During the era in which Mayor Michael Bloomberg took control of the New York City public schools (2002-2012), the city increased the number of selective admissions schools and set a uniform and very high standard for entry to gifted and talented programs. To enter the latter, children as young as four took a standardized test, and could gain admission only by scoring in the very top of the distribution. The stated rationale was to increae equity but the actual result was an escalation of inequity and racial segregation.
Faced with intense criticism for the low numbers of Black and Hispanic students admitted toselective schools, the city is now mulling a report that calls for phasing out gifted and talented programs.
Because of the explosion of school choice, districts go to great lengths to hold on to write parents, who will leave for a charter if they don’t get what they want in the public schools. .
To follow the debate, read this well-informed article by Erin Einhorn, who used to cover the NYC schools for the Daily News.
And read this informative post by Peter Goodman, who writes often about NYC and NY stateeducation issues. Goodman includes a useful summary of the report.
Goodman quotes Council Member Mark Treyger:
Let’s be clear: the School Diversity Advisory Group’s second set of recommendations do not seek to end enrichment programs. Instead, they call for the end of the Bloomberg-era ‘gifted and talented’ admissions model, which has been rejected by national gifted education experts and advocates. This model has failed to live up to its promise of equitable opportunities, resulted in the closure of half of all Gifted and Talented programs which disproportionately impacted communities of color, and increased segregation of all kinds in our schools,” said Council Member Mark Treyger (D-Coney Island, Bensonhurst, Gravesend)
Goodman adds: “Today there are 103 Gifted and Talent classes in grades K to 5 across the city, only one class in District 23, perhaps the poorest district in the city.”
What do you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
G and T programs can work. Unfortunately, they take money. If you take them away, parents who think their children need them will leave public education for private schools, increasing the amount of segregation anyway.
It would seem to me that we should try to minister to the needs of impoverished children so that the number of them who make it to the G and T schools might be increased. Another approach might be to change the nature of the G and T programs to integrate these programs into the schools all across the area.
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I’m a little tentative here, but I’m thinking, if those convinced their children are G&T & can afford to move on to expensive private schools, let them. We’re not really concerned w/those who can pony up tens of thousands in annual tuition, are we? Even a voucher system doesn’t make a dent in such tuitions, so we’re not enabling school choice for that SES level. Totally agree that K-8 G&T pgms are better spent on enrichment for all.
Granted, the NYC schoolsys is a little different, w/its concern over keeping uppermids from moving to suburbs… But then again, during my 20 yrs in NYC [Park Slope], it wasn’t so different from here in NJ. Park Slope uppermids convinced of their kids’ superior intelligence simply bought them seats at Packer, as some uppermids here in my central-NJ send their kids to Warldlow-Hartridge et al (despite the excellent district pubschsys), looking for smaller classes, less hothouse-competition, wider curriculum. At least then in Pk Slpe [25yrs ago], midclass types, & uppermids whose kids weren’t phenoms, soldiered through K-8 zoned pubschs w/an eye to magnets for hisch. That is the real draw keeping mid/uppermids in NYC.
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bethree,
things have changed tremendously since your day!
Park Slope is a place that parents move to for the good neighborhood K-5 schools. They sacrifice the small class sizes (no popular gen ed has small class sizes) in exchange for knowing that the students will be exposed to a curriculum that teaches them the reading, writing and arithmetic that will allow their kids to thrive anywhere, even most of the so-called “gifted” ones.
In middle school, the district has embraced a “choice” in which many students from those more affluent Park Slope elementary schools are in a far more diverse middle school. There are middle schools that parents disdained even 5 years ago that went from being nearly 99% poverty to being much more diverse. One popular new middle school selects students ONLY via lottery! (Not a charter, a public school).
And students from all those middle schools go to high schools all over NYC. Parents are finding that even at a middle school where half the students are struggling to meet standards, the other half – including high performing students – are passing 9th grade Algebra Regents in 8th grade.
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I am tentative re: how elimination of G&T pgms might affect NYC pubschsys, because we in fact moved to NJ suburbs as eldest turned 5, due to local midschools at that time being undermined by the crack epidemic. Seeing vials/ syringes strewing those playgrounds on the way to our PreK tot playgroup was sobering,& we knew we couldn’t afford 3 tuitions for priv midsch, patching thro until hisch magnets. I see online that NYC midschools are open admission– not sure if that was true in late ’80’s/ early ’90’s, but even then we would have thought the idea of ppwk/ competing for seats as soon as kids graduated from the definitely-OK nbhd elemschs– & trying to get them to some other nbhd school– was a little crazy. And we weren’t too psyched about the similar process for hisch magnets, potentially long subway commutes for 14yo’s etc. On the whole, I think one must be a seriously dedicated NYC denizen to put up w/college-like admissions processes for ages 13-17, just to ensure a relatively decent K12 ed, regardless of whether one insists on G&T pgms.
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Oops, nycpsp, our messages crossed! Even then I was happy w/the K-5 elemschs. We lived on the “wrong” side of block, & our kids would have attended PS 39 (not the chi-chi PS321). Always loved that bldg (we rented across from it before kids), & felt it would have been a good fit for them back then. Glad to hear that the middle school situation has greatly improved. Hoping there’s not a lot of admissions ppwk/ folderol to get kids into them.
