By Sarah Miller, Associate Director of The Roeper Institute
In 2016, the Fordham Institute evaluated each state for how they attend to any accountability measures for high achieving students. Only five states earned zero stars out of four, meaning they explicitly or implicitly discourage schools from focusing on their brightest students. Michigan was one of those five (Petrilli, 2016). Within that environment, there is a need for concentrated investment in educational equity for students in Detroit, Michigan. A fervent wealth gap plays out in a city where 77.1% of the population is Black and another 7.7% is Hispanic-Latino. In such a racially and economically-divided area, and with a state legislature offering sparse support for gifted education, it is unsurprising that little to no attention has been paid to gifted and talented children in Southeast Michigan. While 69.1% of high-poverty schools in the country offer gifted programming, only 4.8% of high-poverty schools in the whole state of Michigan offer a gifted and talented program (Yaluma & Tyner, 2018). Yet we know gifted students exist in every school and district, and these children, like all children, deserve an opportunity to reach their potential.
Five years ago, the Roeper Institute took stock of this enormous need and heeded an internal call to be part of the solution in increasing educational equity for gifted and talented students. After concentrated relationship building with key stakeholders in the educational landscape in Detroit, a successful case was made for the inclusion of the needs of gifted and talented students in the larger efforts to advance educational equity in Detroit, and so the Roeper Institute applied for and received an Educational Leadership Award matching grant from The Edward E. Ford Foundation to seed an unusual public-private collaboration for advancing the cause. A Matter of Equity (MoE) was created to provide intensive education and training in evidence-based best practices for identifying and serving economically disadvantaged and racially/culturally marginalized high-potential students in the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD), a public school district serving 50,000 students. The original MoE project successfully launched a Professional Learning Community of educators and school support staff in DPSCD to better identify and educate gifted students.
DPSCD has leveraged this investment, as well as their own highly skilled, dedicated, and passionate staff and faculty, to truly champion the gifted and talented students being educated in Detroit. Despite no state mandate or funding, they created a comprehensive Gifted and Talented Education plan to build and roll out a comprehensive, equity centered program. To support this next phase in the work, the Roeper Institute once again partnered with DPSCD and several universities to apply for a highly competitive Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented federal grant. In August, awards were announced and this project was just one of thirteen chosen for funding, infusing more than $2.5 million over five years into this essential work. The next phase of this ongoing work, Matter of Equity 2.0, is poised and ready to be a catalyst for greater change for gifted and talented youth in Southeast Michigan, centering the students most often left out of the conversation—those who are racially/culturally marginalized, economically disadvantaged, English language learners, and students with disabilities (twice exceptional or 2e). MoE 2.0 offers a robust, evidence-based vision and practical roadmap to expand the scope and scale of the foundational work and create sustainable systemic change. This project will undoubtedly make a difference in the lives of countless students in DPSCD, but also positions Detroit to provide a model for the entire state of Michigan on how a gifted and talented program can be built in a way that truly centers equity.
References:
Petrilli, M., Griffith, D., Wright, B., & Kim, A. (2016). High stakes for high achievers: State accountability in the age of ESSA. Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Institute. https://edexcellence.net/publications/high-stakes-for-high-achievers
Yaluma, C., & Tyner, A. (2018). Is there a gifted gap? Gifted education in high-poverty schools. Thomas B. Fordham Institute. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED592389.pdf
About the author:
Sarah Miller, Associate Director The Roeper Institute
Sarah Miller is a Social Justice Educator and Facilitator. Sarah is committed to increasing knowledge and dialogue about oppression in all of its forms, as well as systemic and historic injustice. Sarah firmly believes that providing relevant education to community members leads to increased empathy and resiliency. Therefore she is committed to social justice education with the intent of moving towards individual and systemic change to create a more equitable world.
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About THE ROEPER INSTITUTE:
A Silver level member of THE G WORD’s Global Partnership Network, The Roeper Institute operates as a separate 501(c)(3) connected to the Roeper School whose mission is to advance educational equity in the field of gifted education and otherwise demonstrate Roeper's commitment to social justice.