The search is turning up students like Emariye Louden, who was debating subjects with his mother virtually since he could talk and knew a slew of birth dates, phone numbers and spelling words by age 4.
In 2008, the district determined that there were no gifted kids at 99th Street Elementary, Emariye's school. Under the new program, school psychologists discovered 13. The school is 75 percent Hispanic and 25 percent black. Nearly half are still learning English and nearly all are poor.
The partnership hopes to give the students the specific nurturing they need, and to demonstrate that neglected schools have extraordinary kids too.
"It's allowed us to ramp up our expectations for children," Angela Bass, the nonprofit's superintendent of instruction, told the Los Angeles Times for a story published Sunday. Bass said that at many schools, "we've missed the fact that our children are really talented. We need to make sure our teachers know that, our parents know that and our students know they are gifted."
The newly discovered students will get additional activities in their current classrooms, bigger campus projects, discussions with scientists and field trips to museums like the Getty Center.
"In the second grade Emariye now has something not everybody has," said Emariye's mother, Tynesha Warren, a medical assistant. "And it's going to follow him for the rest of his life. It could expand his life and open doors. It gives him the opportunity to be noticed."
L.A. Unified Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines said that along with "insidious racism," a chief reason why gifted black and Latino students have gone unnoticed is that most of the district's effort to find and cultivate extraordinary students has been aimed at creating incentives to stay in L.A. schools for middle-class white and Asian students deemed likely to leave for other districts or private schools.
Districtwide, white and Asian students make up 39.4 percent of students designated as gifted despite making up just 12 percent of the students enrolled.
The positive results of early searches will bring an expansion of the program. Cortines and his chief academic officer, Judy Elliott, have ordered that all second graders will be tested starting next year.
Schools receive no additional funding from the state for designating students as gifted.