Dive Brief:

• Less than 7% of students in the U.S. are enrolled in a gifted education program, according to an analysis of 2014 federal data conducted by Education Week, with reasons including differing criteria for determining "gifted" status across states and districts, as well as differences in the number of gifted programs available.
• Some 23 out of the 42 states studied require schools to serve gifted students in some grade levels, but there are varying degrees of oversight available on those programs, with some having none at all — and black and Latino students and English-language learners are also less likely to be placed in such programs.
• The rollout of the Every Student Succeeds Act in the coming school year will require that schools report the numbers of students performing in advanced academic levels, and to report on statistics of how certain student groups are faring in terms of high academic achievement.

Dive Insight:

The lack of uniformity concerning how states and districts measure gifted programs can make it difficult for district and school leaders to call attention to inequities in the availability of such programs. With different assessment models, leaders at schools can follow the guidance of Debbie Roby, supervisor of gifted education in Lewisville Independent School District in Flower Mound, TX. In an Education Dive interview, she said school leaders needed to understand that G&T programs should be “representative” of the community they serve, and also understand that a single test score cannot alone define whether a given student fits the gifted model.

Though it is intended to deliver more control of school districts from the federal to the state level, the passage of ESSA will include facets that will make uniform comparisons between districts and individual schools across the country more accessible to lawmakers and the general public. In addition to more detailed information on high academic achievers in each school, districts will be mandated to report on how each particular school is funded, which will make disparities clearer.

School officials will be able to better advocate for their schools when they are armed with these pieces of information after ESSA’s passage, along with how it compares to neighboring districts and states. Districts can also work with third-party entities attempting to contextualize and combine different datasets, garnering hard evidence as to whether, for example, schools with low funding levels experience a dearth of G&T programs.