Every school has students who possess exceptional abilities; who can be considered gifted and talented. Students with special gifts and talents come from all cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Cohen, 1990). Yet as the number of Hispanic English language learners increases across the country, the number identified as gifted remains the same…

Research in the field of gifted and talented has significantly shifted in recent years to focus on broader conceptualizations of the construct, including performing arts, creativity, and leadership. Yet, it is not clear how states conceptualize and identify students as gifted and talented given the last review of state gifted and talented…

A persistent problem in education is underrepresentation of certain cultural and linguistic groups such as American Indian, African American, and Hispanic, in special programs for exceptionally talented students, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The spatial analytical task, a performance-based assessment with…

Little information regarding the psychometric properties of the most commonly used autism identification measures used in school settings with traditionally racially and ethnically minoritized (REM) groups is available. This analysis of autism identification measures is particularly important due to the demographic increase in the United States…

In public schools, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students are overidentified with autism (AU) but are underrepresented in other special education categories. Such patterns may be result, in part, from overaggregation of data from students representing diverse AAPI ethnic groups. Yet, professionals' implicit biases, limited cultural…

In the Cultivating Diverse Talent in STEM project, funded by the National Science Foundation in the United States, new assessments were developed, field tested, used to identify students with exceptional talent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and compared with existing methods (grade point average [GPA], letters of…

Concept maps were created as one of six measures to identify exceptionally talented students during the Cultivating Diverse Talent in STEM (CDTIS) project, with the goal of identifying and nurturing talents in students from groups traditionally underrepresented in special programs. New methods were compared with conventional methods to select…

As the demographics across the United States continues to change, specifically with increases in school age English Learners who speak a home language other than English, it is imperative that schools meet the diverse needs of these children. This article summarizes studies about English Learners with learning disabilities. It reports on the…

English learners (ELs) are the fastest growing population of learners in the United States; however, despite the growing numbers of ELs, their representation in gifted identification and programming continues to lag behind not only traditional populations of learners from advantaged communities, but also other underserved populations of learners.…

Ongoing research has demonstrated that culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students may be disproportionately represented among students with learning disabilities (LDs). The main aim of this research was to identify groups of CLD students at risk for LDs using the achievement criterion. To that end, 158 students participated in the…

This paper addresses the serious and pervasive problem of the mis-identification of English Language Learners (ELLs) as Learning Disabled (LD). Recent increases in immigration make this problem all the more urgent. The paper outlines problems with current methods of differentiating between learning disabilities and language acquisition processes.…

Changing demographics in schools around the world have raised questions about the nature and role of gifted education programs. An intense interest in the underrepresentation of students from low-income families and minority groups in gifted education programs has caused the field to re-examine both identification and services. In this article,…

Overrepresentation of Dual Language Learners (DLLs) in special education remains a problem even after 40 years of inquiry. One factor is that the U.S. federal government has neither clearly explained the definition of Specific Learning Disability (SLD) nor operationally defined it to identify children for special education services. This lack of…

In this article, we review research on poverty, both poverty rates and the effects of poverty on academic achievement more generally and on the identification and services for low-income gifted children specifically. This review sets the stage for further discussion of the research findings on identification practices including the efficacy of…

Black and Hispanic students are consistently underrepresented in gifted education. Several factors contribute to their low identification and lack of access to such programs and services. While teacher underreferral is a significant contributing factor, problematic also is testing and assessment, which is often administered by school…