I am glad we moved in the sense that we avoided the crunch of hisch magnet applications that was equivalent to college-admissions mania. But we definitely lost something in translation. Our NJ town is uppermid, w/loads of professional parents, & a hothouse competitive pubsch atmosphere starting early on that warps a kid’s idea of how things are in the real working world. NJ also has severe black-white town-to-town segregation—but luckily for us, during our kids’ upbringing there was a huge inswell of Indian/ Pakistani/ Asian kids, plus a growing no of black-white couples w/kids– & our kids’ musical pursuits brought them very frequently to the next town, whose hisch is 50-50 black-white, so they ended up w/a pretty well-rounded view of humanity.
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“On the whole, I think one must be a seriously dedicated NYC denizen to put up w/college-like admissions processes for ages 13-17, just to ensure a relatively decent K12 ed…”
Ha! I like to think of it as most NYC public school students have lots of experience not getting into their first choice middle or high school. And they realize once they are in their 2nd or 3rd or even 4th choice that they are learning and thriving, so by the time college admissions comes around they (at least many of them) get it. There is no “best” that sets you up for life. The kids who didn’t get into the middle school they wanted got into the high school that their friend who got into that middle school did not. The kid who didn’t get into the high school they wanted got into the college that their friend who did get into that high school did not. Kids from the same neighborhood elementary school who went to 6 different middle schools end up at the same high school. Kids from the same neighborhood elementary school went to 3 different middle schools and 6 different high schools and end up at the same college! Gives kids some perspective.
That being said, you are absolutely wrong that “decent K12 education” involves “college-like admissions processes”. There are lots of fantastic high schools that teach a range of students. Schools like Murrow and Midwood (to name just 2) offer classes for advanced students and classes for students who may be struggling. The system is far from perfect, but not as bad as portrayed in the press. As in college admissions, there are parents who believe their child must have the “best” and will do everything they can to insure that it happens. But I think you might find that many high schoolers feel pretty comfortable being weird and different and (to different degrees) engaged with their high school classes while not obsessed with having straight As. As someone who grew up in the burbs, I can appreciate not having the same pressure to conform in NYC public schools.
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Ha, I didn’t realize this message crossed, too!
PS 39 is one of the most affluent schools in NYC now! It’s no different at all from PS 321 except for being much smaller.
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I agree with @BethRee5. The New York City public school admissions process is like a college admissions process at every entry point – K, 6, 9. It’s also that way for nursery school.
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“This model has failed to live up to its promise of equitable opportunities….” But any model–even a racially neutral model– that selects a few 4-year olds for special treatment (G&T), would seem to be a model that is not based on “equitable opportunities,” unless, I suppose, one believes that it is possible to know which 4-year olds just don’t have what it takes.
The idea that we can identify what a human being will be like as an adult just from knowing this adult as a 4-year old is offensive in so many ways, it’s hard to know where to begin. One place, perhaps, is to observe that such a system of democratic, public education identifies the vast majority of students as inferior at the beginning of a 12-year experience of formal education. How can it be pedagogically sensible to treat the majority of kindergartners as inferior to a small group of their age cohort? Everything we know about self-fulfilling prophecies kicks in…on the very first day of kindergarten!
Have we learned nothing about childhood development in the last 70 years?!?!?
Really, it gets tiresome after a while to have to point out that any program meant to stimulate talent that implies most kids should know they’re just not very capable is a stupid, immoral, and pedagogically ridiculous system of education. Add racial bigotry to this toxic mix and one gets…the public education system in NY and most of the country.
And people wonder why so many kids hate school and misbehave? We are fools if we do not grasp this simple truth about growing up.
Welcome to a new school year!
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Thank you!
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Ditto!
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Hear, hear!
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Glad to hear this, NYCPSP.
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Steve Cohen: Hear, hear!
The G&T program at my kids’ ‘90’s NJ elemsch irked me. (There was no admissions test; I believe it was done by teacher recommendation.) For a couple of afternoons/wk, the holy few were shepherded to art museums, robotic displays—I’m probably exaggerating; my memory just retains that their activities should have been on the menu for every kid in that school (incl mine, grrr). And they were the ones whose parents were doing that kind of stuff with them anyway! If there’s an enrichment budget for a few, how much more sense it would have made for teachers to tap those kids in lowest SES whose moms were running daycare out of their home or working odd hours while labor-weary dads somnambulated thro dinner-prep & baths.
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Yes! And honestly, most parents in NYC also agree.
I think I looked at the numbers and something like 7% of the white students in NYC K-5 public elementary schools were in gifted programs. The media reports this as if the entire white population of NYC will run off to the suburbs if their child is not in a Kindergarten class where all “ungifted” students are excluded. It is truly absurd. Most white parents, most Asian parents, most parents of all races and religions and ethnic groups have their children at their local neighborhood public schools and the children who are in the Kindergarten classes are a random assortment of the kids who live in residents that have been zoned for that school.
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NYCPSP,
You must be the only person in NYC that thinks students in kindergarten classes are a “random assortment”.
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Teachingeconomist,
As I said, it is a fact that in neighborhood elementary gen eds, the children in Kindergarten classes are “a random assortment of the kids who live in residences (fixed typo) that have been zoned for that school.”
