> There’s little doubt that racism played a role in identifying children as gifted even though the label was based on supposedly objective criteria.

Why has the LA Times settled on racist teachers as the only reason for the skew in enrollment numbers, and why aren’t teachers upset the LA Times are calling them racists?

I’m constantly surprised how often accusations like this are thrown around and how little pushback there is by those accused of it.

It's not that the teacher were racist. It's that the tests or indicators used to identify individuals as gifted were not evaluated well enough for bias. It's not overt racism. It's stuff like rich parents hiring tutors and the rich parents being more likely to be white (I would argue that implicit racism isn’t racism as it lacks intent, but is still a harmful bias to be eliminated). This goes back to their comment on high achievers getting into the program vs the inherently gifted. Another example is IQ tests administered in English to students who have English as a second language. Even stuff like parents training their kids for the format of the IQ test questions provides and advantage.

The problem I have with a lot of the stuff related to gifted learning is how it's structured and gate kept. In a public school, there should not be a limited number of seats for an academic program. Any student who can perform in that program should be allowed to participate, not just the top 10% or whatever. I think it should be measured on their current academic performance, not some IQ test or teacher recommendations. If you're consistently getting As in the regular course, you should be eligible to try the accelerated program. You may get more out of the accelerated program even if your grade drops from As to Bs. It also seems that many programs are all or nothing - either you're in the gifted program for all subjects or none at all. Being advanced in one or two subjects and in the regular classes for the others should be fine. It seems this is at least picking up more popularity in the past decade or two.

It's really surprising they can't make the logical conclusion from what they wrote that they just point blank accused teachers as being racist.

So are we saying that teachers purposely disproportionately identified asian and white students as gifted? Can we not just admit that asian and white students usually have more learning resources provided to them during their younger years (both due to cultural and economic reasons) and thus in a typical classroom they will be the more likely to stand out academically before jumping to the race card. They've decided to skip straight past logic and straight to identity issues this time.

I am a "white-passing" latino (i.e. nobody assumes I'm latino until they hear my last name) and I was in the gifted program in California growing up. Plenty of the people also part of that program were black or latino themselves.

Honest question, you're a first grade teacher in LA. How do you "push back"? Write a tweet?

> settled on racist teachers

If the population of gifted kids is statistically over-represented by white kids, then one of these must be true:

• The test doesn't measure giftedness, but rather level of education. So we would expect kids from worse schools to perform worse. This is institutional racism. The opportunity is not equal. • Gifted kids from minority communities don't have equal access to the test or the classes. This is institutional racism. The opportunity is not equal. • White kids are smarter. They all took the same test, white kids came out on top. This is a racist belief with a millennia of discredited science to back it up.

No racist teacher required.

>> There’s little doubt that racism played a role in identifying children as gifted even though the label was based on supposedly objective criteria

> Why has the LA Times settled on racist teachers as the only reason…

Notice how the extracted quote (and the article itself) never actually accuses teachers of racism? The accusation only appears in your complaint.

Systemic racism can exist without overt individual racism.

Likewise, the article explicitly leaves open the possibility of other causes by simply assigning racism to “a role in” rather than to, as you claim, “the only reason”.

Your complaint (with false accusations) is, without further explanation, simply manufactured outrage.

I see you have not talked to many public school parents.

You don't understand the non-pushback because you're someone who thinks of racism as a personal matter and something a person either is or isn't. Everyone is racist, I'm racist. Those ideas have been deeply ingrained into me from when I was a little girl all the way through now and they're never going away. What I can do is learn to recognize when my "first thought" is likely a racist one, push it to the frontal cortex for rational analysis, and adjust my response if necessary.

Racist as a pejorative is one who is doing it on purpose or with indifference, context matters. We perceive white children as smarter is an everyone problem, not an individual teacher problem.

Because the alternative hypothesis to racist teachers is literally unspeakable.