Written for Bacon’s Rebellion by James A. Bacon

Here we go again. The Richmond Times-Dispatch is using “statistical disparities” as evidence of racial bias in Henrico County schools.

Under pressure from federal authorities to address racial disparities, Henrico County is endeavoring to enroll more students from minorities in the county’s “gifted” programs. States the article: “The Richmond Times-Dispatch reviewed annual reports on the demographics of the Henrico students identified as gifted and compared them with the division’s enrollment demographics…. As of the 2021-22 school year, Asian and white students were 4.9 times and 3.5 times likelier than Black students to be determined gifted.”

Why does such a disparity exist? Black parents in Henrico, wrote the RTD, claim that Black students are not being identified as gifted due to behavioral issues, according to an external audit of the program.

The article leads with a story of a bright biracial lad whose teachers acknowledged that he was mathematically gifted but did not admit him into Henrico’s gifted program on the grounds of immaturity. He acted out because he was bored by remote learning during the COVID shutdowns, said his mother, Amanda Reisner. “That didn’t set right by me. Maturity has nothing to do with giftedness.”

Reisner’s remark raises an interesting question of whether students (of whatever race) should be denied admittance to a gifted program if they are unable to conform to expected behavioral standards. But let’s set that aside and focus on how the RTD uses statistics to make admissions into the gifted program a racial issue.

In RTD-World, the fact that more Asians and Whites are admitted to gifted programs is highly suggestive of bias.

Matthew was not admitted to Henrico’s gifted program in first grade, and only one student at his school, Mehfoud Elementary in the Varina District, was identified for the program that year.

Varina, a district on the far east end of the county, has areas with high concentrations of poverty. Its student population is nearly 75% Black.

Meanwhile, across town on the wealthier western end, the Three Chopt District has less than 12% Black enrollment and had several elementary schools with upward of 100 students in the gifted program the same year.

Here’s a point of comparison that the RTD did not use: the percentage of elementary school students who score “pass advanced” in English and math.

In Three Chopt Elementary, 41% of Asian students, 44% of White students, and 26% of Black students scored “advanced” on their English reading Standards of Learning exams last year. For math, the pass rate was 59% for Asians, 35% for Whites, and 10.5% for Blacks.

In Mehfoud Elementary, the Virginia Department of Education build-a-table returns zero results for students passing English reading and math. The tragic reality, in other words, is that no student scored “pass advanced.” If none qualified as pass advanced, it is no surprise that that only one last year met the even more stringent criteria to qualify as “gifted.”

The pertinent issue is why academic achievement is so low at Mehfoud Elementary. One line of questioning might address the socioeconomic background of the children. What percentage of children come from households classified as economically disadvantaged? What percentage come from single-parent households? What percentage suffer from disabilities? How engaged are their parents in their learning at home? Another line of inquiry might examine the conditions at the school itself. How short-staffed are the teachers? How is teacher morale? Are administrators working to raise expectations, or do they make excuses for poor academic achievement?

The RTD asks none of these questions in this article — just as it fails to ask these questions in any of its reporting. Reporters use one and only one prism: race. The newspaper routinely presents racial statistics in such a context so as to allow readers to infer that discrimination or bias is at work.

Discrimination or bias cannot be ruled out as factors in differential outcomes. But the same can be said for dozens of other variables. The data I have presented suggest that the racial breakdown of children in Henrico’s gifted program is largely consistent with the breakdown of children performing at advanced levels in their SAT tests. If Black children are under-represented compared to their population in advanced SAT scores, we must seek explanations other than bias in the selection process for the gifted program.

I would go one step further in this analysis. The ideologically driven obsession with race is highly detrimental to public education. It distracts from the underlying issues responsible for low educational achievement, and it calls for inappropriate “solutions” that might well do more harm than good. Will admitting more bright students with behavioral issues into gifted programs be beneficial to anyone? Call me dubious.