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    Anti-Blackness and Racial Disproportionality in Gifted Education

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    crestor upates Original Research Exceponal Citron rn © Tne Authors) 2022 ‘Ail rose gud: ‘agp conournas permisons DO! 10.177/0014402921 1073525, ours sagepub comhomeeoe SAGE Anti-Blackness and Racial Disproportionality in Gifted Education Francis A. Pearman II ©! and Ebony O. McGee” Abstract Black-White disparities in gifted enrollment persist across USS. school systems. In this study, we examined whether these disparities depend on county-level rates of anti-Black bias. We drew data from the Civil Rights Data Collection, the Education Opportunity Project, and the Race Implicit Association Database. Based on a series of heteroskedastic fractional probit regression models, we found that county-level rates of anti-Black bias predict Black— White disparities in gifted and talented enrollment, with gaps being largest in counties with elevated rates of anti-Black bias and virtually non-existent in counties with low levels of anti-Black bias. These findings persist after accounting for achievement and other obser- vable differences across counties, unobserved variation in state-level gifted and talented poli- cies and are consistent for county-level estimates of both explicit and implicit measures of anti-Black bias. ‘The underrepresentation of Black and other minoritized students in gifted programs has emerged as a critical issue for equity-minded scholars and practitioners (Hodges et al., 2018; McBee et al., 2012; Peters et al., 2019; Shores et al., 2020; Wright et al., 2017; Yaluma & Tyner, 2018). Despite making up 15% of the U.S. student popula- tion, Black students are only 9% of students nationwide enrolled in gifted programs each year. In contrast, White students, who make up roughly 50% of the overall student popu- lation, comprise 60% of students identified as gifted (U.S. Department of Education, 2018), These disparities raise concerns because enrollment in enrichment program- ming can lead to benefits for students, including improved academic achievement, heightened motivation, improved self concept, more deliberate engagement with school, and, over the longer term, higher earnings and career attainment (Bhatt, 2009; Card & Giuliano, 2015; Delcourt et al., 2007; Kulik & Kulik, 1982; Rogers, 2007; ef. Adelson et al., 2012). Scholars have cited the following explana- tions for the persistence of Black-White dis- parities in gifted enrollment: racial disparities in academic achievement (Erwin & Worrell, 2012; Ford, 1998), socioeconomic differences between Black and White households (Mickelson, 2003), racial differences in child advocacy (Lareau, 2000), racial mismatch between students and teachers (Grissom et al., 2017; Grissom & Redding, 2016); and the limited presence of gifted programming ‘Graduate School of Eduation, Stanford Universi, Sanford, CA, USA Peabody Colege, Vanderbilt Univers, Naive, Tennessee, USA Corresponding Author: Francis A. Pearman, Graduate School of Education, ‘Sanford University, CERAS 524, 485 Lasuen Mall, Sanford, CA 94305, USA malt apearman@stanford edu in schools that predominantly serve Black children (Baker & Friedman-Nimz, 2002). However, one area of growing interest among researchers and theorists concerned with the persistence of racial disparities in gifted education is the role that anti-Black bias or anti-Blackness can play in the process (Grissom et al., 2017; Lamb et al. 2019). Dumas and Ross 2016) define anti-Blackness as the debasement of Black humanity as reflected in US. laws, policies, and social, institutional, and cultural life. Dumas contrasts anti-Blackness with other forms of racism because anti-Blackness positioned at the opposite end of whiteness and plays the primary pivotal role in the discur sive and material operationalization of race and racism” (Dumas, 2018, p. 32). Dumas, theoriz- ing on the role of anti-Blackness in education policy. grounds the locus of racialized educa- tion policy in the Black body specifically and in the perception of Black people as a threat and as a problem to be solved in educational spaces. Dumas (2016) recommends that poticy- ‘makers and practitioners assume the existence of and question anti-Blackness in education, citing “differences in academic achievement; frequency and severity of school discipline: rate of neighborhood school closures; fundrais- ing capacity of PTAS; access to arts, music, and unstructured playtime” (p. 17) as common areas in which anti-Blackness can manifest in the domain of education. Regarding gifted and talented programming, areas. of anti-Blackness that have been topics of past research have included discretionary decisions of teachers and school personnel, and potential biases embedded in the screening and evalu- ation process (Ford et al., 2008; Harris et al., 2004), Interestingly, there is emerging evidence that anti-Blackness can play out at a broader scale across communities in ways that might also matter for gifted enrollment pattems. For instance, Black children growing up in communities with elevated rates of anti-Blackness may experience greater amounts of