Growing up in the Indigenous community in Lawrence, it never crossed my mind that I could be identified as gifted.
During elementary school my test scores far exceeded my classmates, and the possibility of being identified as gifted grew.
However, my mother was persuaded to not test me by my teacher. At nine years old, I thought the reason I was not identified as gifted was because of my intelligence, but the real reason was that my mother was a person of color who was not able to advocate for me like my white peers’ parents could.
Little did I know, this extends much farther than I imagined. I started the conversation in my class, and many of my peers who are students of color have had similar experiences to me when it comes to the gifted program. It caused all of us to feel inferior or “not as smart” as our white classmates.
I have carried that feeling throughout my life. Now, as a senior looking into colleges, I do not have as much confidence in my academic performance. This caused me to wonder what would happen if my teachers had encouraged my mother to test me instead of pushing her away from the idea.
This led me to research how many students of different ethnicities in USD 497 had been identified as gifted in December 2023. The percentage of white students in the entire district should be the same percentage as the number of white students identified as gifted.. In the 2019-2020 school year, white students were getting over-tested and identified as gifted by over 12%. During the 2022-23 school year white students were still getting over identified by 4.47%.
That number should be zero.
Students of color are aware of their under-representation and feel as if they do not belong in this district. They will most likely carry that with them for the rest of their lives. We as a district should not be causing our students harm. We should not be under-representing those that we say we are trying to protect.
Academic racism has always been present in classrooms but these statistics show the bias that still exists within our schools.
What’s even more heartbreaking is that in the past four years, there have been fewer than 20 American Indian/Alaskan Native, Black/African American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students identified as gifted combined.
The only question that entered my mind was why? Why are those three groups so extremely underidentified? And with this information being public, why is there nothing being done about the representation of about 36% of the students in the district?
Those students are going to speak badly about their experiences in USD 497 if they keep getting underrepresented and underidentified. It sends the message that their district doesn’t care about them as students or people. We as a district need to continue to call out injustice to make Lawrence Public Schools a place where parents of color feel comfortable sending their kids. We as a district need to change our ways to value everyone and not turn a blind eye to allow those in higher power to be ignorant.
Intentional ignorance should not be accepted or expected, especially at the expense of our students.
