Recently, I learned that Denver, CO has a new type of educational program that I had not heard about in my fifteen or so years as an educator — Highly Gifted and Talented. This program carries with it categorical and educational significance that matters beyond the local context. The rise of Highly Gifted and Talented programs (HGT) — as a more selective offshoot of Gifted and Talented programs — indicates that students who are placed in these programs are somehow different from most students in school. The creation of these programs brings several questions to the surface: When did these programs arise? For what reasons? What do these programs mean in relation to other educational initiatives like (full) inclusion?

As I reread Sleeter's (1987) "Why is there learning disabilities?" I was faced with an uncanny similarity between rationale she exposes behind the rise of learning disabilities (LD) in the 1960s and the emerging discourse surrounding HGT programs in Denver, Colorado. I found many similarities between the rise in local policy discourse surrounding HGT programs in Denver Public Schools (DPS) and Sleeter's political analysis of the rise of LD. These similarities extend to the rise of academic standards in schools and to a new form of white middle class protectionism. I argue that the rise of HGT since 2000 has a clear historical and political link to mandated desegregation policies (1973-1995) in Denver and also to the rise of inclusion (1990s) in schools. Both factors created schools and classrooms which were more heterogeneous than before. Shortly thereafter, the first HGT program began.

In this article, I begin with an historical and policy account of the local context that supported a rise of HGT in the past eight years. Then I use three key rationales from Sleeter's paper to frame how the justification of the rise of LD in the 1960s is reconstituted into the discourse supporting the rise of HGT in recent years. Sleeter's reasoning about the rise in LD coupled with a current analysis of HGT demonstrates maintenance of racial and class stratification in the local public school system. Finally, I offer an example of one school in Denver that uses the HGT designation quite differently than the other schools; it uses HGT and the added resources attached to it to improve education opportunities of all students at the school.

Classifying students

Classification systems are used to sort students, teachers, and classrooms. They result in a system that privileges a few, ignores most, and denies others rigorous academic engagement in schools. Therefore, when new categories arise, their development must be analyzed. The new category is encompassed within an institutional context that leads to a construction of a new identity, new institutionalized perspectives and new understandings about children in schools. The underlying epistemologies behind a new category are not often apparent to participants in the system, but can be exposed through careful scrutiny of the new category (Bowker & Star, 1999).

The analysis in this paper follows a tradition established by social theories of deviance (Becker, 1963), labeling theory (Mercer, 1973), and examination of the effects of stigma (Goffman, 1963). It also follows a tradition in critical special education of questioning purposes (Skrtic, 1995), special education classifications (Dunn, 1968), placement options (Gartner & Lipsky, 1987; Lipsky & Gartner, 1996), and issues of overrepresentation of students of color and English Language Learners in special education (Artiles, 2003; Banks et al., 2005; Patton et al., 2003). These theories provide the foundation for examining the rise of a new category that targets a very small group of students who are thought to have "exceptional intellectual ability and academic potential." The analysis is doubly important when prior investigation into gifted programs has demonstrated a relationship between gifted programs and resegregation in schools (Oakes, 2005; People who care v. Rockford Board of Education, 1993).

Who are HGT students1

DPS states that the "Highly Gifted Program provides an educational option for identified students whose exceptional intellectual ability and academic potential, with related social/emotional needs, exceed those addressed in a regular classroom. It provides a full-day school experience and is designed for students who have academic needs beyond their grade level and who need the support and challenge provided by a peer group with similar interests and abilities" (DPS, n.d.b).