racial trauma and micto- aggressions, which may adversely affect their performance in school (Alvarez, 2020; Exceptional Children 0(0) Jernigan & Daniel, 2011; McGee & Martin, 2011): community members in areas charac- terized by higher levels of anti-Blackness may have lower expectations, on average, for Black than white children, contributing to disparate treatment in local institutions (ee Grissom et al, 2017; Lamb et al., 2019; McBee, 2006); and communities with higher degrees of anti-Blackness may also have greater racial disparities in exposure to quality educational opportunities ohnson, 2011; Reardon, 2016; Siegel-Hawley et al., 2018; Sosina & Weathers, 2019), thereby contributing to racial differences in the quality of learning environments. Each of these factors are likely to influence the rates at which gifted programs enroll Black chil dren. Yet, there is little empirical research on whether anti-Black bias at this scale disparities in gifted relates to enrollment. ‘This oversight is notable considering two recent studies that linked county-level rates of anti-Black bias to racial disparities in key educational outcomes, namely discipline and achievement, Riddle and Sinclair (2019) dtew cross-sectional data from the Civil Rights Data Collection and found, based on a series of Bayesian multilevel logistic regres sions, that Black-White discipline disparities ‘were worse in counties with higher levels of anti-Black bias, a pattem that held after accounting for a host of socioeconomic and demographic differences across counties. Similarly, drawing data from the Education Opportunity Project and employing a precision-weighted hierarchical linear model- ing approach that adjusted for a variety of con founding factors, Pearman (2021) found that county-level rates of anti-Black bias were as predictive of Black-White test score dispar- ities as Black White gaps in family income. These studies indicate that improving our understanding of racial disparities in educa tional outcomes may require shifting our ana- lytic ens outward to consider how anti-Blackness operates at a broader, commu- nity level. However, no study to date has focused squarely on whether anti-Blackness at this scale matters for racial disparities in gifted and talented enrollment. Pearman and McGee ‘The current study begins to fill this gap by ‘merging four national datasets to investigate whether county level rates of anti-Black bias predict Black-White disparities in gifted enrollment, To be sure, this study does not intend to estimate the causal effect of county- level rates of anti-Black bias on Black-White disparities in gifted enrollment, but rather to provide descriptive evidence that might help generate hypotheses and build intuition about the nature of racial disproportionality in gifted programming. The following research questions guide the analysis. Research Question 1: To what extent are Black students assigned to gifted programs at lower rates than White students across the United States? Research Question 2: Does the underre- presentation of Black relative to White stu- dents in gifted programs reflect other observed differences across student popula- tions, including achievement, socioeconomic background, or school funding disparities? Research Question 3: Does the degree of underrepresentation of Black relative to White students in gifted programs vary according 10 county-level rates of anti-Black bias? Research Question 4: Is the potential asso- ciation between county Level rates of anti-Black bias and Black-White gaps in gifted enrollment due to an association between anti-Black bias ‘and changes in Black gifted enrollment rates, White gifted enrollment rates, or both? Method We integrated data from three national data sets, focusing on all U.S. counties. We then used heteroscedastic fractional probit regres- sion models to examine Black-White dispar- ities in gifted enrollment and to investigate whether these disparities correlate with county-level rates of anti-Black bias. Data This study combined national data from Project Implicit, the Civil Rights Data Collection, and the Education Opportunity Project. It focused on school years 2008-09 through 2015-16, which corresponded to the data collection period for the Education Opportunity Project that contained informa tion on county-level. achievement scores. ‘This study focused on county-level rates of anti-Black bias because the county-level was the smallest geographic unit for which aggre- gate information on anti-Black bias was avail- able (described in mote detail in a subsequent paragraph), Moreover, the study restricted the analytic sample to U.S. counties that contain at least 20 Black children and 20 White children to ensure that county-level disparities in gifted enrollment rates reflect meaningful cross- group differences. As described in Table 1, this restriction yields an analytic sample of 3,917 counties. Primary Outcome of Interest ‘We gathered data on gifted enrollments from the 2011-12, 2013-14, and 2015-16 surveys of Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). The 2011-12 CRDC Survey was the earliest CRDC survey during the obser- vation window [2009-2016] that contained data on every