In a break with tradition, there was only one keynote speaker at the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) Annual Convention this year. That speaker was Jeffrey Blount, award-winning author of the book, “The Emancipation of Evan Walls,” as well as longtime director of Meet the Press, NBC Nightly News, and the first African-American director of The Today Show. Mr. Blount gave a stirring presentation interlaced with stories from his personal experience as an African-American student who was accused of “acting White” because of his interest in academic pursuits. Early in his journalism career, he encountered another academically gifted young Black boy who was also mercilessly taunted for “acting White,” who became the inspiration for this book.

The book is a page turner, following young Evan Walls through the 1970s as his family fully disowns him, the Black community turns against him, and his Black peers at school completely reject him, despite the fact that he is the star player of the high school football team. It’s easy to hear the phrase “acting White” and imagine some gentle ribbing at school, or maybe a bully who takes it upon themselves to teach a lesson. This book will disabuse you of that naive notion. 

Yes, there was a bully in this story, but this was no schoolyard tussle. This bully and his cronies sent both Evan, and on a different occasion, his white friend who stuck up for him, to the hospital for multiple week stays. The Black community turned against Evan swiftly and unequivocally by ignoring, maligning, and threatening him for daring to want a better life. He was not welcome at church, at social events, or even on his own family’s front porch. He was called “Uncle Tom” by his Black classmates and was shut out of his formerly tight group of friends. At his newly integrated school, Evan was caught between two tides - his Black classmates who pointedly ignored and taunted him, and his White classmates who generally feared their Black peers. 

Evan’s own parents denounced their son, were embarrassed by him, physically beat him, celebrated his brother’s report card but not Evan’s straight A’s, withheld lunch money and other basic necessities, and were unfazed when Evan chose to sleep most nights in the cornfield rather than in his bed. If not for wise Mama Jennie and a practical mentor named Bojack, Evan would have been completely alone and friendless throughout his childhood, and even they were not a constant in his life. A couple of white boys befriended him at school, but quickly found that their otherwise strong friendship was battered by complex racial tensions and by the end of the book, it simply became too dangerous for them, and they, too, abandoned Evan. This was an impossibly difficult situation for Evan to grow up in, and most people would have succumbed to these intense social pressures.

More than anything, Mr. Blount’s keynote and his tremendous book reminds us that achieving equity in gifted programs, or in education at all, is extremely complex. In our field, proactive and unbiased identification of gifted students from all demographic groups is only the beginning. We must also provide meaningful gifted programming in every zip code that keeps gifted kids actually growing, not just paddling in place. Even with those crucial pieces in place, unwinding biases, stereotypes, and cultural trauma, as well as honoring the wide variety of values across different communities is going to be the hardest aspect of our work. This book would be an excellent choice for a book club at home or at school, and would stimulate meaty, insightful, and difficult conversations.

Mr. Blount’s keynote was a perfect opening for this year’s NAGC Convention. Equity was a popular topic this year, with a surprisingly large number of breakout sessions as well as the majority of the livestreamed general sessions focused on various aspects of equity. 

This is a welcome shift from prior years. We are finally recognizing the existential threat to the gifted field if equity is not addressed fully, comprehensively, and most of all, quickly. Gifted programs will simply not be allowed to remain in existence much longer if we cannot solve the equitable access problems that have plagued them for decades. 

In a field known for its lack of consensus on definitions, models, or best practices, I noticed hopeful signs throughout the NAGC Convention that leaders in our field are now rallying around equity, and perhaps even reducing their own personal dogmas a notch. A common goal we can all get behind would do our field a lot of good.

The NAGC convention was offered both online and in person this year. Recordings are available for registered attendees until May 31, 2022. If you’d like to hear Mr. Blount’s keynote, you can find it at 3:25 on the Thursday livestream recording, which is highly recommended if you missed it. Mr. Blount’s book, “The Emancipation of Evan Walls,” is widely available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, most bookstores, and your local public library.

Austina De Bonte is a consultant at Smart is not Easy, LLC (www.smartisnoteasy.com), President and Past President of the Northwest Gifted Child Association (www.nwgca.org), and co-President of the Washington Coalition for Gifted Education (www.wacoalition.com) Austina has a Masters degree from MIT, and did her thesis work in the MIT Media Lab's Epistemology and Learning Group, where Lego Mindstorms was invented, and is currently a doctoral student at Bridges Graduate School. Contact Austina at austina@smartisnoteasy.com

Proud to have contributed to the writing of this important publication.

