An alarming report on the current state of excellence in the United States has been released today.

The conclusion of the report “Talent on the Sidelines: Excellence Gaps and the Persistence of America’s Permanent Talent Underclass” is that the United States is relying on less than half of its talent, with large percentages of our brightest students not even getting a chance to enter the room.

University of Connecticut Professor Jonathan Plucker and colleagues at two other universities examined data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and state assessments. Their most striking finding is the under-representation of low-income and minority students among those performing at the highest levels of academic achievement.

While the percentage of white students scoring at the advanced level in Grade 4 mathematics increased from 2.9 percent to 9 percent between 1996 and 2011, the percentage of high-scoring black students barely budged, reaching 1.1 percent in 2011. The math scores based on economic background were even more dramatic, with students ineligible for free or reduced-price lunches improving from 3.1 percent in the advanced range in 1996 to 11.4 percent in 2011. Less affluent students, meanwhile, went from 0.3 percent scoring in the advanced range to 1.8 percent.

They put these findings in perspective: In Grade 8, 8% of all eighth graders reached advanced levels in mathematics, which translates to about 290,000 of the 3.6 million eighth graders that exist in the United States. This means that out of the 44% of all students eligible for free and reduced meals (about 1.6 million), less than 40,000 would score at advanced levels, about 160,000 fewer students than if low-income students performed as well academically as more affluent students. This means that schools are losing about 160,000 high-performing eighth grade students every year.

The researchers conclude that America has developed a "permanent talent underclass":

"In an age of increasing global competitiveness, it is somewhat harrowing to imagine a future in which the largest, fastest-growing segments of our K-12 student population have almost no students performing at advanced levels academically. In many states, including many of our largest, this is already the reality."

The report also offers state-by-state comparisons, where the lack of non-white and poorer students among the highest achievers can be even more stark than the national average. In North Carolina, for example, the percentage of black students with advanced scores in Grade 4 math rounds to zero, while in Texas, an impressive 17 percent of more well-off students have advanced scores in that category, compared to just 3 percent of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches. Individual state profiles are available at the report web site (http://cepa.uconn.edu/mindthegap).

As Plucker and colleagues note: