History of GAGC Coalition for Access and Equity

In the Summer of 2020, following the lead for NAGC’s Championing Equity and Social Justice for Black Students in Gifted Education: An Expanded Vision for NAGC, the Georgia Association for Gifted Children’s Executive Board released a similar message. They committed to ensuring an action-oriented approach to bring about change in Georgia concerning equity and access. As a result, a standing GAGC committee, the Coalition for Access and Equity, was created.

Since August 2020, this coalition has focused on creating actionable items around the GAGC Statement on Anti-Racism, established working groups to address the systemic racism and racial inequality faced by students from underrepresented groups, and committing to educate themselves and others as agents of change.

To initiate this work, the coalition identified challenges impacting equity and access in Georgia.  They used a creative problem-solving model, dedicating time to problem-sensing and fact-finding about the experiences of students and teachers.  

As a part of that fact-finding and problem-sensing framework, the group brought in two nationally recognized leaders in gifted education, both homegrown leaders and scholars from Georgia. Dr. Sally Krisel has served as gifted teacher, gifted coordinator, and state coordinator of gifted programs. She issued a challenge to the group to take leadership as a state to demonstrate to other states the important work of equity. She shares, “It’s been almost 30 years since GAGC courageously embraced and promoted Dr. Mary Frasier’s research on equitable identification procedures. We changed state law. We changed SBOE Rule. We literally changed the face of gifted education in the state and, indirectly, across the country. What GAGC accomplished was extraordinary, but as the British poet Percy Shelley reminds us: ‘Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.  Recent events have made clear that we still have far to go to rid our country of the scourge of systemic racism. And, while we have made progress, minority children are still significantly underrepresented in our gifted programs. It is time for GAGC to once again be courageous in demanding change. It’s time to define new cutting-edge policies and practices to promote equity, inclusion, and anti-racism in gifted education."

The second guest who addressed the group was Dr. Kristina Henry Collins.  Dr. Collins is the core faculty for Talent Development at Texas State University.  Dr. Collins offered insight and practical application for organizations, including those in gifted and talented education (GATE), that seek to translate symbolic support into real action for change, equity, and social justice. She shared how forging actions for change without redressing the institutional racism and systemic biases that exist will inevitably equate to more of the same with only a new label or new name; she posits that redressing institutional racism and systemic biases compel a shift in strategic thinking and action planning that first recognizes that the solution does not lie in fixing a system that is broken, but understanding, first and foremost, that the system is operating in the exact way that it was designed – embedded with racist ideology, implicit biases, exclusionary intent, and inequitable desired outcomes.

Following these presentations, coalition members gathered to apply Dr. Mary Frasier’s 4 A’s (access, accommodation, assessment and attitude) to cross-reference our challenges, problems, and solutions, ultimately finalizing a series of priorities for the coalition (Frasier, 1997).  Using thematic analysis, we organized these issues into categories of professional learning, policy, and resources, which then became our ongoing working groups. Each group addressed relevant challenges, leading the coalition to identify 14 projects to pursue over a 3-5 year period.

References

Frasier, M. M. (1997). Gifted minority students: Reframing approaches to their identification and education. In Handbook of Gifted Education. essay, Allyn & Bacon.