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Thread: Someone who was their state's school counselor of the year a few years ago has been tweeting about how recognition and delivery of special ed services to a gifted child is a sign of school bias and failure. This is dangerous thinking.
Many disabilities and difficulties and differences can co-exist with intellectual giftedness. It is a not a sign of school failure if a child who receives needed services is also intelligent and highly able. That is a sign of school success. Go, school!
Children are "allowed" to be both strong and vulnerable. Students can have both strengths and needs. It is not "Eurocentric" to give children of color support in learning. What would be racist would be to deny it to them.
Issues of bias against segments of a population exist everywhere. This is not an American problem alone. It affects highly-able children around the world. We are biased against learning disabilities, as well as race.
We often look at students who are culturally and/or linguistically different from the majority population when we look at equity issues in #gifteded, yet students with disabilities are perhaps an equally great equity issue. And these issues can be conflated.
At deep risk are our gifted children of color with learning differences. Bias is strongest where bias is oldest. Our schools have gifted children with disabilities. We often miss them, and we need to face it.
Later success does not mean that previous services or diagnoses were inaccurate or biased. It can mean that they worked. Two of my gifted sons received speech services. This was needed & necessary. It was not a slight to them or their intelligence. I'm grateful it was available.
There is danger in attempting to say that dyslexia or other learning differences are not problems. When we do that, we go down a slippery slope of denial and perhaps removal of the funding for needed services. We fund what we want to help. 
Human thinking is complex, and it is not race-based. 
Humans often have strengths and needs. Humans often need support in order to achieve all they can. I can have dysgraphia or a math processing disorder and still need gifted services. I can benefit from both.
Humans often have strengths and needs. Humans often need support in order to achieve all they can. I can have dysgraphia or a math processing disorder and still need gifted services. I can benefit from both.
Does inequity exist? Of course. Does it mean that a child of color who is identified as having dyslexia and is also intelligent was necessarily a victim of a racist school system? I do not see how you can draw that conclusion. 
The answer is not to deny the co-existence of learning difficulties and differences. The answer is to recognize that you can be gifted and have what I call a "gift with purchase." 
You can be "smart" and [insert learning difference here.]
True equity will be when all children receive the services they need to allow all of their talents and abilities shine, regardless of where they live, what color they are, or how much money their parents have. That's equity. And its time is now.