In other words, there are students who are quite far above average, those who are average and those who are below average in their academic strengths. And they are randomly assigned to Kindergarten classrooms.
The one thing those kids have in common is that their parents live in the catchment area for that elementary school. But even in the most affluent neighborhoods, that does not make all of those 5 year olds “gifted”.
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Damn, that rings true, Steve.
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So many parents think that their children are gifted and it just isn’t so. There is nothing in the drinking water that makes certain kids smarter. There is nothing in a certain race/ethnicity that makes children any smarter. Truly gifted people comprise a small portion of the population and quite frankly, where one is gifted in a certain way, they tend to be less gifted in many other ways ( it was quite difficult growing up with a truly gifted sibling!). GT programs in public schools cater to competitive parents but do very little to enhance the education of the children in the programs because the kids really aren’t gifted….they are socio economically gifted as a birth right. They should just get rid of GT programs period OR they should develop 4th – 8th “gifted” schools but only allow 1-2% of the feeder elementary schools to populate that school based on test scores and child psychologists. High schools can accommodate those truly gifted students with the beloved AP program put out by the crapola College Board.
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Teacher Tom talks about a study (I haven’t looked into it myself) on “geniusness”. According to TT, at age 4, nearly every child meets the definition of “genius” (and I have no idea what that definition is). By high school, only about 1% do. Something about aging (schooling?) cures geniusness apparently.
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I read that…I love teacher Tom. It’s because children are inquisitive about their surroundings and if left to test those surroundings on their own, they develop critical thinking skills.
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LisaM,
I don’t think that the AP program offers nearly enough for truly gifted students. Thomas Jefferson High School, for example, offers students the opportunity to take multivariable calculus, differential equations, complex analysis, and probability theory. All of these courses require at least BC Calculus as a prerequisite.
TJ math curriculum can be found here:https://insys.fcps.edu/CourseCatOnline/#/reportPanel/503/10/0/0/0/1
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Teachingeconomist,
“Offers students” is entirely different than “a majority of students”.
There is a high school in NYC called Stuyvesant and they also “offer students the opportunity to take” those classes, too.
And some students do. They are truly gifted math geniuses. But while there might even be as many as 100 students in each grade (perhaps fewer) who take those “offerings” that is a small percentage of the students, even at a school like Stuyvesant. Many students graduate with their most advanced math class being AP Calc AB.
And I suspect the same is true at Thomas Jefferson.
I also found that the few math genius kids I have met were teaching themselves multivariable calculus and complex analyses in middle school because it was “fun”. They were rarely found among the students in elementary school g&t programs.
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NYCPSP,
Are you suggesting that there are too few students for whom classes beyond BC Calc is appropriate to worry about? I suppose the subtitle of this blog could change to “a site to discuss a better education for most” does not really have the same ring.
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TE, Ah, why is it so important that all K-12 students have to take calculus?
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“Are you suggesting that there are too few students for whom classes beyond BC Calc is appropriate to worry about?”
Say what? Many people have already posted to explain to you that those students who need classes beyond BC Calc are already being served. This discussion is about gifted programs that identify 4 year olds. Not offering advanced math classes to high schoolers which no one is saying must end. You are inventing a straw man to argue with.
So why change the subject? Offering high level math classes to high school students has nothing to do with justifying the extraordinary amount of money spent to test 4 year olds whose parents want them to be tested so the ones who are supposedly “gifted” can be separated from the others for the next six years.
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Lloyd,
It is not important that all students take calculus in high school. It is important that students have the opportunity to take classes well beyond calculus in high school, just as it is important that students have the opportunity to read Shakespeare, Faulkner, Lee, and Shelley.
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In high school, I was not interested in or ready to take college prep math classes like Algebra through Calculus. I was in a family living in poverty. Yes, we were Caucasians but many Caucasians also live in poverty. The ratio is lower but the raw numbers are higher than other racial groups.
The family I grew up in was also a severely dysfunctional family. I will not go into details about that dysfunction.
Because of that, I was born with severe dyslexia. My learning disability was so bad that when I was seven my mother was told by administrative experts (not bey any of my teachers) that I would never learn to read or write.
That means I was a slow learner and way behind my peers. In high school, I only took general math and I managed to earn a high school degree but had no desire to go to college. At that time in my life and at that age, I hated school, but I had been an avid reader for years ever since my Mother made liars out of those so-called admin experts.
I loved reading books and often polished of two a day through high school.
That is why I joined the Marines. While in the Marines and serving in Vietnam I changed my mind about college.
After the Marines in 1968, I started college on the GI Bill and was required to take all those “F*****G” math classes so I could earn a college degree. For my first two years in college, I carried more than 20 units a semester so I could take those college prep math classes and get them out fo the way.
During my first two years in college, I had to take two semesters of algebra, one of geometry, one of trig and one of calculus, (there were other science classes, too) and I have never used anything I learned in those classes in my life outside of those classes, but I passed them and earned my Associate of Science Degree and then transferred to my first four-year college/university where I eventually earned my BA in journalism and later an MFA with an emphasis on writing. It wasn’t until my MFA that I was ready to be introduced to Shakespeare, Faulker et. al.
