NYC eliminating gifted and talented program

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My dd has a GAI of 134 but because she has ADHD her FSIQ is only 120 due to very slow processing speed. So far she is a straight A student but the school states she is not appropriate for g&t?? She is a white middle class kid though.

My kids are in the G&T in NYC. My older son has ADHD and an IQ of 146. Being in that G&T classroom has been essential for him - his ADHD manifests as hyperactivity. He has rapid processing speed but he is always stimming. Being in this class with similarly bright kids allows him to get challenging schoolwork from a teacher who doesn't have to pull up lots of struggling students, so that he is rarely bored (which means he doesn't become a disengaged troublemaker).

Before anyone says anything, my family is Black, Asian and white. We did not do any test prep drilling with my kids - we followed the directions on the NYC DOE G&T webpage, did the practice exam once, and went over the question (it was only one question) they didn't get. And then we.did the same practice test a second time. My DS1 got a 99 and my DS2 got a 97. So it is possible to get a qualifying score on the test without excessive expensive test prep. Also, my son with ADHD did not have any special accommodations for the test - he had a neuropsych and was diagnosed when he was 6 and already in the G&T. And my kids are not the only non white kids in the G&T classes at their school (although, yes, it is mostly white).

That said, there are many things that can be done to improve the G&T program, now that Adams has pledged to continue it in some form:

The qualifying score for the G&T is 90 for a local program and 97 got a Citywide G&T school like NEST+m. Because there are too few available seats in these programs, most seats are filled with 99s in the City wires and 96-99 in the local ones. I'm sure many more Black and Brown students would be in the G&T if there were enough seats. So, I would expand the program to many more schools.

Also, even though this is such a hot button issue in NYC, very few people seem to know about the program or have their kids test to enter it. I have proselytized about it to other Black families at my kids' school. They always seem either uninterested or a bit intimidated about it, maybe because they don't see a lot of other Black or Brown families participating, or maybe because they think it's bougie or elitist. The solution would be to have all students evaluated for the program (yes, just like the proposed Brilliant NYC program). I would make it mandatory or at least opt out rather than opt it. It would not take too much school time to do this. All students who scored 85+ could be offered a seat.

I would also make a set aside for students to be offered seats based on teacher recommendation (this is how I entered the G&T, as I mentioned in a post above). Say 50% of seats based on teacher assessment.

Also, because there are so few seats currently, it was very difficult to get in after Kindergarten. I would have rolling admissions, so that every year a classroom could be created at most schools. If a school cannot make it work budgetwise, students would be allowed to transfer to schools with available G&T seats.

Differentiation is supposed to happen in every classroom. But because of widely diverse abilities in one classroom, teachers are.forced to focus on the remedial students. By having the G&T students in their own classes, teachers would be better able to give differentiated teaching to the remaining students. I think providing accelerated work for those remaining students, via Brilliant NYC, would then make sense. This would help the students who are late bloomers or are middle of the road, get teaching on their level of abiloty. So, rather than binary G&T and Gen Ed tracks, you'd have G&T, accelerated Brilliant NYC, and Gen Ed. Diffentiatikn also is helped by smaller class sizes and co teaching , so fewer students per teacher.

^^Sorry for the autocorrects and typos. I think I fixed them all.

In addition, after reading this again, I'm not sure everyone here knows that some boroughs of NYC don't even have the G&T program. The Bronx has zero (there were some in local schools but they ended them due to lack of interest). So I would add G&T programs to every borough. If testing is mandatory or opt out, the G&T classes would be filled in those areas. I would also build a G&T school, K-8 at least, in the Bronx, Staten Island, and two more in Brooklyn. There would be enough demand to fill yhem, especially if testing if universal and the program promoted.

Thank you for providing this insight. I am a NYC G&T parent with a mixed race family too, so like you I am aware of these issues. Unfortunately our detractors have been in control of the narrative, so this nuanced perspective rarely exists in a public forum.

You're welcome! I hope our voices get heard in this debate in NYC. Adams wanted to expand the program, so I think he is listening. We're posting this on a DC centric board, though, so they might not get where we're coming from, having first hand experience with the program.

[Anonymous]

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

Which has been the goal forever yet it never happens. Once again, it never happens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:wow there is a lot of just straight up classic racism in this thread. incredible.

Bringing up racism is for those too lazy to think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Their intentions are good, but there will probably be another round of white flight from the city.

Marginalizing individual achievement in favor of groups is seldom a good intention.