U.S. school and school dis trict. CRDC provided counts by race of the number of students enrolled in gifted and talented programs. As noted previously, this research aggregated enrollment counts to the county level because this was the only available unit containing bias informa- tion in the Project Implicit database. We assigned each school district a county code corresponding to those provided by the National Center for Educational Statistics Gifted rates for Black and White students represent the number of students by race enrolled in gifted programs in each county divided by the total enrollment of each racial group in each county. To be clear, we sought {0 examine the gap in enrollment rates between Black and White students, with particular interest in how this gap changes as county-level rates of anti-Black bias change. Although many groups experi- ence inequity and undertepresentation in gifted education, we focused on the under- enrollment of Black relative to White stu dents in gifted programs only because the Table 1. Descriptive Statist. ‘Mecn SD CoungpLevel Rail Bas Expl Bias 096 oe Ili Bas 04002 Black Students % Gifted and Talented 41038 ‘Average Test Scores 0478 Suspension Rates 8504.06 Special Ed Rate B56 376 ‘Avg. Per-Pupil a4 303301 Expenditures White Students % Gifted and Talented 778618 Average Test Scores 026 om Suspension Rates 32718 Special Ed Rate 82 303 ‘Avg. Per-Pupil 61767626 Expendicures County Choractrisics % Black oie oe % Latin ols 07 % Asian 004 005 % White 059024 % ELL 007 oor Total Enrollment 60610 106250 % Eeonomiealy 050” (06 Disadvantaged Racial Segregation 0.26 O17 % Urban 028 oR % Suburban 041036 % Rural 019 026 % Town 02 0m County Choracterisies, Black Residents Log (Medan Income) loss 029 % Bachelor’ oF Higher 019007 Unemployment Rate 014 003 % Receiving SNAP 026 = 008 Poverty Rate 027-008 % Single Mothers 046 (007 County Characteristics, White Log (Medan Income) 1100026 % Bachelor’ or Higher 032 Unemployment Rate 007 oan % Receiving SNAP 008 0.04 Poverty Rate 010 4 % Single Mothers 014 oan County Choractrisics Crime Rates (per 100.000) 61947 328.00 Number of Counties. 3917 county-level measure of anti-Black bias per tained specifically to racial biases about Black people by White people. Exceptional Children 0(0) Primary Independent Variable of Interest We gathered data on county-level rates of anti-Black bias derived from the over 1 million respondents who visited the Project Implicit Website between 2008 and 2016 and completed an online survey of explicit and implicit racial attitudes. Following prior research, we measured explicit anti-Black bias as the difference in respondents’ reported ‘warmth for Black versus White people (where 0 =very cold and 10 =very warn; see Leitner et al, 2016). Implicit anti-Black bias ‘was measured based on the Race Implicit Association Test, a dual categorization task that calculates bias scores based on differences in the time it takes to attribute positive and negative words with White versus Black faces. (For studies on the predictive and con- struct validity of Project Implicit Data see Greenwald et al, 2009 and Nosek et al., 2005.) We began with the entire publicly avail- able dataset from Project Implicit but then limited what we used in three ways. First, given that institutional power within the United States is highly stratified along lines of race, with White people wielding dispropor- tionate power in decision making processes (Milner, 2015), we followed the work of Riddle and Sinclair (2019) and Pearman (2021) to focus on anti-Black biases of White people, in particular, by restricting the sample of respondents to those who selfidentify as White. (We report results in the Robustness Checks section in which county-level rates of racial bias are based on all respondents, regard- less their race.) Second, we restricted the sample to respondents who had geographic information that enabled us to identify the respondent's county. Third, the sample was restricted to respondents who took the assess- ‘ment between 2009 and 2016, that is, the time frame corresponding to data collected for the Education Opportunity Project. Although prior research has shown that respondents to the bias survey generally mirror the general public in terms of racial composition (Hehman et al, 2018), the sample itself was voluntary; therefore, respondents to the bias survey are not a representative sample of the US. population. To reduce concems about Pearman and McGee potential response bias, we adjusted county- level estimates of anti-Black bias with multiple regression using post stratification (MRP; Park etal, 2004); MRPis commonly used in political science to estimate subnational preferences from national polling (eg., Kastellec et al, 2010), Within the current study, this approach allowed us to account for known differences between the sample of respondents and the target population of each county. Respondents were first grouped into four education bins (less than a high school degree, high school degree, some college, college graduate), and ‘multilevel regressions were fit in which explicit ‘and implicit anti- Black bias scores, respectively. ‘were regressed on county-level characteristics. ‘These