Identifying Hispanic Gifted Children: A Screening

Rural Special Education Quarterly, Winter 2004 by Brice, Alejandro, Brice, Roanne

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Strong correlations between Reading and Academic checklist scores were found. This was the only strong correlation found when Reading was compared to the teacher checklist. It is known that English language learning Hispanic students are at a disadvantage in terms of verbal skills when measured with traditional, standardized tests (Brice, 2002; Brice & Perkins, 1997; Cheng, 1996; Hakuta, 1986; Peterson, 2000; Rosebcrry-McKibbin, 2002). However, strong correlations were found for Math teacher checklist scores of: Intellectual, Motivation, Leadership, Academic and Total Checklist. Thus, if educators are to consider the use of standardized test scores, such as the Stanford Achievement test scores, then it makes sense that math may be less linguistically biased against bilingual or culturally and linguistically diverse students. It should be noted that the Academic Checklist scores and Intellectual scores correlated the highest with the Stanford Math scores. Total Checklist and Leadership student behaviors were also highly correlated. Thus, these behaviors are directly observable and should guide teachers in making in classroom assessments of their students' abilities.

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The T.A.R.G.E.T. B Teacher Checklist

The T.A.R.G.E.T. B teacher checklist is a districtdeveloped instrument to assist teachers identifying gifted behaviors in children. However, upon closer examination, with aid from a review of the literature, the authors felt that 13/S5 (24%) of the items were culturally biased. Those items which are possibly biased items are reported in Table 2. Almost one fourth of the items seemed to reflect a NorthAmerican, middle class or Anglo-American bias. These items will be discussed to illustrate the potential biases in examining student behaviors. While these biases may not have been intentional, their perspective is still damaging to culturally and linguistically diverse students. The majority of the critiques deal with the noted difference in cultures between the Mexican-American population sampled in this study and that of the North, Anglo-American orientation that the schools display, particularly that the schools display an "Individualistic" or "I" culture, whereas, Hispanic students are known to display characteristics of a "Collcctivistic" culture or display a group orientation (Gudykunst, 1991; TingToomcy, 1994; Triandis, 199S). For example, the behaviors of "Works well independently", "Initiates a lot of activities", "Is very assertive", and "Does not always go with the crowd" are not always typical of the Hispanic culture (Bricc, 2002). Other behaviors dealt with asking questions and contributing to discussions. Again, Hispanic students may not share in a large classroom environment where this type of behavior is seen as "showing off" and not "being humble" (Roseberry-McKibbin, 2002; Pctcrson, 2000). These and other concerns regarding this teacher checklist are presented in Table Two. Those behaviors which are suspected of being culturally inappropriate for Hispanic students are noted by an asterisk on the T.A.R.G.E.T. B teacher checklist.

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Identifying Hispanic Gifted Children: A Screening

Rural Special Education Quarterly, Winter 2004 by Brice, Alejandro, Brice, Roanne

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