Before anyone cancels or “unpersons” me (in the mild, non-Stalinist sense), I am not here to wax philosophical on the merits or demerits of the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (“DEI”) movement—not writ-large, at least—that for the past few years has enthralled our country’s corporate, political, and collegiate landscapes, alongside varying (albeit less intense) inroads into several other spheres of American public life. No, my purpose today is merely to highlight one close-to-home instance of how the (partially) good intentions animating the drive for “equity,” seemingly at all costs, sometimes produce lose-lose outcomes for the broader community and those who DEI proponents seek, properly, to elevate. In this case, Seattle—that bastion of reasonable governance—recently responded to sociodemographic disparities in its public schools’ “gifted” program (aka its “Highly Capable Cohort”) by yeeting the entire enterprise instead of, say, working within its contours to better promote equality of outcomes.
At bottom, the move reflects a sheer political (and frankly creative) laziness on the part of DEI “proponents”—in quotes because I hope, instead, that any true adherent to lower-case diversity, equity, and inclusion (myself among them) would celebrate a program that benefits historically underrepresented communities, even if it does so at lower rates than groups that have apparently derived an outsized benefit from the status quo ex ante. From this perspective, the most equitable approach is to renovate the program rather than dismantle it.
After the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 ended school segregation in the Jim Crow South, some Southern states responded by cancelling public schooling for an entire year. Their hatred was such that no education, for anybody, was preferable to a racially diverse one. Seattle is doing an incredible disservice to minority students by taking this maximalist approach in the complete opposite direction—broadcasting, essentially, that no gifted-students program is better than one with racial disparities. This is a mistake, to say the least, and more broadly indicts any DEI-inspired default to dismantlement over reform. As it stands, hundreds of Black and Latino Seattle students will be discharged from the program, alongside their White and Asian-American counterparts. Who this benefits is anyone’s guess.
As recently as 2021, the Seattle Times reported that “[c]ommunities across the United states are reconsidering their approach to gifted and talented programs in schools as vocal parents blame such elite programs for worsening racial segregation and inequities in the county’s educational system.” In response, New York City’s then-Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a phasing out of all such programs. Ditto New York’s Long Island and Montgomery County, Maryland, to name a couple. In the same article, Professor Marcia Gentry, who teaches education at the Gifted Education Research and Resource Institute at Purdue University, opined that, while she “get[s] the burn-it-down and tear-it-down mentality . . . what do we replace it with?” Unfortunately, Seattle has just joined a growing chorus of cities that have decided to replace such programs with . . . [drum roll] . . . nothing. A substitute “Highly Capable Neighborhood School Model” approach does not sound remotely promising, with gifted students set to remain in the same classrooms as their less advanced peers. “Seattle’s education leaders have chosen not to widen the pipeline into their Highly Capable Cohort. Instead, they are dismantling those classrooms in the name of fairness.” According to the Times editorial board, this is “a flawed interpretation of the concept” of equity. Amen.
What is a better solution, then? Few, today, are (or should be) content to perpetuate programs that have a disparate impact between communities when viable alternatives exist. But do they? How do we solve race-based inequities without hurting more than harming the communities we hope to benefit? One approach is to use household finances as a synecdoche for racial inequities. The sad truth is that White and Asian Americans in Seattle (as elsewhere) earn far more than their Black or Hispanic neighbors. This is neither a sanction nor an indictment of the disparity—it is simply a statement of fact. In Seattle, the average White household’s annual income as of 2021 was $96,333. Similarly, the average for Asian-American families was $77,470. In contrast, Black and Latino families on average earn annual incomes of $39,240 and $64,240, respectively.
Given these unfortunate disparities (so long as they remain), it stands to reason that a gifted-students program will better reflect the overall demographic picture if it charges families above a certain income threshold a greater portion of their child’s tuition—out of pocket—than less well-off families must pay (ideally zero at the poverty rate, say). That is, incorporate some means-based metric into the mix—especially one that noticeably varies depending on a household’s race. This obviously would not, writ-large, solve disparate race-based impacts in Seattle’s education system. But as with similar cost-sharing parallels in higher education, it would go some way towards flattening them. Not overnight, of course. But the move could quickly free up tens of millions of dollars to expand Black and Latino access to the program.
“Proponents” of throwing our most gifted babies out with the DEI bathwater must understand that centuries of institutionalized racial inequities take time to reverse, and anything less than an incremental and piecemeal approach will end up harming the very communities such efforts are intended to benefit. Seattle’s decision to jettison its public gifted-students program pell-mell is just such a misplay—one that stands in the short-term to impede the educational opportunities of hundreds if not thousands of Black and Latino students, to say nothing of the future tens of thousands that will never have the option to accelerate and intensify their educations in accord with their above-average abilities.
Beyond redistributing the costs of such programs so that students from wealthier backgrounds do not gobble up public funds at the expense of less-advantaged students who skew towards underrepresented communities, Seattle could have taken a self-critical look at its curricula, to see if anything in the substance or methods of teaching tends to favor some cultural groups at the expense of others. Two weeks ago, I discussed a move similar to Seattle’s YOLO moment here, when the Washington Supreme Court, in response to racial and other inequitable results, opted to toss the bar exam as a prerequisite for performing licensed legal work instead of commissioning its renovation from within. I emphasized then—as I do here—that rather than doing away with testing altogether, or, as in this case, the very concept of accelerated gifted-students programs is no panacea for disparate outcomes. Fix the questions, that is—not the criteria. All Washingtonians stand to benefit from a program that identifies and nurtures the most advanced students. It is worth reiterating: Among Seattle’s gifted are hundreds of Black and Latino students who now have no accelerated path before them. Why should they lose out because administrators lack the wherewithal to fix a system instead of just “yeeting” it, as younger Evergreeners like to say?
Alki,
Sam Spiegelman