estimates were allowed to vary by the education level of respondents as well as by the respondent's county, state, and region of the country. Next, we created models to predict the expected amount of explicit and implicit anti-Black bias for each demographic category. The final estimates of explicit and implicit anti-Black bias were the estimated pre~ dictions noted in the previous step weighted by the population count of each demographic subgroup in each county. This weighting strat- egy resulted in more representative estimates of explicit and implicit anti-Black bias. (Riddle and Sinclair [2019] employed a similar weight- ing technique.) Of note, we report results in the Robustness Checks section that show that esti ‘mates of explicit and implicit anti-Black bias based on raw county means as well as Empirical Bayes shrunken estimates largely mir- rored weighted estimates, minimizing concems about response bias. Control Variables In addition to examining whether an unad- jjusted relation exists between county level rates of anti-Black bias and Black-White dis- parities in gifted enrollment, we were also interested in whether such a relation persists after accounting for observable differences across counties. We selected the first set of control variables fiom the Education Opportunity Project. These variables pertain to schooling characteristics. Given that one of the strongest predictors of | whether educators identity a child as gifted is his or her prior achievement (Donovan & Cross, 2002), we controlled for the average county level achievement of Black and White students during the observation period (2009-2016). Also, given that the presence of gifted pro- ‘grams is correlated with demographic features of schools (Grissom & Redding, 2016), we controlled for the following characteristics of, each county’s student population: total enroll- ‘ment; percent White: percent Black; percent Latinx; percent Asian; percent English lan- ‘guage leamers; per-pupil expenditures; the amount of between-school racial segregation percent of students enrolled in special educa tion classes; percent of schools in the county located in urban, suburban, or towns: and average suspension rates by race. Prior research has also indicated that socioeconomic disparities contribute to Black-White dispar ities in gifted enrollment (Mickelson, 2003). ‘Therefore, we controlled for Black-White dis- parities in the following socioeconomic char acteristics at the county level: share of adult residents with a bachelor’s degree, unemploy- ment rates, the share of households receiving welfare, the share of households living at or below the federal poverty line, and the share ‘of households led by a single mother. We also controlled for overall levels of the just mentioned socioeconomic characteristics. Finally, to capture a general measure of com munity safety that could be related to anti-Black bias (Unnever & Gabbidon, 2011), we also controlled for county-level crime rates, averaged across the 2009-2016 FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Surveys. Summary statistics for all included covariates are displayed in Table 1 Analytic Strategy ‘We answered Research Question | by caleu- lating enrollment rates by race at the county level and comparing them for Black and White students. We answered Research Question 2 by adjusting this gap for observed differences across counties. In particular. to answer Research Question 2, we estimated a heteroskedastic fractional probit regression model as proposed by Papke and Wooldridge (2008). Let y;=€ [0, 1] denote gifted and talented assignment as a proportion of total enrollment for racial group i in county j, For the set of student- and county-specific explana- tory variables, the heteroskedastic fractional probit model is represented as follows: E(uy\Raceyy, 8), x) [ay + a Racey +0 + 7K) +A, +o « where ® is the standard normal cumulative disuibution function (CDF); Race, is a binary indicator for racial group i in county j with Black students serving as the referent category; 6, corresponds to a vector of student character- istics for racial group 7 in county j (including, for instance, achievement levels, suspension fates, and percent of students assigned to special education classes); X; corresponds to a vector of characteristies for county j; Ay come sponds to state fixed effects that control for unobserved variation across states, including state-level policies about gifted and talented programs; and ey corresponds to an error term that accommodates clustering at the county level. Notably, given that unobserved determi- nants of gifted and talented placement may differ by race, Equation 1 follows Papke and Wooldridge (2008) and includes a sealing factor, 6, that adjusts for differences in residual variation across racial groups and is calculated as: 1 1466, where 6 is the estimated heteroskedasticity parameter interpreted as the amount that the error standard deviation differs for White com- pared to Black students, By including 8 in the ‘model, differences in residual variation, which could distort Black-White comparisons. in gifted and talented placement, are assumed to be controlled. Of interest in Equation | is the