A year after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, giving $1 billion (worth about $9 billion today) to strengthen science, math and technology programs in public schools in fear of falling behind other countries. Students nationwide were given intelligence tests with strict cutoffs to determine “giftedness.” Remnants of these programs remain in local districts, but tend to exclude socioeconomically disadvantaged and historically underrepresented students in their operation.
In the San Mateo-Foster City School District, children can start self-contained GATE learning, where students take core classes only with other GATE students, in fourth grade at College Park Elementary School. In middle school, students can continue their GATE-exclusive education at Bayside Academy. To be GATE-identified in the SMFCSD, students must pass an optional academic test in third or fifth grade. These programs are effectively schools within schools, as GATE-identified kids only see non-GATE children during breaks or elective classes.
Senior Zachary Daniloff graduated from Bayside in 2017 and didn’t know about the GATE program’s existence until he entered middle school.
“I would hear teachers talking about how kids in the GATE classes would act different than we would … [or were] more responsible,” Daniloff said. “An education shouldn’t differentiate us based on how we act.”
Beyond providing two different educations at the same institution, the GATE program at Bayside acts as a de facto racial segregator. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection, in 2017, 46.7% of the school’s population was Latino or Hispanic and 8% was Pacific Islander. White and Asian students were 16.1% and 19.7% of the school’s enrollment, respectively. Yet, 25.3% and 54.9% of the GATE program at Bayside was comprised of white and Asian students respectively. In that school year, no Pacific Islander students were in the GATE program, and only 1.1% of the program was Latino or Hispanic.
“I think we need to continue to have a conversation about what it means to be gifted and talented”
In the San Mateo Union High School District, GATE does not function as a curriculum-based cohort. The program acts as an enricher for those who seek academic or career-focused opportunities, manifesting itself in SAT and ACT preparation courses, guest speaker series and college application essay workshops.
Although the SMUHSD’s GATE program is not self-contained, it has a similar demographic makeup. This school year, only two Pacific Islander students and eight Black students are enrolled in the GATE program districtwide. Asian and white students make up 385 and 269 students in the program respectively. Data from 2017 shows Hispanic and Latino students make up 32.4% of the district population, but only 9.9% of the GATE program.
Most GATE opportunities at Aragon are offered to all students, with students actually in the program given priority. This year, students in the program access information through a Canvas course run by history teacher Jayson Estassi, who assumed the role of site representative at the beginning of the school year. Students not enrolled in the program are usually informed about GATE events on the Canvas home page or through an opt-in email list offered each year on summer paperwork.
Some SMUHSD GATE activities are funded and organized by the GATE Parent Group, a districtwide organization of parents of GATE-identified students. They operate test preparation and summer enrichment courses, which are available to students for a fee or for free if a student qualifies for aid.
“Our mission is to help enrich kids’ lives in our district,” said President Ella Yun, parent of a Burlingame High School junior. “We’re set up as a GATE [program], but we help the whole community. We also provide different funds and grants for each school in the district.”
Samia Shoman is the liaison to the SMUHSD GATE program, meeting with site representatives to overview events and managing student entry into the program. The SMUHSD recently changed the program name to Gifted and Talented Enrichment, instead of Gifted and Talented Education, and opened entry to all students who self-select into it.
“I definitely want to be conscious of being all encompassing and being really thoughtful that if we do change the acronym that also means that GATE parents have to buy into that,” Shoman said. “They are part of this partnership, and they are helping fund our program.”
“We are working in a system where systemic inequity is present. It is the air that we breathe”
GATE, as it exists now, was established in 1980 by California Assembly Bill 1040, which allows districts to set their own criteria outside of pure academic ability.
“I think we need to continue to have a conversation about what it means to be gifted and talented, what the criteria for this program and how it is that we as educators operating this system can best serve the needs of our students,” Estassi said.
In the SMUHSD, outstanding VAPA performance and leadership and creative ability qualify with teacher recommendations.