My life experience taught me that we do not all need Algebra to Calculus. In addition, my life experience taught me that many of us are not ready to make the kinds of decisions when we are not yet twenty-five with a mature brain, ready to decide what we want to do with our working years.
Forcing all children into square holes when they are not square does not work when we are five, or twelve, or sixteen or even eighteen and probably not even twenty-four years old yet.
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NYCPSP,
It is not my view that students who take differential equations as high school juniors spring fully formed form Zues’s forehead as high school freshman. Their special academic needs must be nurtured long before high school if they are to find school based education a useful way to spend their time.
Again, I ask you to distinguish between the existence of a program and the admission system to the program. People of good will can argue about the acceptance criteria, but many here argue that the program should be discontinued. Differentiated instruction can work early on, but eventually differences in students need to be recognized. That is accepted here for students with learning disabilities, but not yet for students with exceptional learning abilities.
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There are many different types of gifts, not just intellectual gifts. Simone Biles is gifted and Picasso was gifted. Comprehensive public schools generally provide enough enrichment without so-called GT programs, especially in elementary schools. Many years ago my diverse district eliminated GT because it became a political hot potato.
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“but only allow 1-2% of the feeder elementary schools to populate that school based on test scores and child psychologists.” Where does the cut-off point come from? Is there a manual that says only 1%-2% of kids are gifted, or is that number arbitrary? If it’s arbitrary–and it its–then some kind of self-serving discrimination is at work in denoting some kids as “gifted” and some as “ordinary.” End of story in a democracy that should be free of insidious distinctions among children. (God says ALL of the children are His, doesn’t he?)
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It’s an arbitrary #. FYI….I believe that ALL children (every human) are gifted in a certain way. I’m just saying that maybe there should be small “gifted schools” where these few children who are truly academically gifted can attend. This would stop the over zealous and competitive parents.
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I don’t favor hurting kids to placate parents, especially ones that are looking for status for their kids, rather than genuine, stimulating education. The parents you’re talking about are looking for someone to say they’re wonderful people…meaning more wonderful than their neighbors. Why distort our education system, and hurt kids in the process, to placate them?
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Why can’t we just get rid of the GT programs period and give every child an enriching education at their neighborhood school? Because GT programs are a status symbol for parents, especially wealthier parents. This drives real estate and taxes, which in turn causes segregation. The crazy needs to end.
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G&T in NYC generally (ever?) isn’t tied to neighborhood catchment. If anything is tied to real estate, it’s neighborhood schools. PS 234 in Tribeca. PS 321 in Park Slope (the Mayor’s neighborhood).
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When we had elementary GT, ELLs were never selected because they could not reach the standardized cut score. I have had a couple of very gifted ELLs during my career that could not qualify.
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FLERP!
It will probably surprise you but PS 321 includes students who are not “gifted” and even students who struggle academically. They are all in the same Kindergarten classes as students who come into Kindergarten and can already read.
So I’m not sure what your point is, except to imply something that isn’t true — that somehow students at PS 321 or PS 234 are all gifted so there is no need for a gifted program.
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I will likely be flamed here for this view, but the School Diversity Advisory Group’s recommendations on G&T are terrible. (The report goes way, way beyond G&T, but the middle school and high school aspects are getting no press.)
The SDAG recommends ending all existing G&T programs and replacing them with undefined and yet-to-be-developed “enrichment” programs. This means gen-ed for all, relying on differentiated instruction for kids with wildly differing levels of academic ability and background knowledge in classes of 30+ children. Killing G&T would have no impact on “segregation,” because only something like 3% of all elementary school students are in G&T elementary programs. With those programs eliminated, kids will default back to their neighborhood schools. To the extent G&T programs are, as the advocates charge, disproportionately white and wealthy, that means they’ll default back to neighborhood schools with admissions catchments defined by the ability of their parents to afford the neighborhood.
Eliminating G&T can only have a meaningful impact on school diversity if it’s coupled with dramatic re-zonings and/or new admissions policies designed to ensure demographic balance. Thus, the report recommends “redraft[ing] district lines” to ensure “all schools reflect the city population.” It’s not clear how this would work for elementary schools, since their catchments are at the sub-district level. But as a practical matter, right for the time being, white students make up about 15% of the school population. A huge chunk of those are on Staten Island. Making elementary schools “diverse” across the system — which appears to be the goal of the advisory group — would thus require a massive, bitter political fight over zoning (which directly implicates property values, which people feel strongly about) as well as full-bore efforts to ship students to neighborhoods across the city. (Staten Island students would literally have to be “shipped” by ferry or endure brutally long bus rides.)
If “enrichment for all” programs, as advocates assert, benefit all students and are more effective at identifying and teaching “gifted” (or “advanced,” the terminology doesn’t matter much to me) students, then why not implement them at all non-G&T programs — the ones that 97% of elementary students attend? If the advocates are right about the benefits of that kind of instruction, the results would speak for themselves. Parents who find the G&T application process stressful or absurd would notice and opt out of G&T and into “enrichment.” Pilot these models (I understand there are some schools already doing it) and if they’re successful, build them out. Expand access to enrichment. Don’t burn down a system that thousands of parents rely on.
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Thousands of parents “rely on” gifted programs that start in Kindergarten? What are you talking about?
I would support prioritizing a gifted program so that only at-risk students received Kindergarten seats. That’s not at all what we have now.
