Inequality in Gifted and Talented Programs ─ Parental Choices About Status, School Opportunity, and Second-generation Segregation

Inequality in Gifted and Talented Programs examines the relationship between gifted and talented (G&T) education, school choice, and racialized tracking within New York City elementary schools. This timely book breaks the silence surrounding the segregative effects of G&T education within urban elementary schools as a growing number of policymakers, citizens, scholars, and even some parents, are voicing their concern about using a single test score for G&T admission. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fifty-two parents from different racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds, the findings suggest that when advantaged, white parents are given the choice between mostly segregated programs and the ability to use their uneven cultural capital exchange, they all strive for the whiter, and higher status programs even if they also value diversity for their children's education. Conversely, parents of color believe that G&T is used as a tool for segregation, status, and power. Roda argues that the New York City G&T system creates these status distinctions between schools and programs. The book advocates for de-tracking the segregated G&T programs within otherwise diverse schools, and using school choice as a tool for diversity since right now integration is not the goal.

Allison Roda is Postdoctoral Research Associate and part-time Instructor at Rutgers University, USA.