HGT students are "defined as having intellectual ability and academic potential in the top two percent2 of all students" (DPS, 2001a). A child who qualifies for HGT often possesses the following traits as evidenced in the HGT application form for 2009-2010: the child is "curious about everything," is "a fast learner," "uses advanced vocabulary," and/ or "speaks like an adult," is an "early or eager reader," "expresses strong beliefs, ideas, or opinions," has exceptional short or long term memory," "generalizes information across settings," "understands abstract ideas," "is a leader of children the same age," "needs everything to be perfect," and is "extremely sensitive to others." This form also asks for examples about a student's verbal, spatial mechanical, construction, and problem solving expression (DPS, n.d.c). The principal at one of the HGT elementary magnets has this to say about HGT youngsters, "they are very different children — difficult to raise. They are very intense. This is a safe place for kids to be, and ask their weird questions and make up their strange games" (Meyer, 2008). She is proud of the growth of HGT in DPS and wants "kids from all backgrounds … to have the same opportunity to be safe and weird in their brilliance" (Meyer, 2008).

This new category of HGT, created through parental and organizational pressure on the DPS Board, consists of students whose defining characteristics could encompass a broad range of students from a variety of backgrounds. Sleeter (1987) states:

Reforms were to help schools more efficiently fit every child for a 'place' in society, with some 'places' clearly more desirable and profitable than others. Advocates of school reform envisioned their own children among those who would rank as 'bright' or at least 'average', and therefore would receive the better teachers, beefed-up programs, and more lucrative opportunities. (p. 219)

Evidence points to HGT privileging white, middle class children over the rest of children in DPS. The next section examines the institutional history that lead to the adoption of HGT in 2001.

Situating Highly Gifted and Talented

This section historically locates the demographic changes that have happened in DPS in relation to other large schooling changes like inclusion, desegregation, HGT, and resegregation in the district (See Figure 1). Since 1973 Denver has been under a court desegregation order whereby busing and racial integration were imperative for determining school populations. This ended in 1995, when Judge Matsch lifted the order and the Denver Public School Board voted to reintroduce neighborhood schooling. As might be expected, schools began to resegregate because of demographic shifts and the end of court ordered busing (Horn & Kurlaender, 2006). From 1994 to 2003 the white population in DPS decreased by 7%, the black population decreased by 2%, and the Latino population rose by 12%. At the same time, "DPS has begun to see a rise in the number of racially isolated schools" (Horn & Kurlaender, 2006, p. 7). Fully half of the elementary schools went through "noticeable change in white representation" (p. 8) after 1995.

Figure 1

• 1973   Court-ordered desegretation
• 1976   Gifted and Talented
• 1990   Rise of inclusion
• 1995   End of court-ordered desegretation
• 2000   Highly Gifted and Talented
• 2008   Changes to DPS' HGT application

Racial changes to the schools meant socio-economic changes as well. Race and class are highly inversely correlated in Denver. Schools with low white enrollment have a high number of students with a low socioeconomic status. Schools with a high concentration of poverty have "negative educational consequences on all students" there (Horn & Kurlaender, 2006, p. 11). Therefore, racial shifts following the end of busing in Denver left some schools with fewer resources and more needs than other schools in Denver, which left students more segregated in the district than before.

During the same time period, inclusion of students with disabilities rose in the district, although the Colorado Department of Education maintained a concern for and maintenance of a continuum of services (Duhaney, 1999). These two factors precipitated the 2000 proposal for formally adding HGT programs to the district.

Although Gifted and Talented has been a category under the Exceptional Children's Educational Act since 1976, a new sub-category officially emerged in Denver in 2000-2001 (C.R.S. 22-20-101 et. seq.) called Highly Gifted and Talented (this category does not exist anywhere else in the state). An HGT program arose as a pilot program in 1985 in a partnership between a local university and DPS (Teller Elementary, 2008). After several years of partnership the two entities split; the university created a university-based educational center and DPS decided to continue the HGT program as an official program starting in the 2000-2001 school year. Shortly thereafter, the DPS school board passed Resolution 2716 which provided guidelines for the few highly gifted elementary programs in the district (DPS, 2001a). A year later, school board meeting minutes indicated a need to increase the number of HGT programs from six to seven because of increased parental interest in placing students in these programs. The board also showed interest in this proposal because of worries about the "number of students who were attending private schools" in the area instead of staying in DPS. Parents also indicated that adding an HGT program to the seventh school, that already housed a program for students with hearing disabilities, "would enhance the appeal as a neighborhood school and expand their diversity" (DPS, 2002c). At that same meeting, another school that already housed an HGT program wanted to expand their program to include students who were labeled "high achieving students3 ." In this case, the school wanted to expand their program by opening the program to a broader group of students so that the few students in HGT would remain at the school; the other option was closing the HGT program because of low student enrollment, meaning that the HGT students most likely would leave (and their high test scores would too). This school had recently lost other students because they and their families followed "highly popular teachers" to a new school that recently opened (the new school is a K-8 and has a much higher population of white students, from 14.86% at the former school to 43.01% at the latter) (DPS, 2002c).

