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Race cut as factor for gifted admission

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Bush, who also has helped eliminate the use of race and ethnicity in state university admissions, said the state will get better results if it has "the same high expectations for all students."

"To suggest that we have lower standards for one group over another is a failed policy that yields the result that you start with," he said.

But Norman Chachkin, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the change will reduce the number of minority students who are identified as gifted. He said minority students in Florida are already underrepresented in the programs.

"When they get in, they succeed at the same rates as majority students," said Chachkin, director of litigation for the New York-based legal group that has long represented African-Americans and other minority groups in education cases.

The change, which Bush and the Cabinet members approved in a voice vote after no debate, stems from the state's decision to settle a federal lawsuit in Miami-Dade County, Education Commissioner Charlie Crist said. That lawsuit argued that the state discriminated against white and Asian students, who also were not covered by the policy.

Yesterday's change also comes about two years after Duval County schools ended the use of race in admitting students to magnet programs. That decision, which Duval County officials made after winning a decades-old desegregation case, did not affect gifted programs.

Mark Cashen, general director of exceptional student education for the Duval County schools, said the county has 4,045 students in its gifted programs this year. He said he expects to hear from the state about how the county should handle students who are being evaluated to enter the programs next year.

"I don't know what we're going to do to increase representation," Cashen said.

Of this year's gifted students, 2,852, or about 70 percent, are white, and 652, or about 16 percent, are black. By comparison, the system's overall enrollment is about 48 percent white and 43 percent black, according to figures reported to the state last fall.

The state has long tried to increase minority enrollment in the programs, which provide specialized instruction to high-achieving students. African-Americans and Hispanics traditionally have scored lower than their white and Asian counterparts on measures such as standardized tests, which makes it more difficult for them to get admitted to the gifted programs.

Duval County has used two systems to decide whether children are eligible for gifted programs. Most white and Asian students have needed to pass an initial standardized test and then score at least 130 on an IQ test to get admitted.

Minority students, children with limited English skills and low-income children have been evaluated on a series of factors, including grades and tests, but did not have to take the initial standardized test. They then have to score at least 120 on IQ tests.

Under the change, children with limited English skills and low-income children still could get into the programs with IQ scores of 120. But minority students who don't fall into either of those categories would have to meet the same requirements as white and Asian students.