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Agree, FLERP. That was what I was getting at in my criticism of my NJ district’s ’90’s G&T elemsch program. It was [by default] directed at upper-SES families who already were enriching their kids’ out-of-school experience w/pgms that would/ should have been part of every elemsch student’s learning. As a budget item, I suspect our elemsch G&T pgm could have translated to 4 or more field trips for all.
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bethree5,
I may be misunderstanding what FLERP just wrote, but my interpretation was that FLERP wants to keep in place the g&t program that tests kids at age 4 and disproportionately seems to benefit white and Asian students.
I don’t understand why anyone would argue for keeping the system that Bloomberg designed that tests 4 year olds in place. I think the School Diversity Advisory Group was correct that there is something terribly wrong with it. Why would anyone want to keep in place a program that keeps selected 4 year olds in separate classrooms (and sometimes entire schools) from Kindergarten through 5th grade? So they don’t have to suffer by having so-called “ungifted” 5 year olds ruining their education?
I do not understand why anyone would think that is a good idea.
As FLERP says: “Parents who find the G&T application process stressful or absurd would notice and opt out of G&T and into “enrichment.” Those parents ALREADY opt out of g&t.
This issue has nothing to do with “parents who find the G&T application stressful or absurd.” This issue has to do with understanding that identifying 4 year olds as more gifted than their peers such that they must never have those supposedly not gifted peers in any of their classrooms from Kindergarten through 5th grade is just absurd.
Why would anyone advocate to keep that in place? Having other kinds of enrichment for all is a wonderful idea but testing 4 year olds and keeping them completely separate for the next 6 years is a bad idea that makes no sense.
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agree, NYCPSP. Testing kids at age 4 in an attempt to keep them segregated from the hoi polloi is just stupid & wrong, as Steve Cohen has said above.
I’m going to let you in on little secret here. At age 6 my parents moved from a small “downtown” upstate-NY small city, where I attended K, to a rural hamlet on its outskirts where K had just been introduced [PreK was unknown in the early ’50’s]. K-3 in that hamlet was a 1-room schoolhouse built in 1923. We had about 25 students & one [very competent] teacher. As it happens, I had learned to read at my mother’s knee at age 3. [That BTW never came into play in my downtown K, which was strictly about social adaptation, music & art.]
About 3 wks into 1st grade, my teacher had me stay after school one day to take me thro all the 1st-gr readers. She gave me a piece of candy & told me to ask my mom if it was OK for me to move to 2nd grade the next day. [Which I did; it involve moving over one row].
It is important to know that that one-room schoolhouse taught every single kid in the village, including professors’ kids [we lived near a collegetown] to somebody’s cousins who just moved North from Appalachia complete w/bowl-cuts, & a couple of devptlly-delayed kids who made the cut. It worked in large part due to our preternaturally-accomplished veteran teacher– but also because we worked as a team: while K napped in blankets on the podium & teacher did a directed lesson w/1st-gr, 2ndgr did hw assnts at desk, & 3rdgr reading & math circles were run by students advanced in tose fields.
For 4th-6th, we went on to a nearby village whose K-6 school was divided into 3 classrooms: K-2, 3-4, & 5-6, using similar methods. That school was located where most of the Ivy league Uni’s professors lived, but included [50%] the poor kids who lived on the outskirts. That cohort’s 6thgr graduates included a spectrum of kids who became everything from Ivy League grads to your local plumber. No “G&T” program needed.
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@NYCPSP This is what @Flerp said, “Eliminating G&T can only have a meaningful impact on school diversity if it’s coupled with dramatic re-zonings and/or new admissions policies designed to ensure demographic balance.”
@Flerp – I agree with you completely.
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@Beth
I agree with that point, too. Eliminating the g&t program that tests 4 year olds will not miraculously integrate all public schools. So what?
The question is whether there is any value to spending who knows how many hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to give a test with no validity to thousands of 4 year olds (those with the most motivated parents) because their parents believe that the most “gifted” of those 4 year olds must be in classrooms or even schools that exclude regular old 5 year old children who were not certified “gifted” by that exam. Exactly why are we spending that money again?
There is absolutely no justification for such a program that tests 4 year olds and then purports to isolate them from other supposedly less gifted Kindergarten and first graders in the name of some greater good. So what reason would anyone have to insist that it needs to remain exactly as is because ending it doesn’t solve a much bigger problem? It doesn’t do anything at all except waste lots of money to pay adults to give a meaningless test to 4 year olds. Surely there are much better things to spend money on.
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FLERP: “I will likely be flamed here for this view,” Not by me! I think you’re on the right path. The struggle here is to finance genuine “enrichment” programs. (Oh, why isn’t routine, normal, everyday instruction “enrichment”? If it isn’t, does that mean it’s boring and plodding?)
Mozart didn’t need to pass an IQ test to be seen as a genius. Nope, he wrote a couple of symphonies before he could walk! (More or less) Raise kids in rich, and enriching, environments and let the kids show what they are good at. But rich people don’t want to spend money on this approach, so we all say, ok, how about G&T, will you at least finance those programs? Please, pretty please.
