LAUSD Needs More Space for Gifted

Re “Gifted Education: a Broken Ladder,” Opinion, Aug. 5: You don’t need to be a minority parent to see the shortcomings of the LAUSD gifted program. Article after article seems to feel it necessary to overemphasize the “minority” position on this issue, when the entire system is broken. There are two steps in the process: identifying gifted children and providing an adequate educational challenge to all those so identified.

The article seems to place a lot more emphasis on the inability of schools to adequately identify gifted children, when there are already fewer than half the requisite gifted classrooms to place them in.

Once identified as gifted, it is actually harder for Anglo children to get into a gifted program than for minorities, because the ratio of Anglos identified as gifted to the spots available is far worse than for most minorities. An Anglo parent such as myself could claim that the program is significantly biased in favor of gifted minorities, because they get into the existing slots in greater proportion than gifted Anglos do.

My daughter has been classified as gifted for several years and has been on a gifted magnet waiting list the entire time, with no guarantee of getting into a gifted magnet school no matter how well she does in the future.

We need more openings for gifted students.

Dennis Campbell

Los Angeles