Addressing Social-Emotional and Curricular Needs of Gifted African American Adolescents

African Americans remain conspicuously absent from today’s cohort of gifted and talented students (Milner & Ford, 2007). Although they represent 17.2% of the public school population, they comprise a meager 3.5% of the total gifted population (National Center for Education Statistics, 2007). At times the rate of underrepresentation has hovered between 50% and 70% (Ford & Grantham, 2003). Several causal factors have been attributed to the lack of students in these programs. As an example, biased attitudes and assumptions about African American children; failure to recognize culturally mediated attributes that constitute giftedness; narrowly constructed assessment procedures; lack of multicultural competence among school personnel; and student and family concerns about the social isolation that may result from enrollment in gifted programs have been cited as salient factors that contribute to the limited participation of African American students in gifted program initiatives (Ford & Grantham, 2003; Ford, Harris, Tyson, & Trotman, 2002; Milner & Ford, 2007).