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When I was in elementary school I was shipped to another school once a week for a gifted and talented program. I found the “enrichment” there dull and desultory. It was run by hippies with a progressive-ed bent. We wandered around and were encouraged to explore our passions and express our creativity when what we really wanted was to learn. In third grade I made a wretched book filled with horrid poetry and horrid art. Even then I knew the poetry was garbage. The only part I enjoyed were the rare occasions when the teacher would go to the board and teach us something. The only distinct learning I recall is a teacher telling us what “adjacent” meant.
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I find it somewhere between amusing, pathetic and sad that you think that “knowledge” and “learning” are things that you can only get from someone else. How very authoritarian.
The reality is that humans learn and gain knowledge from minute one of their lives and never stop. When an infant discovers her fingers and toes, she is learning. When a baby sits in a high chair and drops things over the side, he is gaining knowledge. As children play and, yes, explore their own passions, they are learning and gaining knowledge. Knowledge they know to be true not because someone told them it’s true but because they experimented and discovered for themselves.
And, yes, of course your third grade poetry was “garbage”. All third grade poetry is “garbage”. As is third grade art, writing, math, etc. Should we stop doing those things because it’s “garbage” at that age? Of course not. Any human endeavor starts with “garbage”. If you talk to nearly any published author, you’ll probably find that they wrote tons of “garbage” poems/stories/essays/etc. in elementary school. Or do you think that they just suddenly reached an age and a level of “knowledge” such that they were miraculously able to write?
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I do not agree that “all” 3rd-grade poetry and art is garbage. Some children, well, to be honest, a rare few, are prodigies.
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It’s been downhill for me since 3rd grade.
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How many years are we talking about?
For me, my uphill climb started after 1st grade in the early 1950s, and I’m still climbing.
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About 40, unfortunately.
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Dienne,
Nice to hear from you!
Debased Deweyianism shaped hippie pedagogy, which you advocate so well. Hippie pedagogy holds that kids are fonts of wonders and that formal schooling is like a poison that kills all that innate beauty. I think this is completely wrong. Kids are, in many important respects, blank slates that need to be written on. This “writing” makes the child. School is an alma mater –Latin for “soul mother”. Done well, it turns a clever animal into a good, wise, interesting, multifaceted human being. It is not indoctrination or forming the child in the image of the teacher; it is about filling her with broad knowledge and letting her innate reasoning and other mental powers sort that knowledge, along with life experiences, out in an unpredictable way. In third grade I did not need to express myself; I craved and needed to learn about the world. Asking eight year olds to express what is barely formed is folly. Let the soul form first! Dewey’s disciples have misled us all.
And friendly reminder: please refer to me as a “Stalinist”; I’m no mere authoritarian.
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I think all students should have access to a curriculum appropriate to their academic needs.
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And puppies are cute.
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What follows from my view is that G&T programs should continue because they give students access to the appropriate curriculum. Students should have access to courses beyond the AP level because that is what is appropriate.
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Do you understand that you cannot identify which students will be acing AP Calculus BC by their junior year in high school based on a g&t exam given to them at age 4?
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NYPSP,
I think it is useful to distinguish between the existence of a G&T program and the criteria used to govern admission to the program. My post was about existence, and did on advocate any particular criteria for admission.
By the way, calculus BC is the beginning of a gifted student’s high school education in mathematics, not the end.
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You do realize, do you not, TE, that many public schools do offer, among other things, advanced math classes beyond calculus? My step-daughter, for instance, is taking a co-credit multi-variable class at our local community college paid for by the high school. Many (most?) public high schools have similar cooperative programs with their local state or community colleges to allow qualified students to take classes that the high school itself would be unable to offer.
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Dienne77 is right.
The high school where I taught in Southern California offered college classes that were not available at the high school (linked to community colleges near the high school) and the students didn’t need to commute to the college because the high school library was set up with video and the ability to ask questions in real-time for students who voluntarily signed up for those college classes and the credit they earned from the college classes not only counted toward college graduation but also counted toward high school graduation.
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Certainly some public high schools have co enrollment classes. Alas, my local high school is not among them. Do you have any data on how many high schools offer this option?
More importantly, how would a student in junior high school (7-9 in my district) prepare to take advanced mathematics in senior high school without some G&T or at least very serious tracking in junior high school?
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It confuses me that people like teachingeconomist keep bringing up having advanced math classes in high schools, which has nothing to do with doing away with a g&t program that tests 4 year olds (if their parents sign up) to determine how “gifted” they are and then separates those children entirely from children who are supposedly not gifted for their entire elementary K-5th grade education experience.
This committee was not advocating doing away with advanced math classes in high schools. I doubt anyone would, but I certainly agree that is not a good idea. Again, no one is suggesting that.
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I do not understand why TE is even bringing up math when it is not a real problem:
“Forty-five states have agreed to follow Common Core standards for math, which aim to create a more standardized math curriculum across the country. The Common Core standards state that six content categories should be covered in high school math classes:
However, these standards are very broad and don’t specify which math concepts should be taught at which grade, so there is still a lot of differentiation among schools and among states.
For high school math, there is not a specific course you should be taking as a freshman, sophomore etc. Instead, there is a series of courses, and each student begins with the math class best suited for him/her, based on testing and prior math knowledge.
