Report suggests many gifted and talented minority students go unidentified in Oklahoma
As many as 60,000 students, mostly black and Latino children, aren't identified as gifted and talented, according to the Purdue University report.
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Robby Korth
Flickr/Jacqui Brown
A national report found that thousands of gifted and talented black and Latino students aren’t identified by educators in Oklahoma.
Thousands of gifted and talented minority students aren’t identified by their schools in Oklahoma, according to a report published last month.
Anywhere between 19,000 and 60,000 students – mostly black and Latino children – aren’t identified as gifted and talented, according to the report published by Purdue University’s Gifted Education Research and Resource Institute.
The report explores nationwide programs for identifying gifted and talented students and estimates as many as 3.6 million gifted students aren’t discovered because of inadequate policies in states. Oklahoma, though, is one of only four states that has statutory systems in place to identify and fund gifted and talented programs.
The authors estimate 90% of Oklahoma students are properly screened to see if they’re gifted and talented and given appropriate programming in school. But the students who aren’t properly identified are disproportionately black and Latino.
The lack of identified black and Latino students also crosses the entire economic spectrum as students in both poor and wealthy schools are just as unlikely to be identified.
According to the report, though, Native American students are often properly identified no matter their income level.
The researchers wrote that Oklahoma is one of the few states that does a good job in finding indigenous students and providing them with resources.
“Perhaps others can learn how Oklahoma has achieved equity for these students,” the report says.