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This article is a joint publication by the following Washington State non-profit organizations:

 • WA Educators of the Talented and Gifted (www.waetag.org) 

• NW Gifted Child Association (www.nwgca.org) 

Over the past month, there have been dozens of articles in the national press about the New York City Public Schools and the recent proposal to shut down gifted and talented programs across the city. The driving reason behind this proposal is the disproportional representation of students from various demographics in citywide gifted programs, including students of color, low-income students, students with disabilities, multilingual learners, and students in temporary housing. However, this set of issues is not at all unique to New York City. Here in Washington state, we have the same equity problems, and in fact, a very similar proposal has just been made in our state’s largest metropolitan public school system, Seattle Public Schools...

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Washington state’s laws around highly capable programs are deceptively open-ended. Unlike in other states, there are no explicit qualification criteria, no mandated tests, and districts have quite a bit of latitude in designing a program that meets their students’ needs. However, that flexibility does come with some important requirements. While Washington doesn’t legislate the specifics, there are guard rails in the law that govern which services are provided, regardless of how that is accomplished. 

The first sentence of RCW 28A.185.020 states: 

“The legislature finds that, for highly capable students, access to accelerated learning and enhanced instruction is access to a basic education.” 

There’s a lot going on in that simple statement. Taken together, this statement lays out several clear tests we can use to assess whether a school district’s highly capable services are meeting state law or not. Let’s unpack it bit by bit. 

Starting at the end, highly capable services are part of “basic education” in Washington state. That means that highly capable services are not a choice program, or a “nice to have.” All school districts are required to offer highly capable services, just like special education. So, highly capable services must be provided during the regular school day, not after or before school. As a basic education program, districts are required to provide any needed transportation for students. The statute goes on to say that school districts must identify students for highly capable services in grades K through 12, and must “prioritize equitable identification of low-income students.” 

Let’s come back to the middle of the sentence. These five words pack in a lot of meaning: “accelerated learning and enhanced instruction.” 

“Accelerated” means that learning is occurring at a faster pace and/or at a higher grade level. Students who qualify for highly capable services are often already working one or more grade levels ahead of their age mates, and we want schools to be meeting them at their current readiness level. Note that accelerated learning does not mean greater volume of work within the same standards, but moving students forward to new standards that they have not yet mastered. Washington state expects highly capable students to be experiencing accelerated learning. One of the longest running studies on this population, the Study for Mathematically Precocious Youth, quantitatively demonstrates that acceleration is the single most important indicator of success for highly capable students, even decades into their adulthood. 

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Equity in Highly Capable (HiCap) programs in Washington State is a hot topic these days. There's no question that there is a disproportional under-representation of low-income students, students with learning disabilities, English Language Learners, and students of color in our HiCap programs statewide. But what is the root cause behind this disproportionality? 

Peeling the onion, first we find that there are many outdated identification practices in common use, that each carry bias: relying on parent or teacher referral to identify students for testing, conducting testing on Saturdays, using only English-language test instruments, sending only English-language information about the HiCap program to parents, yearly testing windows, not providing practice tests to all students, ignoring known biases in the test instruments, relying on the appeal process to catch mistakes, and many others. 

Peeling the onion a bit further, we find that even if students were identified properly, there are many outdated practices in how districts provide access to HiCap programming that creates barriers, such as: not providing full transportation to magnet programs, classroom makeup that does not reflect the diversity of the community, believing that differentiation can reliably meet HiCap student needs, assuming that all students have access to technology and homework help at home, and many others. 

Peeling the onion a bit further, we realize that the driving issue behind these problems of identification and access is a lack of funding in the WA state budget, despite the fact that Highly Capable programs have been part of Basic Education since 2014. Outdated identification practices arise because there is not enough funding to “do it right.” Furthermore, HiCap funding is used almost entirely for identification and professional development (not staff), so UNDER-FUNDING highly capable programs in the WA state education budget is DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR EQUITY PROBLEM in highly capable programs across the state. 

Peeling to the center of the onion, we realize that the reason Highly Capable funding has not been prioritized is because most people believe that HiCap students will turn out alright in the end, regardless of whether they were well served at school. This is a myth. In actuality, HiCap students have challenges in social and emotional development, delayed development of executive function, and are at significant risk of not developing grit or growth mindset if school is always “easy” for them. 

We need to stop thinking about Highly Capable programs as a coveted “prize,” and the equity problem as being primarily about figuring out how to spread that prize around more fairly. That’s not it at all. 

Rather, we need to reframe the conversation: HiCap programs are a vital “whole child” intervention for vulnerable students who would likely not be successful with a conventional approach. Hence, we need to seek out EVERY child who needs that intervention, in order to best support students’ long term outcomes. 

With that frame of mind, we realize that some of our most vulnerable children are habitually underrepresented in our state’s HiCap programs, which just makes this inequity that much more painful. This is a social justice issue. 

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