Dr. Donna Y. Ford is the gifted research guru in the issue of underrepresentation of students of color in gifted and advanced programs. The title of her NAGC23 talk last November was quite appropriate. Though educators and experts in the field of gifted education have been working on this issue for 30+ years- hardly anything has changed! We still see fewer students from underrepresented populations in our gifted programs, our AP classes, etc. We also still see OVERrepresentation of these students in special education programs and in discipline numbers. So, what are we to do? Dr. Ford discussed her “Dirty Dozen” for us to combat. Here are my notes to the best of my ability from what I remember!
Donna Ford’s Dirty Dozen
Issues Caused by Deficit Thinking
According to Zaretta Hammond, deficit thinking means holding beliefs, attitudes, and values that define students by their weaknesses instead of their strengths. Deficit thinking leads to:
- Low and negative expectations
- Stereotypes
- Racism
- Under-referrals- All of the above contribute to teacher under-referral of students of color to gifted testing.
Issues Caused by Instrumentation
5. Bias
6. Unfair and Inequitable
7. Inadequate norming (not using Local Norms when appropriate)
8. High Stakes nature
Instruments contribute to underrepresentation in gifted programs. Dr. Ford asked the question: If a particular group keeps doing poorly on a test, why do we keep using it? She said that non-verbal measures are better to use for gifted testing since they reduce the cultural loading we see with traditional tests. She also described the assumptions that are built-in to traditional testing that make them unfair and inequitable, such as:
- Homogeneity in life;
- Cultural differences don’t matter;
- What interesting in one culture is interesting in another culture;
- Everyone had an equal opportunity to learn before taking the test;
- Tests are neutral, objective tools; and
- Everyone is familiar with paper-pencil tests.
Issues Caused by Policies and Procedures
9. Norms and Cut-offs
10. Approved tests
11. When students are assessed
12. New referrals
We are still utilizing policies and procedures for gifted testing that lead to underrepresentation in gifted programs. We need to audit our policies and procedures to ensure that we are using culturally fair testing, using local norms (when appropriate), getting away from cut-offs, creating better assessment windows, and opening up our referral processes so parents and community members know about them.
Dr. Ford also discussed the Office of Civil Rights’ (OCR) 80% Rule- that there was a court case that gives school divisions a 20% allowance for their gifted identification numbers. In her work, she has called this the “Equity Index.” What this means is that our identified gifted student subgroups should be within 20% of the actual subgroup student population for each school or school division. She has a terrific article describing this concept and how to figure out your Equity Index for your own school. You can download the article here:
Lastly, Dr. Ford finished up her talk by telling us that CULTURE MATTERS! Culture is learned and acquired, so we should not ignore it. Zaretta Hammond talks about how the brain is our hardware, but culture is our software. Dr. Ford also gave us the metaphor of the iceberg- Culture is like an iceberg (watch this quick YouTube video to learn more).
Along the culture lines, she shared with us Boykin’s Afro-Centric Cultural Styles Model. Through my research for this blog post, I found a really interesting short article written by Ford and Scott which does describe Boykin’s model- Under-Representation of African American Students in Gifted Education: Nine Theories and Frameworks for Information, Understanding, and Change (2010). It has been over 13 years since this article was published. After reading the article, the first thought that came to my mind was, “Wow! I agree with Dr. Ford. The more things change, the more they stay the same!”
All of the things I heard from Dr. Ford really resonated with me and made me do a mental audit of the policies and procedures we have for gifted identification in my school division. Though I feel we have done much in my division over the past few years to create a more equitable gifted identification system (for example, using the standard error of measure when considering standardized achievement test scores, considering extenuating circumstances of students, adding alternative data to supplement the gifted data, pushing in to classrooms to work with all students through Talent Development lessons, training teachers, etc.), there is always more to do. Dr. Ford’s talk gave me great momentum to make sure my school division is doing the best we can to find gifted and potentially students of all populations.
What resonates with you from my notes? What things are your school division doing to create a more equitable gifted identification system for students?
Teaching for Talent 
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