coefficient for race, o1, which answers Research Question 2 by indicating the covariate-adjusted Black-White gap in gifted and talented enrollment. To aid in interpretabil- ity, we also report results in terms of an average ‘marginal effect for a (and for all displayed Exceptional Children 0(0) coefficients), which is interpreted as the Black-White gap in gifted and talented assign- ‘ment expressed in percentage terms, Tn addition to examining the relation between race and proportional enrollment in gifted and talented programs, Research Question 3 pertains to whether Black-White Gisparities in gifted and talented enrollment depend on county-level rates of anti Black bias. To answer Research Question 3, we mod- ified Equation 1 to include an interaction term that allows the association between race and gifted and talented placement to vary by ‘county-level rates of anti-Black bias as follows: E(yy\Racey, 9.x) @farRacey + apBias; + asRacey x Bias, +10 + 7% +4, toes) @ Of interest in this model is the coefficient for the interaction term between Racey and Bias;, which answers Research Question 3 and whose marginal effect is interpreted as the incremental change in the Black-White gifted and talented gap associated with a stan- dard deviation increase in county level rates of explicit or implicit anti-Black bias (separate models were run for explicit and implicit racial bias). To answer Research Question 4, which pertained to the association between county-level rates of anti-Black bias and enrollment rates for each racial group specifi cally, we considered (a) the coefficient for the main effect of Bias; in Model 2, a, whose ‘marginal effect indicates the adjusted associ- ation between county-level rates of anti-Black bias and gifted enrollment rates for Black students, and (b) the linear combin ation of the coefficients for the main effect of Bias,, 2, and the coefficient for the interaction term of Racey x Bias;, a3, whose combined ‘marginal effect is interpreted as the adjusted association between county-level rates of anti-Black bias and gifted enrollment rates for White students. The other components and clustering in Equation 2 are identical to Equation 1. All models were weighted by Pearman and McGee county-subgroup enrollment, Models for Equations | and 2 were fit using the fracglm ‘command in Stata 16, Results Table 1 provides descriptive statistics for county-level rates of anti-Black bias and all included covariates. With respect to indepen- dent variables of interest, the unstandardized estimates of explicit and implicit anti-Black bias adjusted with post-stratification are 0.96 and 0.40, respectively, indicating anti-Black biases on scales where zero equals no bias. Research Questions ‘Table 1 also answers Research Question 1. In particular, the average rate of gifted and talented assignment for Black and White stu- dents in US. counties is 4.1% and 7.8%, respectively, corresponding to an unadjusted Black-White gap in gifted and talented assignment of 3.7 percentage points. While this descriptive statistic highlights the underre- presentation of Black relative to White stu- dents in gifted and talented programs nationwide, Research Question 2 inquires as to whether this overrepresentation reflects other differences across student populations, such as achievement disparities, differences in socioeconomic background, racial gaps in special education assignment, or school funding inequalities for Black versus White students, ‘Models I and 3 of Table 2 answer Research Question 2 by reporting results from fully adjusted heteroskedastic fractional probit regression models as specified by Equation 1, Models 1 and 2 refer to explicit anti-Black bias, Models 3 and 4 refer to implicit anti-Black bias. Models 1 and 3 indicate that after adjusting for observable differences across counties, including average achieve ment levels, White relative to Black children are still overrepresented in gifted and talented programs. Models 1 and 3 indicate that the average enrollment rate in gifted and talented ‘Table 2. Fractional Probit Regressions of County-Level Rates of Gifted and Talented Assignment on Race and County-Level Rates of Racial Bias, Explicit Racial Bias Implicit Racial Bias @ 8) a 0 White gear 0593 gsi OsIs™ (0.115) 12) @lI7) —@112) [o.ose] {0.052} [0057] [0.082] ‘Couney-Level Bias ‘0.005 =0.049" ‘0014 = 0073" (0.012) (0.022) (0017) (0.025) [o.001] [-0007] {0.002} [-0011] Bias x White 0.066"** 0.105" (0013) (0018) {0.019} {o015} Sigma 0.160" 0.168 0152 0.158" (0.050) (0.052) (0051) (0.053) a 3917 3917 3917 3317 "Note. This table reports results derived from heteroskedastic fractional probit models that include the full set of student and district controle as well a state fixed effects, Student controls are racial group specifi a the district level and include academic achievement, suspension rates, per-pupil expenditures, and percent of students assigned to specal education ‘asses, District controls include percent Black, percent White, percent English language learners, total enrollment percent economically disadvantaged, the share of schools located in urban, suburban, and rural areas, respectively.

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