The SMFCSD recently removed teacher recommendations for GATE eligibility, citing that some teachers asked for them to be removed as parents were pressuring them to recommend students they were not comfortable recommending, leaving the academic test as the only criteria for entry into the program despite the California Department of Education stating that “best practices support using more than one factor to identify GATE students.”
“Where it becomes tricky is with our students who are historically underrepresented in classes and programs like this,” said Alicia Heneghan, SMFCSD director of curriculum and instruction for elementary schools. “If it’s just one test score, then we can predict that we’re going to see some of the same outcomes that we see nationally, and we do see it. … We don’t have a diverse representation in our GATE program. We don’t have a high number of students who are learning English or who are Spanish speaking or who are coming from families who are socioeconomically disadvantaged.”
Even with teacher recommendations in place in the SMUHSD, students can be disadvantaged when teachers’ implicit bias comes into play.
“We are working in a system where systemic inequity is present,” Estassi said. “It is the air that we breathe. … Classification is in some sense necessary, but it is also deeply problematic.”
While information about GATE testing in third and fifth grade is sent home by the SMFCSD, many people hear about the opportunity through word-of-mouth, and homogenized parent groups can preserve racial divides.
Divides from SMFCSD’s GATE program extend to high school; white and Asian students make up the majority of Advanced Placement classes at Aragon. According to CRDC in 2017, calculus classes, which are only offered as AP classes at Aragon, are 6.3% Latino or Hispanic in student makeup, while the student population that year was 27.2% Latino.
“Looking back now, I feel like if I was in the GATE program I would have been more prepared [for advanced courses in high school]”
Senior Jessica Chen graduated from Bayside in 2017. She didn’t hear about opportunities to test into the GATE program until it was too late.
“Looking back now, I feel like if I was in the GATE program I would have been more prepared [for advanced courses in high school],” Chen said.
A study by Vanderbilt professor David Lubinski found that adolescents identified as having “exceptional mathematical or verbal reasoning abilities” before the age of 13 pursued doctoral degrees at rates 50 times the rate of those who were not. When socioeconomically disadvantaged students aren’t adequately informed about opportunities to be identified as advanced, however, they aren’t given the same resources for life success that are offered to students in the GATE program, who are primarily white and Asian.
Freshman Vanely Torres Godinez graduated from Bayside in 2020 and received the Latinos del Futuro scholarship, which aims to motivate students from a Latino or Hispanic background to consider pursuing post-secondary education. She didn’t know about the GATE program until the beginning of eighth grade, despite being on the same campus as it.
“I think I would have been better without GATE [because] I didn’t really hear about it,” Torres Godinez said. “I never knew much [about] the program.”
In 2013, California’s Local Control Funding Formula redistributed GATE funding, allowing stakeholder input in how funds are used to support high-ability students. Most SMFCSD funds set aside for the GATE program go towards its upkeep and optional testing, which leaves little room for diversifying the program.
“I think at the core, where we struggle, is that we have created a class that sits outside of the general curriculum,” Heneghan said. “When we look at the move from the national level … that’s the primary reason why self-contained GATE classes have been dismantled [in other districts], because they don’t represent the diversity of the general population. It’s complicated because … we don’t have the resources to focus on creating a perfect GATE class, and I don’t think a lot of districts do which is why they don’t have them. Our resources, primarily, go to … our students who are historically underrepresented and ensuring that they have access to the core [not GATE] curriculum.”
Despite issues with the GATE program, some constituents in the SMFCSD advocate for its continued existence.
“I’d say [they’re] not a diverse group of parents,” Heneghan said. “I think I probably don’t hear from our Title I school families.”
Title I schools have a student population where at least 40% come from low-income families. Such families may not have the resources or time to lobby the district and may not even know about the program.
In public schools, resources allocated towards GATE programs only serve a portion of the school’s population. Gifted and curious students deserve a place to excel, but those kids are not solely white and Asian. When a lack of funding and regard for inclusion forces schools to retain the structure of the GATE program they have, it stays the way it is: exclusive.
Nonsense! Everything here is trying to be politically correct with equal opportunity and diversity. Every kid has a chance to get into GATE if they were talented. Why exclude the specially gifted kids just try to be politically correct.
Exactly!