Gifted programs in elementary schools aren’t adequately serving Black and low-income students, research finds.

“The potential benefits aren’t equally distributed,” says lead author and University of Florida College of Education professor Christopher Redding, who evaluated data from gifted programs in elementary schools nationwide. “The conversation up to this point has been about access, with less emphasis on how students perform once in gifted programs.”

While academic achievement gains for students overall were modest—going from the 78th to 80th percentile in reading and rising only a third as much in math—low-income and Black gifted students, on average, saw no achievement gains. When the researchers looked at factors beyond scores, including engagement, attendance, and whether a student left or stayed in a school, they found little evidence to suggest gifted participation influenced those measures for any group.

Read the full article about inequity in gifted programs by Alisson Clark at Futurity.