NYC eliminating gifted and talented program

[Anonymous]

I would have streaming within the same school. There would be frequent testing opportunities to get into the gifted program throughout the year with clearly defined benchmarks and any kid who wants to can sit the test.

My experience of teacher recommendations is that they reward nice middle class kids and equally bright kids with a bit of a edge get disregard. I witnessed it going to a predominantly white working class school my self. You could feel the differences in how some teachers interacted with different kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think they should eliminate g&t - they should ensure it is demographically balanced.

I live in NYC. I'm born and raised here and have lived here my entire life.

They're are only 5 schools with the programs. It's literally in only certain areas.

MANY, MANY parents don't even know the program exist. I didn't even know this program existed until 2 years ago! HA!

I live in NYC too. You are thinking about schools like Anderson and NEST. But there are also G&T programs in many local elementary schools operating like a separate track.

Isn’t nest for kids on the spectrum?

No, my niece is there. Tested in at 4. From what my sister tells me, it functions like a private school. Huge budget for PTA, after school fencing, chess, multiple languages, swimming.

[Anonymous]

Gosh, I know nothing about NYC schools, but as a kid who was bored in public school for years and years, I really wish there was a way to sort this out. All kids deserve to be challenged.

My life got appreciably better when I was allowed to start taking a half day of high school classes as a 7th grader. Latin, French, Advance Algebra, Orchestra. It was like the world opened to me after years of being locked in remedial classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax County will go that way soon. They are doing everything they can to dismantle their AAP program.

I have almost finished my third decade working in an ES for FCPS. I think it was much better when the program was GT and students who truly “thought outside the box” got into the program. Now many of the students who are in the program are in it solely because of test scores or because parents were squeaky wheels. Many of the students aren’t flexible in their thinking at all and are actually quite rigid with their mindset.

Your last sentience is a dog whistle for anti-Asian racism, bigot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax County will go that way soon. They are doing everything they can to dismantle their AAP program.

I have almost finished my third decade working in an ES for FCPS. I think it was much better when the program was GT and students who truly “thought outside the box” got into the program. Now many of the students who are in the program are in it solely because of test scores or because parents were squeaky wheels. Many of the students aren’t flexible in their thinking at all and are actually quite rigid with their mindset.

Your last sentience is a dog whistle for anti-Asian racism, bigot.

Yes.

When I grew up people were always saying this kind of stuff about smart Asian kids. "They're smart but they're robotic, no creativity." In every context -- math, music (ironically), whatever. It's nonsense, it's horrible, and it is absolutely racist. It comes from seeing kids as representatives of their ethnic group rather than as individuals. It's part and parcel with Harvard systematically dinging Asian applicants on personality.

Of course it is entirely possible OP is not describing of Asian kids with the "quite rigid" comment. But this pops up often enough that it's certainly worth addressing. The anti-Asian aspects of the anti-GT stuff is kind of unmistakable at this point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax County will go that way soon. They are doing everything they can to dismantle their AAP program.

I have almost finished my third decade working in an ES for FCPS. I think it was much better when the program was GT and students who truly “thought outside the box” got into the program. Now many of the students who are in the program are in it solely because of test scores or because parents were squeaky wheels. Many of the students aren’t flexible in their thinking at all and are actually quite rigid with their mindset.

Your last sentience is a dog whistle for anti-Asian racism, bigot.

WTH?? Of course kids who always get the "right" answer can't be flexible in their thinking. They know how to test & spend lots of time practicing how to do it. Maybe even on the spectrum. It's not all about you and your I assume Asian bias.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax County will go that way soon. They are doing everything they can to dismantle their AAP program.

I have almost finished my third decade working in an ES for FCPS. I think it was much better when the program was GT and students who truly “thought outside the box” got into the program. Now many of the students who are in the program are in it solely because of test scores or because parents were squeaky wheels. Many of the students aren’t flexible in their thinking at all and are actually quite rigid with their mindset.

Your last sentience is a dog whistle for anti-Asian racism, bigot.

WTH?? Of course kids who always get the "right" answer can't be flexible in their thinking. They know how to test & spend lots of time practicing how to do it. Maybe even on the spectrum. It's not all about you and your I assume Asian bias.

Love how you insert the casual autism reference there you douche.

[Anonymous]

Isn't the solution to this debate to just award a specific number of spots to each school or district?

I find testing kindergarten aged students and then streaming them from that to be really weird.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would have streaming within the same school. There would be frequent testing opportunities to get into the gifted program throughout the year with clearly defined benchmarks and any kid who wants to can sit the test.

