Gifted & Talented Programs and Racial Segregation

Owen Thompson

No 29546, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: 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.

JEL-codes: I24 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sea and nep-ure
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Journal Article: Gifted & Talented Programs and Racial Segregation (2024)
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