Equitable Access to Excellence: Opportunities for Gifted Education to an Underrepresented Population Through Open Enrollment

Gifted education has served the educational community as a leader in curriculum designed for promoting excellence in our nation's classrooms. The apparent lack of equitable opportunities for entrance into gifted programs for certain segments of the school population have, justifiably, brought criticism of elitism. Inappropriate iden-tification procedures create underrepresentation in programs. This paper describes a gifted program that identified students after entry into the program. Students are judged suitable for gifted education only after they have had the opportunity to develop and exhibit behaviors within a gifted classroom environment. The result has been student opportunities and achievements that span the chasm between excellence and equity. The Proposal I would like to make a radical proposal concerning gifted education. To promote equitable opportunities for underrepresented groups, what if we minimized the identification process and created a gifted program that allowed all students the opportunity to demonstrate "giftedness"? A radical proposal? Perhaps, but such a model has been in existence for more than a decade. The Problem The literature on gifted education is replete with directives for more "enlightened, " more equitable, and more inclusive admissions pol