ABSTRACT
The achievement gap notwithstanding, there are African Americans who obtain the gifted and talented label in both school-based and university-based programs. In this chapter, giftedness is defined as superior performance in a given domain relative to other high performers in one's peer group. The achievement gap between African American students and many of their Asian American and European American counterparts is a longstanding and vexing problem in American education. All gifted programs originate with the identification process; therefore, it is important to define the aspect of giftedness that will be served by the program prior to beginning the identification task. Researchers need to extend the studies that are currently reducing the achievement gap in African Americans to African American students in gifted and talented programs to see if the same types of gains will result. Researchers also need to conduct longitudinal research on African Americans across the achievement range to understand the trajectories of students into and through gifted programs.