The typical order of math classes in high school is:
However, this order is definitely not set in stone. Some schools teach algebra 1 and 2 back-to-back then move on to geometry, some schools include trigonometry with geometry or pre-calculus instead of algebra 2, and some students take pre-algebra or a similar course if they need to strengthen their math skills before taking algebra 1. However, most high schools follow a course order similar to the one above for their math classes.”
https://blog.prepscholar.com/the-high-school-math-classes-you-should-take
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Lloyd,
I bring it up because a student in a language arts class can be exposed to the greatest writers of the current generation. Students in mathematics classes are generally allowed to think about nothing that has been discovered within the last 300 years.
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When I was a child attending K through 12, I was not ready to be exposed to those “great writers”. I had no interest in those books. I was an avid reader but was only interested in science fiction, fantasy and historical fiction. That interest changed but came much later in my forties when I earned an MFA in writing with an emphasis on the great writers of the 20th century. I was not introduced to Shakespeare until I was forty-four and started teaching Shakespeare to high school English students.
I think it is safe to say that I was not an exception. If children are not ready to be introduced to those “great writers,” especially when they grow up in a poor dysfunctional family, most of those children will not get anything out of that exposure.
How many children in the U.S. grow up in poverty? one in four children. With more than 50 million K-12 children, that means 12.5 million probably are not ready, and it is probably a better idea to start them out with something they might be more interested in so we hook them on reading before they are introduced to the “great writers”.
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Back when I was in the NYC public schools in the 1950’s and 1960’s, it was the Jewish kids whose academic performance was superior to that of the other white ethnic groups as well as to that of the black and Puerto Rican students. Nobody cried racism or demanded a leveling process to ensure performance “equity.” Although many Jewish kids were called “Browns” along with other academically advanced students, nobody demanded the end to “smart classes” or the Specialized High Schools. All that has changed now. There is deep resentment towards Asian kids and the remnants of the once majority white student body for the unforgivable crime of outperforming blacks and Hispanics. How dare they?
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I grew up in NY in the fifties and sixties, too. The world is very different now from what it was in the bad ole days. And a better one, precisely because so many people are demanding high quality education.
There are many fine local high schools in NY whose students are as talented as kids in the highly selective high schools. That’s how many smart kids there are out there. So the obvious policy decision, in a democracy, would be to make all neighborhood high schools as good as Bronx Science.
There is no leveling going on. Just the opposite: more people are demanding the same sort of education for their kids as the kids at Bronx Science get. That’s a good thing!
The problem now is the same as it was back then: the rich (mostly white) population doesn’t want to spend the money creating Scarsdale-quality school systems in Jamaica or Plattsburgh or Hempstead. Demanding that this situation be changed is hardly lowering standards: it’s quite the opposite.
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Hear! Hear!
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I am amazed that NYC schools are the most segregated schools in the USA. see
I fail to see how eliminating G&T programs will lead to less segregation.
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It won’t. To the extent NYC elementary schools are “segregated” (meaning they they have student bodies whose racial or ethnic demographics are substantially different from those of the city’s schools overall—obviously these schools are not literally “segregated”), that is a function of traditional neighborhood schools. To change that, the city would need to drastically redraw or eliminate the catchments that exist today.
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Interesting article. The link about New York being (among) the most segregated doesn’t actually prove that it is, in fact, the most segregated. There is a lot of data about New York (city and state), but nothing to compare that to other states. I’d like to see a side-by-side comparison of Chicago and New York – I think Chicago might win out.
Anecdotally speaking, the people I know in Chicago who come from New York say Chicago is more segregated. Also, according to this article, https://atlantablackstar.com/2014/05/27/7-of-the-most-segregated-school-systems-in-america/3/ , a U of C study in 1987 found Chicago the most segregated. That article talks about black migration from the South and how the migrants “settled into their own neighborhoods” without a whiff of acknowledgement that the “Black Belt” was the only neighborhood blacks were allowed to settle into.
Chicago today is possibly somewhat less segregated, but only because affluent whites have moved into so many formerly all-black neighborhoods like Cabrini Green. But, as the long-gone Cabrini Green – now simply the trendy “Near North Side” – shows, it doesn’t take long for the segregation to just switch the other way.
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Agree. Just finished reading “The Warmth of Other Suns” about the Great Migration. Perhaps the most enlightening info is that that migration of blacks south to north lasted nearly a century: from 1875 until 1970’s. The “receiving stations” were partly determined by train terminuses, but mostly by where labor was needed for mfg. All the “receiving stations”– Chicago, NY, Newark, Detroit, Cleveland, Rochester NY, Milwaukee et al– had limited places where it was “OK” for blacks to move in, but Chicago’s was perhaps the most geographically restricted.Their “area” was ringed by newly-moved-up Slavs, Irish, Italians etc, who rioted, burned houses etc as blacks burst out of their compressed qtrs.– then quickly moved out, leaving the next to nghdbecome totally black-inhabited.
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“Integration means better schools for all.” True then and true now. What’s old ain’t new, and what’s new ain’t true.
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I feel that this discussion has ignored the idea that designation as gifted implies that a child with this designation is supposed to be hampered in a way that makes them fundamentally different. Gifted children sometimes exhibit traits that keep such children from learning in specific circumstances, often circumstances that are common in classes of other children.
