School Integration Limits the Ability of Local Norms to Diversify Gifted Programs: A Mathematical Analysis with Implications Related to the Achievement Gap
Several experts within gifted education have advocated for the use of local norms when selecting students for gifted programs, instead of national-level norms. Local norms compare students to the peers in their school to identify gifted students and are believed to produce a more diverse gifted program. However, one limiting factor on the ability of local norms to diversify gifted programs has been almost completely overlooked in the gifted education community. Through a simplified example, I show in this article that local building-level norms are best at diversifying gifted programs when schools are highly segregated. Conversely, I also show that—when achievement gaps are present and a uniform admissions cutoff is applied—using building-level norms in highly integrated schools produce gifted programs that are highly segregated. In short, the use of building-level local norms trades one form of segregation for another. Implications and recommendations for gifted education and beyond are explored. A preprint version of this article is available at XXXX.