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S5.8.5 Results of Four Years' Research at the National Center for Research on Gifted Education
Recent studies of gifted and talented programs indicate that the extent and quality of services available to gifted students varies within a nation. Also, students of particular racial and ethnic backgrounds, students from lower income families, and students from rural communities are often disproportionally underrepresented in gifted and talented programs. Data collected by our national center included 1) reviews of 293 district gifted plans; 2) analysis of a cohort of 362,254 students’ mathematics and reading scores across grades 3, 4, and 5; 3) survey responses from 332 districts on district practices related to identification of gifted students; 4) survey responses from 2,419 schools related to gifted service practices in the schools; and 5) analysis of 202 transcripts collected from interviews at exemplar schools. Researchers from our group will present on the following findings that are supported from this data: - The variance in gifted identification between schools in a district is greater than the variance across districts. -Underserved populations are not being identified at the same rates as non-underserved students even after controlling for student achievement. Non-native speakers, free or reduced lunch, and minority students are less likely to be identified as gifted even if they have the same reading and mathematics achievement as students not from these groups. -Very few schools offer programs to identify and recruit potentially gifted students. -There is an extensive use of cognitive tests to identify gifted students. -Third grade achievement is directly related to identification gaps in identification of gifted students. -Practices such as universal screening and nonverbal tests do not appear to be panaceas for removing the identification gap. -Universal screening with modification shows promise at reducing under-identification of underserved populations. -Gifted programs seldom focus on core curriculum such as math and reading. Gifted programs have a greater focus on critical thinking and creative thinking than reading/language arts and mathematics. -Gifted students start ahead in reading and mathematics achievement at 3rd grade but don’t grow any faster than other groups by 5th grade. In some cases, gifted students show slower growth during this period than non-identified gifted students. -Teacher autonomy positively influences academic achievement of gifted students. -Non-native language speakers’ reclassification to fluency is linked to gifted identification.. -When school personnel serve as talent scouts and interact with each other they are more effective in identifying gifted second language learners. We will discuss implications of this work for the field and schools.