It has been almost 70 years since the Supreme Court made its precedent-setting decision to desegregate schools in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case. While our nation has made immense progress from our former legal structures that openly endorsed blatantly segregated schools, we still have a long way to go. Approximately 6% of students currently in the American public education system are enrolled in gifted programs. The aforementioned group of students is overwhelmingly composed of white and Asian students, while many incredibly intelligent Black and Hispanic students are left without the same chances for academic advancement. For example, in New York City, almost three-fourths of students in gifted programs are white or Asian, despite the fact that Black and Hispanic students make up 65% of the school system.
On the surface, one of the many causes of this damaging disparity is standardized testing, but when digging deeper, the apparent prevalence of racism in our society is to blame. Some efforts that have already been made to reduce this disparity include the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Children and Youth Education Act of 1987, which aims to provide more equal opportunities to underrepresented students. While this initiative is a step in the right direction, it falls short, as exhibited by the persistence of such vast disparities in the status quo.
Just this past week, news broke of a lawsuit against the New York City public school system demanding action against these systemic inequities. The suit argues that selective admissions policies and gifted programs have perpetuated and exacerbated racial inequality within the school system. This comes in the wake of several other similar lawsuits that have been filed across the nation, including a suit in Detroit. While I am hopeful that these efforts will not go unnoticed, I feel that in order to create widespread, long-term change, we must create uniform politics that can be implemented around the country.
One effort that must be taken is to provide youth with increased and more equitable access to preschool programs in order to create an equal playing field for admissions procedures, which sometimes come as early as age four for gifted program entrance. We must change admissions procedures to permit students of many different backgrounds to showcase their talents and intellect. While there are many ways to approach this, individual interviews, as opposed to standardized testing, would greatly increase fairness. Once these initiatives are underway, we can begin to dismantle the systemized discrimination that disproportionately shorts Black and Latinx students out of gifted programs. In addition, opportunities for students whose first language is not English must simultaneously be implemented in order to bolster equality.
The achievement gap will only widen unless concrete efforts are made. If we, as a nation, truly want to create more widespread equality, then this issue must be prioritized rapidly. The Equal Education Opportunities Act promises to provide equal educational opportunities to all students no matter their identifiers, and in order to truly fulfill this promise, we must address inequality in gifted programs.