In early 2003, a member from the Denver Association for Gifted and Talented came to the school board with concerns about children that were being held back by No Child Left Behind. He felt that HGT students needed to be "allowed to forge ahead when they were performing above grade level" (DPS, 2003). A year later this same gentleman came back to the school board with two causes of concern; the first, a continued worry that the district was keeping advanced students from their potential because he felt they were receiving less attention and resources than "below average students," and he also asked the board to support an HGT high school in Denver (DPS, 2004).

School board commentary about HGT programs quieted down in 2005 and 2006 and then resurged in 2007. In early 2007 a parent commended the school board for "the district's commitment for two new schools for the 2008-2009 school year, one of which is a highly gifted magnet school" (DPS, 2007a). Two weeks later a resolution passed for the creation of the newest HGT program (DPS, 2007d). At that same meeting, a board member asked that the new school "aggressively recruit highly gifted students from low income and minority families" (DPS, 2007b). Two months later, a parent representative of the new HGT program told the board that the parent outreach committee's mission "is to reach out and recruit students that the gifted identification and testing process may miss; and to ensure cultural, ethnic, and economic diversity at the school and the new gifted program" (DPS, 2007c).

This issue recently gained more momentum. The Denver Post wrote an article titled "Minorities, poor get 'highly gifted' lift" in early 2008. This article cites a new entrance system into DPS' HGT programs that "gives extra credit to children who are economically disadvantaged or non-native English speakers" (Meyer, 2008). The article explains that HGT programs up until the present have "drawn mostly white students in a district that is mostly Latino (57% Latino, 20% white, and 19% black)" (Meyer, 2008). Right now only 25% of HGT students in the district are non-white. The new changes to entrance criteria are supposed to make that percentage rise to 30% (Meyer, 2008). Though only a 5% increase, the increase represents a "threefold increase" of English Language Learners and students who receive free and reduced lunch participating in the HGT program over the previous year (Meyer, 2008).

As of 2008, there is still no HGT high school in Denver. Enrollment in elementary and middle school HGT programs continues to be highly competitive, with a lottery and a waiting list every year.

Inclusion in Denver

Inclusion has risen nationwide over the past two decades. By 2000 "Most students (about 96 percent) with disabilities are being educated in regular school buildings. Almost half of all students with disabilities (46.5 percent) are being educated in the regular classroom for most of the school day. That is, they are outside the regular classroom for less than 21 percent of the school day" — or inside the classroom for about 80% of the school day (US Department of Education (DOE), 2003, p. 43). This number is slightly lower for students with LD, 44% of whom spend less than 21% of their time outside of the regular classroom (p. 44). In Colorado, the statistics are more promising. As of 2000-2001, 71% of students designated as having special educational needs in Colorado spent 80% or more of their time in the regular classroom. For students with LD that number rises to 76% (DOE, 2003).

One way that districts in Colorado choose to include students with disabilities is through a model of special education called the "center-school format" where all disabled students are bused to specific schools in order to pool services and personnel. In DPS, students with disabilities are bussed to 50 of the 63 elementary schools in the city. Students with different disability labels are served at different schools (Hubler, 2003). There are center programs at six of the eight HGT serving schools. Each school differs in the level of integration for students with disabilities and for HGT students.

