Gifted & Talented Programs and Racial Segregation / Owen Thompson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thompson, Owen.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w29546.

NBER working paper series no. w29546

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2021.

Summary:

Racial segregation can occur across educational programs or classrooms within a given school, and there has been particular concern that gifted & talented programs may reduce integration within schools. This paper evaluates the contribution of gifted & talented education to racial segregation using data on the presence and racial composition of gifted & talented programs at virtually all US elementary schools over a span of nine school years. I first show that, consistent with widespread perceptions, gifted & talented programs do disproportionately enroll white and Asian students while Black, Hispanic and Native American students are underrepresented. However, I also show that accounting for the within-school racial sorting caused by these programs has little or no effect on standard measures of overall racial segregation. This is primarily because gifted & talented programs are a small share of total enrollments and do enroll non-negligible numbers of under-represented minority students. I also estimate changes in race-specific enrollments after schools initiate or discontinue gifted & talented programs, and find no significant enrollment changes after programs are eliminated or initiated. I conclude that gifted & talented education is a quantitatively small contributor to racial segregation in US elementary schools.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2021.