The "gifted" system in US schools is broken, racist, and completely fixable

[gollygee]

http://qz.com/497450/the-gifted-system-in-us-schools-is-broken-racist-and-completely-fixable/

The changes represent a 180% increase in the number of disadvantaged students, an 80% increase in the number of black students, and a 130% increase in the number of Hispanic students classified as gifted.

The researchers—economics professor David Card at the University of California, Berkeley, and Laura Giuliano, an associate professor of economics at the University of Miami—suggest that universal screening leveled the playing field for students who traditionally get overlooked in referral-based systems.

Notably, the study shows that students who might not have been classified as gifted under the old regime did well once they got into the gifted programs.

“f anything, the newly identified students benefitted even more from participating in gifted education than did the group of always takers who [would] be identified under a traditional referral system,” the researchers observed.