recognition of advanced cognitive behaviors;
and increased nomination of traditionally underserved stu-
dents for gifted services. Engaging students in complex,
engineering tasks seems to unveil talents among underserved
students, resulting in higher achievement and better recogni-
tion of their talents by their teachers.
Limitations
There are limitations to the programs and steps we have
described, primarily that they have not yet been widely
implemented (a finding in its own right). We debated
whether we could be so bold as to offer suggestions that
“did not come directly from our data.” But our data, like
those that have been reported previously, are descriptive in
nature, and the results are consistent and troubling, which is
why we chose to offer some steps to mitigate this longstand-
ing and unacceptable condition of disproportional represen-
tation in the field of gifted education. We believe to do less
is unethical. We suggest implementation, evaluation, and
study of the literature-based suggestions we include in this
article.
Additionally, the OCR data are limited to what is reported
by schools, which means error likely exists. They also repre-
sent a wide variety of identification policies because few
states mandate that all districts use the same process for iden-
tification. The data do not include the Bureau of Indian
Education (2018) Schools that serve more than 41,000
Native American youth in the country; and until recently
(2010 and earlier), populations of Native American Youth
were so small that the OCR cautioned drawing conclusions
from the data due to the inherent error in these small popula-
tion sizes. The OCR data do not include identification rates
by eligibility for federal meal subsidy, which is especially
problematic given what is known about the relationship
between poverty, achievement, and likelihood of being iden-
tified as gifted. This points to a critical need in the research
literature: an investigation of the current demographic state
of gifted education after controlling for relevant background
factors (e.g., family income, prior academic achievement).
Such a perspective has gained attention in the field of special
284 Gifted Child Quarterly 63(4)
education and should be similarly applied to gifted education
(e.g., Morgan, Farkas, Hillemeier, & Maczuga, 2017).
Conclusion
The data presented in the results section make clear that,
although the nation as a whole has not made progress toward
greater proportionality, some states have improved. This is a
finding that warrants additional research to better understand
why some states are doing better than others (Plucker, Makel,
Matthews, Peters, & Rambo-Hernandez, 2017). For exam-
ple, some states, such as Minnesota, have legal mandates that
require all schools to identify gifted and talented students
and yet their African American RIs have declined. Similarly,
Illinois had no state policy or mandate for gifted education
when these data were collected (this has recently changed),
but in 2016, African Americans were proportionally repre-
sented in gifted programs. What explains these state-level
trends? What policies have been successful? What policies
or actions can be implemented elsewhere to effect greater
change? Each of these questions needs further study.
Similarly, the field would benefit from wider application of
not only policy research in general but also well-designed,
confirmatory studies designed to test hypotheses such as the
idea that universal screening for gifted program eligibility will
increase the demographic diversity of identified populations.
Many of the promising interventions presented above need
stronger empirical foundations. Perhaps the clearest take-
away from this article is that simple, expanded awareness has
not mitigated the problem of disproportionality. The topic is
ubiquitous in gifted education circles, and yet, it persists. If the
field of gifted education and K–12 education more broadly is
concerned about inequity, then attention needs to be paid to
inequity at advanced levels of achievement, including broad
implementation of services designed to mitigate this inequity.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest
with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: Currently, the first author serves as the Association Editor
for the National Association for Gifted Children – the organiza-
tional publisher of Gifted Child Quarterly. However, this article
was submitted prior to his term in this position and he played no
role in its review or the decision to publish.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article:
Research support for this project was provided by the Untapped
Potential Project.
ORCID iD
Scott J. Peters https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2459-3384
Marcia Gentry https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3048-2373
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Author Biographies
Scott J. Peters, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of
Educational Foundations and is the Richard and Veronica Telfer
Endowed Faculty Fellow of Education at the University of
Wisconsin–Whitewater. His research work focuses on educational
assessment, gifted and talented student identification, dispropor-
tionality, and educational policy.
Marcia Gentry, PhD, is a professor of educational studies and
directs the Gifted Education Research and Resource Institute at
Purdue University where she enjoys working with doctoral stu-
dents and engaging in research and gifted education professional
development. Her work focuses on cluster grouping and differen-
tiation, the application of gifted education pedagogy to improve
teaching and learning, student perceptions school, and on nontra-
ditional services, equity, and underserved populations. She
remains active in the field through service to The National
Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) and The American
Educational Research Association (AERA) and by writing,
reviewing, and presenting research aimed to improve education
for children, youth, and teachers.
Gilman W. Whiting, PhD, is an associate professor and director
of graduate studies for the department of African American and
diaspora studies. He directs the Scholar Identity Institute and the
Black male initiative at Vanderbilt University in Nashville,
Tennessee. His areas of research include educational disparity;
special and gifted education; sociology of race, sports, and
American culture; research methods, and fatherhood initiatives.
Peters et al. 287

He is the founding chair of the Achievement Gap Institute at the
George W. Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt. In 2006
Whiting created the Scholar Identity Model™, a psychosocial
model to assist whole communities to rethink ways to combat aca-
demic apathy. He consults with school districts and programs
nationally and internationally.
Matthew T. McBee, PhD, is an associate professor of psychology
at East Tennessee State University. He is interested in gifted identi-
fication, statistics, and causal inference.
Manuscript submitted: July 11, 2018; Final revision received:
January 28, 2019; Accepted: Febraury 4, 2019