Final Presentation for Gifted Cohort 6 Lakeisha Bolling Jennifer Franzen Ariene Johnson Identifying and Nurturing the Impoverished Gifted

Often overlooked by traditional selection processes, gifted students from poverty backgrounds need to be recognized and celebrated.

Oftentimes, schools claim that their gifted students represent all segments of the student population. However, research provides a very different picture. Inequities between those identified as gifted and non- gifted become quite evident, with disproportionate numbers from one segment of the population identified as gifted to the near-exclusion of others.

Research shows that in one typical urban school district, only 4 percent of students identified as gifted came from those classified as economically disadvantaged (mostly Black and Hispanic) who make up 43 percent of the school population, compared to 7 percent of white students, who constitute little more than a tenth of the school population.

Characteristics/Conceptions of Impoverished Gifted Students

S OME G ENERAL C HARACTERISTICS OF S TUDENTS OF P OVERTY Disorganized Don’t do homework Like to entertain Do only parts of an assignment Great storytellers Unique sense of humor Like discussion/hands-on Creative responses Speak their mind freely Talk back Appear rude Independent Dislike authority Laugh at inappropriate times/situations Struggle with reasoning (prefer verbal/physical assault) Will do work if they like you (relationships important) Lack procedural self-talk (get started or continue work) Need more “space” and opportunity for creativity Live in moment ( no goal setting)

Conceptions of Poverty Individual – Caused by laziness, poor choices, incompetence, lack of ability Cultural Beliefs – Culture of poverty adapts a subculture of belief systems and values that prohibit success Political-Economic – System prevents those in poverty from obtaining success Upper class groups in power making decisions – Barriers to education, high paying jobs, health care, safety Geographic – Regional differences that place certain groups at a disadvantage Cumulative & Cyclic – Combination of political and geographic – all inter-related Bradshaw, 2006

Inequities with Impoverished Gifted surrounded by masking or misdiagnosis

Most school districts identify gifted students by using standardized test scores, teacher recommendations, and student grades to establish cutoff scores. This process often screens out underachieving, learning-disabled, culturally different, and most consistently students from poverty backgrounds. This does not allow for their differences and is very unequal in treatment.

This generally occurs since students who come from poverty backgrounds have not had the same opportunities as middle-class students, and the identification processes do not factor in environmental differences. Theoretically, all students are treated equally in meeting established qualifications for giftedness. But, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter once said, "There's nothing so unequal as the equal treatment of unequals."

Educational Interventions for Indentifying and serving Impoverished Gifted

Advocacy Issues for Impoverished Gifted Students, Parents, and Teachers

F ACTORS THAT L EAD TO EDUCATIONAL DISADVANTAGES Education of mothers Single parent homes English as a second language Poverty Minority membership Pallas, Natriello & McDill, 1989

Research and Best Practices for Impoverished in Identification

W HAT CAN WE DO ? Actively work on building sense of community in program, beginning with recruitment and selection. Build in academic and social – emotional supports. Stress mastery goals over performance goals, and malleable over fixed goals, and malleable over fixed intelligence. Acknowledge publicly and normalize the ‘big fish little pond effect’. Routinely monitor program environment. Van Tassel-Baska 2010

Service and Maintenance of Impoverished Students in Gifted Education

Bibliography