In talking about inclusion, the Department of Education (2003) indicated that, "The trend over the past 10 years (from 1990 to 2000) has been to serve more children in less restrictive environments" (p. 50). However, an inverse trend is apparent with HGT programs in Denver. Students in HGT programs are placed in more restrictive settings, like HGT self-contained classes or in an HGT specific school. Inclusion is a way to have more students in the same environment interacting with each other academically as well as socially but what happens educationally and socially when there is one group of students entering the classroom while another group is leaving?

Rationales behind the recent rise of Highly Gifted and Talented

The context of the language surrounding the rise of and current definitions of HGT mimics many of the same reasons for separating out LD as a separate educational category in Sleeter's (1987) article. This section of the paper examines the theories of action pertaining to the rise of LD in Sleeter's (1987) paper in relation to discourses used in data gathered about the rise of HGT programs in Denver today. Gee (1996) argues that the ways in which discourses are used among members of a community demonstrate one way of being in that community. He states (1996), "the way we use language in particular contexts not only represents perspectives, but creates them as well" (p. 1905). Cherryholmes (1988) iterates, "All speech is action.... What is done with an utterance is material" (p. 7). The common language used around LD and HGT serves to justify the existence of separate programs and to justify finding new ways of segregating students in school. The rationale and the language used to explain the rationale is a "normalizing discourse, which has the potential to render invisible other kinds of knowledge and pedagogies" (Kornfeld et al., 2007, p. 1924) like that of creating truly inclusive classrooms where all students belong and thrive.

In Sleeter's article, she provides three main rationales for the rise of LD in American schools, first for white students and later for students of color in the US school system. These reasons are that 1) LD helps schools preserve inequalities, 2) LD helps give parents bio-medical reasons for their child's perceived differences, and 3) an LD designation provides extra resources in a system that has scarce resources. In Sleeter's article (1987), each rationale also relates to school resegregation. These rationales support different stake holders' views on what is important about public education and how to achieve those important social, political, economic, and educational goals. These same rationales exist today in the data collected for this study about the rise of HGT programs in DPS. Ferri and Connor (2006) demonstrate the linkages between the discourse of desegregation and inclusion — both serve to continue to exclude some students from schools and classrooms. In this study, I examine a similar but different effect where students are not systematically excluded but who actively find ways to "fly the coop" in similar ways to traditional white flight from urban areas (Armor, 1986).

The next section provides analysis of the rationales behind the rise of HGT programs. The analysis is based on an understanding of Sleeter's three rationales for the rise of LD in the 1960s. As I undertook an historical policy analysis of the rise of HGT Programs in DPS, I turned to several data sources: 20 years of legislative and news sources in Colorado from 1987 to present, Denver board of Education minutes from 2001 to present, State Board of education minutes, the Colorado Department of Education website, and the DPS website. The data reflects 1987 as a start date which corresponds to the publication date of Sleeter's article.

Lessons from the rise of HGT in DPS

Denver is undergoing many educational and demographic changes. In recent years the number of white students has fallen in the district and the number of students of color has risen and will continue to rise. In addition to the rise of students of color is the rise of students with disabilities in general education classrooms. In a school system that is based on scarcity and meritocracy, one can see why parents want to do what it takes to get the "best" education for their children. This system rewards getting to the top and staying there. Being part of a system that tries to integrate everyone into the same classroom produces fears about a lack of rigor due to heterogeneous groupings, a lack of hierarchy if there is nowhere "better" to be, and a lack of trust that the system will educate all students well.

In light of DPS' changes, one can ask: Why this program now? Although there is not a direct correspondence between race, class, and HGT, as has been shown to be the case for LD, there is enough circumstantial evidence to question the rise of HGT in Denver at a time when more students with disabilities and more students of color are flooding general classrooms. It is well documented that many school practices and policies benefit middle class and wealthy students — often at the expense of students in poverty (Darling-Hammond & Post, 2000; Kozol, 1992). Students of color and students with disabilities make up a great percentage of those in poverty. Therefore, classist underpinnings of schooling affect both these groups of students. Denver is the only district in the state to have HGT programs and it is the district with the least number of white students in the state. This could mean that the HGT program is opening challenging opportunities to all students in the district. It could also mean that HGT is a way to keep white students in the district. Recently parents of color and advocacy groups have noticed a racial discrepancy between students in these programs and the overall school and student populations. The rise of HGT now helps explain why 75% of the HGT programs are in schools with more than 50% white students.

Is dismantling HGT the best solution in Denver? We know that DPS is firmly entrenched in beliefs about meritocracy, white, middle class students and their parents benefit overwhelmingly from this meritocratic system. We also know that parents want to maintain status and have some control over deciding the "best" school for their children. If we try to create an egalitarian system it will just send those same parents off to find "something better" — which means leaving the district. So instead of creating a new reason for white flight, what else can be done in an urban area like Denver, where "white parents flee to make the best possible life for their children within a social context they accept" (Sleeter, 1987, p. 233)?

Everyone has the "desire to be part of a set of functionally relevant and valued social norms and institutions," but these norms and institutions will have to change quite dramatically to meet this desire (Kittay, 2006, p. 97). One idea for changing norms and institutions that benefit from HGT is to show parents how creating a truly egalitarian class can give all students a chance to excel in school (Hart et al., 2004). Another idea is to develop a broader sense of giftedness in the school and community (Matthews & Foster, 2005). A third is to create creative ways to keep students interested at school. These include whole grade or subject specific acceleration, as well as forms of enrichment like mentorship, career exploration, books, and online possibilities (Matthews & Foster, 2005). Horn and Kurlaender (2006) note that "white students in integrated settings exhibit more racial tolerance and less fear of their black peers over time than their counterparts in segregated environments … and leads to their likelihood of cross-racial interactions and friendships" (p. 5). If white parents see evidence that their child learns valued social and academic skills and receives extra value in the form of what desegregation does for white students, then maybe we have a chance at making schools into a part of the democratic process in this nation.

The newest HGT program in Denver is striving to do things differently than before. It sees adoption of an HGT program as something that will benefit all students in the school. Much like other inclusive practices that open classrooms up for all students through creating multiple entry and exit paths to a lesson or giving students choice in their own learning, this "school's goal is to create intentional and effective learning environments for all students. Every child … will benefit from this highly differentiated curriculum, instruction and assessment" (Teller Elementary, 2008). Rather than pulling students away from each other and creating an environment where some learn more, better, or differently than others, this new program understands its mission to bring new pedagogies to everyone at the school. It sees how "every child benefits both academically and socially by interacting with many different children with many different special gifts. This model is real life" (Teller Elementary, 2008).

Popkewitz (2002) argues that curricular decisions "obscure the normalizing and dividing practices of teaching. This includes reformulating questions of diversity into a particular curriculum enactment that has consequences for social exclusion and inclusion" (p. 262). HGT, like other categories in schooling, does not, in and of itself, have to be dividing — but in practice it often is. It often divides students based on race, class, and ability even though the official rationales do not articulate these hidden curricula. The discourses highlighted in this paper demonstrate that HGT programs are often used as a mechanism to diminish white flight from the district, but result in white flight within the district. The rationales behind HGT discourses parallel in many ways those demonstrated by Sleeter in the rise of learning disabilities: preservation of inequalities, bio-medical (or significantly different intellectually) reasons for children's perceived differences, and extra resources in a system that has scarce resources.

HGT, whether a term for one child or a group of children, impacts that child, other children with the same label, other children at the school and at other schools, teachers, parents, administrators, and the list could go on. This new category in DPS is shaping "in profound ways the possibilities for learning and change" back to the status quo of segregated Denver public schools (Cook-Sather & Youens, 2007, p. 62). However, HGT also has the possibility, as in the case of the newest HGT program, to shape classrooms that benefit every child both academically and socially, but it will take careful and continual pressure to break away from the status quo and create schools and classrooms that benefit all of Denver's students equally.