[Anonymous]

Mayor-to-be Adams has his own view.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Its more than cherry picking the best performing, best behaved students with the most committed parents. Charters can also counsel out or directly push out underperforming or problem students. They can kick a student out, keep the money from the government that was attached to that student, and that student ends up in a public school. That now has to deal with an underperforming/problem student without the money needed for that student.

What are you talking about? Funding follows students. If you are admitting that public schools need to use all of the per student funding from average students to subsidize the more resource intensive underperforming students, well, that is another issue that we should talk about directly.

The funding kicks in the fall. In DCps they had count day where all the kids were officially counted as being enrolled. After that the charters were free to kick kids out since they got their money from that student.

[Anonymous]

And yet another article: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/schools-debate-gifted-talented-racist-elitist-80830623

The bottom line is that the country is ideologically split. Half the people view everything through an equity lens and the current program is not delivering that. Or at least some people can’t achieve the grades to enter the classes. The other half of the country is more interested in offering a class to anyone. If people can cut it they can cut it, if not then we’ll that’s tough.

I don’t think you can just claim it’s all systemic racism that’s responsible, although it factors in. Why are poor Asians students the ones who make up 2/3s of enrollment into a school like Stuyvesant, that has a race neutral entrance exam, and why so they thrive there? They’re farms students. Is it from being pushed by their family.

How do we stop lowering the educational bar? Is this what is driving Republican gains in Virginia? Obviously, there is this issue of perceived “crt” being taught, but is this issue of dropping advanced classes in favor of equity also a factor in Republican gains? There are so many weird confluences with education and testing and achievement.

[Anonymous]

PP - the fact remains:

- NYC eliminated the program. For everyone.

The educational bar just got lower in the U.S.

That bar will not be lowered world wide.

[Anonymous]

They eliminated the process of selecting G&T kids by test at 5!

A process that rewards middle class parents who can afford to tutor their kids while claiming to be selecting for raw intelligence is ridiculous and should have been dumped ages ago.

A child shouldn’t be punished because their mother is too busy working 60 hour weeks to teach them to read Harry Potter in kindergarten.

Don’t actually select for parental input when you are looking for raw intelligence of the kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They eliminated the process of selecting G&T kids by test at 5!

A process that rewards middle class parents who can afford to tutor their kids while claiming to be selecting for raw intelligence is ridiculous and should have been dumped ages ago.

A child shouldn’t be punished because their mother is too busy working 60 hour weeks to teach them to read Harry Potter in kindergarten.

Don’t actually select for parental input when you are looking for raw intelligence of the kid.

FYI The G&T test could be taken at 4, 5, 6, or 7. There are also academic middle schools and high schools in NYC. G&T students weren't selected exclusively at 5. That's a false narrative.

My children are in a G&T program and the kids are intelligent. Hardly anyone teaches their child to read. It's bad form to demonize someone else's kids. Talk about someone else's kids as you would your own.

[Anonymous]

“ Hardly anyone teachers their child to read”. Oh please so babies got their own age appropriate books and taught themselves the alphabet and vocabulary on their own?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They eliminated the process of selecting G&T kids by test at 5!

A process that rewards middle class parents who can afford to tutor their kids while claiming to be selecting for raw intelligence is ridiculous and should have been dumped ages ago.

A child shouldn’t be punished because their mother is too busy working 60 hour weeks to teach them to read Harry Potter in kindergarten.

Don’t actually select for parental input when you are looking for raw intelligence of the kid.

Let’s be clear here. How do you define and measure raw intelligence? Read the book ‘Ungifted’ and see how this highly decorated psychology professor was placed in Spec Ed classes until middle school. What G&T mostly looks for right now is an excellent working memory and compliance. No test captures an individual’s brilliance. I actually think University of Rome has it about right - everyone gets in, only a few graduate. But around here it’s just Lake Wobegon. Where everyone is above average. If you don’t hack it the system they just create another tract - labeled ‘honors’ - so you or more likely your law school trained parents feel good about Larlo.

What’s really going on is these magnets cull for a certain type of student to make failing public school systems - here’s looking at you MCPS - look like they aren’t failing the vast majority of kids. See we have Blair Magnet - we aren’t failing third graders in reading if we got 15 kids from THIS school into MIT.

[Anonymous]

All hope for Virginia eliminating so-called “gifted and talented” / AAP programs was lost last night with the election of a slate of white supremacists to run our state.

So sad and depressed!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My dd has a GAI of 134 but because she has ADHD her FSIQ is only 120 due to very slow processing speed. So far she is a straight A student but the school states she is not appropriate for g&t?? She is a white middle class kid though.