My experience of teacher recommendations is that they reward nice middle class kids and equally bright kids with a bit of a edge get disregard. I witnessed it going to a predominantly white working class school my self. You could feel the differences in how some teachers interacted with different kids.

So the gifted classes start out empty and just get bigger? I assure you, public schools don’t have that kind of money.

Or the gifted classes start out full, and we keep packing them in like sardines.

Or, as kids test in, others get bumped out. I assure you that won’t go well.

Nice idea, if we had unlimited resources.

[Anonymous]

It’s 2021, we have online classes now. We are no longer constricted by physical classroom sizes. There doesn’t need to a cap of the number of kids in a gifted class. The only limit is the number that meet the academic standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax County will go that way soon. They are doing everything they can to dismantle their AAP program.

I have almost finished my third decade working in an ES for FCPS. I think it was much better when the program was GT and students who truly “thought outside the box” got into the program. Now many of the students who are in the program are in it solely because of test scores or because parents were squeaky wheels. Many of the students aren’t flexible in their thinking at all and are actually quite rigid with their mindset.

Your last sentience is a dog whistle for anti-Asian racism, bigot.

Right. Not sure why democrats think anti-Asian racism is ok but are the self-proclaimed defenders of every other group. It’s disgusting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax County will go that way soon. They are doing everything they can to dismantle their AAP program.

I have almost finished my third decade working in an ES for FCPS. I think it was much better when the program was GT and students who truly “thought outside the box” got into the program. Now many of the students who are in the program are in it solely because of test scores or because parents were squeaky wheels. Many of the students aren’t flexible in their thinking at all and are actually quite rigid with their mindset.

Your last sentience is a dog whistle for anti-Asian racism, bigot.

No, it is a statement of fact and entirely independent of race. If you want to interpret it as Asian-specific, that's on you.

Some kids can solve a difficult-for-their-grade-level math problem using a particular methodology, and if you ask them "great, can you now show me another way you could approach solving this problem?" they can come up with one or more alternatives and demonstrate thoughtfulness and creativity in doing so. Others will look at you like a deer-in-headlights as if you just started speaking Greek. We need to help those students develop that muscle, but it's a lot of work and shows they are in a different place than their peers ("same-race" peers, if that's a hangup for you) in terms of their academic development and potential to flourish in a GT/AAP environment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I always hear good things about Ember charter school, a predominantly black school in Brooklyn.

Why does it matter if schools are public or charter as long as there is equitable access?

Why does it matter if school employees have health insurance and job protections?

I mean matters to the kids, the objective that should be priority.

My home town went hard core into charter schools to solve their declining and underfunded public schools. It was such a mess. They had charter schools in strip malls. They had charter schools teaching whatever crazy curriculum they wanted — one of my nephews went to a “Montessori” one and turned out to be illiterate because no one had taught him to read. Many had super high teacher turnover and just had teachers. The theory behind charters is that they can be more creative and less regulated. But unless they are closely monitored with guard rails in place, it’s just a money making machine for companies that serve customers (kids) who aren’t well situated to police the product being served to them.
I know of some great charter schools—but it seems like when a system goes heavily into charter schools, it attracts the bad apples and is just much harder to monitor the quality of the product.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The qualities of gifted and talented are by definition are present at birth and are equally distributed across race and socio-economic factors.

If your program actually selects for environments factors that favour middle class and predominantly white kids then you don’t fit the title and deserve to be abolished.

When these programs select low income Black, Hispanic and any kid with EFL at the proportion that they are present in the community then I will take them seriously.

true

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I always hear good things about Ember charter school, a predominantly black school in Brooklyn.

Why does it matter if schools are public or charter as long as there is equitable access?

Why does it matter if school employees have health insurance and job protections?

I mean matters to the kids, the objective that should be priority.

My home town went hard core into charter schools to solve their declining and underfunded public schools. It was such a mess. They had charter schools in strip malls. They had charter schools teaching whatever crazy curriculum they wanted — one of my nephews went to a “Montessori” one and turned out to be illiterate because no one had taught him to read. Many had super high teacher turnover and just had teachers. The theory behind charters is that they can be more creative and less regulated. But unless they are closely monitored with guard rails in place, it’s just a money making machine for companies that serve customers (kids) who aren’t well situated to police the product being served to them.
I know of some great charter schools—but it seems like when a system goes heavily into charter schools, it attracts the bad apples and is just much harder to monitor the quality of the product.

Charter schools are a well known scam. Their boards spend their funds on private jets and ski getaways while the quality of education goes out the window. Maybe some places figure out how to avoid troubled students to pad their test scores but that is also not good.