Seattle Is Shutting Down Schools For Gifted Children Because They Are Too White And Asian

Seattle has shuttered its gifted and talented programs because the school board determined they had too many white and Asian students. The district began phasing out its Highly Capable Cohort schools and classrooms for advanced students in the 2021-22 school year because they found it had too many racial inequities. School bosses said black and Hispanic students were underrepresented at the schools. According to Seattle Public School data, of the highly capable students in the 2022-23 school year, 52 percent were white, 16 percent were Asian and 3.4 percent were black. During a January 22, 2020, school board meeting, parents of black students in the Highly Capable Cohort asked the board to consider finding ways to incorporate students of color into the gifted program rather than shut it down. Then school board vice president Chandra Hampson slammed those parents saying, 'this is a pretty masterful job at tokenizing a really small community of color within the existing cohort.'