My kids are in the G&T in NYC. My older son has ADHD and an IQ of 146. Being in that G&T classroom has been essential for him - his ADHD manifests as hyperactivity. He has rapid processing speed but he is always stimming. Being in this class with similarly bright kids allows him to get challenging schoolwork from a teacher who doesn't have to pull up lots of struggling students, so that he is rarely bored (which means he doesn't become a disengaged troublemaker).

Before anyone says anything, my family is Black, Asian and white. We did not do any test prep drilling with my kids - we followed the directions on the NYC DOE G&T webpage, did the practice exam once, and went over the question (it was only one question) they didn't get. And then we.did the same practice test a second time. My DS1 got a 99 and my DS2 got a 97. So it is possible to get a qualifying score on the test without excessive expensive test prep. Also, my son with ADHD did not have any special accommodations for the test - he had a neuropsych and was diagnosed when he was 6 and already in the G&T. And my kids are not the only non white kids in the G&T classes at their school (although, yes, it is mostly white).

That said, there are many things that can be done to improve the G&T program, now that Adams has pledged to continue it in some form:

The qualifying score for the G&T is 90 for a local program and 97 got a Citywide G&T school like NEST+m. Because there are too few available seats in these programs, most seats are filled with 99s in the City wires and 96-99 in the local ones. I'm sure many more Black and Brown students would be in the G&T if there were enough seats. So, I would expand the program to many more schools.

Also, even though this is such a hot button issue in NYC, very few people seem to know about the program or have their kids test to enter it. I have proselytized about it to other Black families at my kids' school. They always seem either uninterested or a bit intimidated about it, maybe because they don't see a lot of other Black or Brown families participating, or maybe because they think it's bougie or elitist. The solution would be to have all students evaluated for the program (yes, just like the proposed Brilliant NYC program). I would make it mandatory or at least opt out rather than opt it. It would not take too much school time to do this. All students who scored 85+ could be offered a seat.

I would also make a set aside for students to be offered seats based on teacher recommendation (this is how I entered the G&T, as I mentioned in a post above). Say 50% of seats based on teacher assessment.

Also, because there are so few seats currently, it was very difficult to get in after Kindergarten. I would have rolling admissions, so that every year a classroom could be created at most schools. If a school cannot make it work budgetwise, students would be allowed to transfer to schools with available G&T seats.

Differentiation is supposed to happen in every classroom. But because of widely diverse abilities in one classroom, teachers are.forced to focus on the remedial students. By having the G&T students in their own classes, teachers would be better able to give differentiated teaching to the remaining students. I think providing accelerated work for those remaining students, via Brilliant NYC, would then make sense. This would help the students who are late bloomers or are middle of the road, get teaching on their level of abiloty. So, rather than binary G&T and Gen Ed tracks, you'd have G&T, accelerated Brilliant NYC, and Gen Ed. Diffentiatikn also is helped by smaller class sizes and co teaching , so fewer students per teacher.

^^Sorry for the autocorrects and typos. I think I fixed them all.

In addition, after reading this again, I'm not sure everyone here knows that some boroughs of NYC don't even have the G&T program. The Bronx has zero (there were some in local schools but they ended them due to lack of interest). So I would add G&T programs to every borough. If testing is mandatory or opt out, the G&T classes would be filled in those areas. I would also build a G&T school, K-8 at least, in the Bronx, Staten Island, and two more in Brooklyn. There would be enough demand to fill yhem, especially if testing if universal and the program promoted.

Thank you for providing this insight. I am a NYC G&T parent with a mixed race family too, so like you I am aware of these issues. Unfortunately our detractors have been in control of the narrative, so this nuanced perspective rarely exists in a public forum.

You're welcome! I hope our voices get heard in this debate in NYC. Adams wanted to expand the program, so I think he is listening. We're posting this on a DC centric board, though, so they might not get where we're coming from, having first hand experience with the program.

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I agree. Implement universal testing and increase seats so more children can benefit from these programs. I also think teachers can play a vital role in communicating to parents about these programs. I work with lower income families and the parents who come from lower income backgrounds themselves want safe, local schools for their children. They are just not as likely to identify a kid as gifted. They value teacher opinions and would be more likely to consider gifted programs if a teacher told them their child is gifted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“ Hardly anyone teachers their child to read”. Oh please so babies got their own age appropriate books and taught themselves the alphabet and vocabulary on their own?

There is a subset of children who do teach themselves how to read. Educators acknowledge that this happens. There are children who like to decode.