When I was in college, I took advantage of the honors program to learn in ways that the average student was unable to be involved with. This was very important to me, indeed it changed what had become a very difficult first year of college for me. People who see life through a different lens are often thought to be eccentric, and are marginalized by a group that does not understand them. If a G-T program helps them, what is wrong with that?
It strikes me that this is a prelude to individualizing instruction with a computer. Sit everybody down without a teacher and let them interact with the machine. It would be cheaper.
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Pampered? Not “hampered.”
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What I meant was that gifted children are often off the charts with regards to one ability. For example, they may have a gift at associating ideas together. Sounds like a plus, but random association of thoughts makes it hard to concentrate. Another child may possess extraordinary ability to think through a series of ideas, but their coordination prevents them from making it to paper in a coherent form.
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Roy Turrentine,
Do you really believe that those gifted children are best identified because their parents signed them up to be tested at age 4?
A test that has spawned an industry of prepping and tutoring? (Yes, parents actually prep their 4 year olds so they can demonstrate how gifted they are. And then other parents feel very smug because they say “I only reviewed the questions on the sample test with my 4 year old a few times, so that isn’t prepping”.
Often the most gifted children won’t be found via that test — we are talking about 4 year olds going in with a complete stranger!
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I do not have any experience with the type of testing done. At the high school level in my experience, little is done to help a kid who has some extraordinary but peculiar ability. I have had no experience with testing 4 year olds. That sounds crazy.
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“People who see life through a different lens are often thought to be eccentric, and are marginalized by a group that does not understand them. If a G-T program helps them, what is wrong with that?“
Thank you @Roy Turrentine for your thoughtful comment. It’s disappointing the extent to which people stereotype G&T parents as people who are only looking for status and their children as over-prepped and privileged.
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If you read Roy’s later comment, he was not talking about 4 year olds being identified as gifted because of a test (and then being in Kindergarten – 5th grade classrooms from which any 4 year old not given that designation is excluded). He thought that sounded crazy.
I have known some clearly gifted young children and many of them were in regular gen ed elementary schools because a system to identify them based on a test of 4 year olds makes no sense. There are some truly gifted 4 year olds who may get identified via that exam, but the majority of students in the elementary school gifted programs are no different than the academically strong students at good neighborhood gen eds (and even not so good ones).
I noticed that at the biggest citywide gifted program – NEST+m — only 60% of the 3rd graders got 4s on their state ELA exam last year. (The rest got 3s, which means that thousands of NYC gen ed public school 3rd graders scored higher.) Those 3rd grade students are supposed to be the most gifted in all of NYC but 40% of them aren’t even scoring above average on the state ELA test?
Of course, it is totally reasonable to say that the state test is not a valid way to identify students who are gifted and many gifted 3rd grade students will receive a score that identifies them as just meeting standards but not above. That is likely true. But it is even more true of an exam given to a 4 year old.
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I think admission to these so-called gifted and talented classes should not be based on standardized test scores or even on GPA.
While GAP might play a factor in the selection, also let students that are gifted and talented prove they are gifted and talented through their self-dedication and discipline, with a portfolio that showcases their talent and gift in addition to teacher recommendations based on observations.
How many great writers, artists, and scientists did poorly on standardized tests?
For instance, in today’s climate of rank and punish standardized tests, Einstein would probably have never become “Einstein”.
“When he was very young, Einstein’s parents worried that he had a learning disability because he was very slow to learn to talk. (He also avoided other children and had extraordinary temper tantrums.) When he started school, he did very well-he was a creative and persistent problem-solver-but he hated the rote, disciplined style of the teachers at his Munich school, and he dropped out when he was 15. Then, when he took the entrance examination for a polytechnic school in Zurich, he flunked. (He passed the math part, but failed the botany, zoology and language sections.)”
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/einsteins-life-facts-and-fiction
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Lloyd,
The tests are given to 4 year olds and are not typical standardized tests. There is actually an industry of tutors in NYC who, for a fee, will tutor a 4 year old child for a test. The 4 year old goes off with a stranger and answer questions verbally or by pointing.
I have no idea who in the Bloomberg administration ever thought this was a good idea. I get that they felt that teachers were playing favorites by nominating kids to the gifted programs but the “cure” was worse than the illness.
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“Gifted and talented” means whatever one wants it to mean.
Not sure what a standardized test (particularly of a 4 year old) is supposed to show, but I’m pretty sure it says nothing about talent for drawing, theater, music, sports or any number of othe;r things.
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My youngest brother did not talk until he was 4. My mother used to go around saying, “Einstein didn’t talk until hw was 4.” [He is has long been the highest-earning among we 4 sibs.] My youngest also did not talk until 4. We weren’t sure what to make of it, as eldest talked at 9 months, & middle around 2. But a little before youngest became articulate, we realized that his constant baby-talk babble was words & paragraphs previously unintelligible to us. He had been talking all along!
My 3 sons’ talking ages presaged verbal ability. The eldest who talked at 9mos was preternaturally verbal, w/ the sort of articulateness that signalled teachers that his inteligence was not reflected in low test-scores/ hw ability (swiftly putting him on SpEd radar). He was that rare person who could at 13 explain cogently to layman mom what quadratic equations were all about, but could not map one out on paper. Middle son who talked at 2 is more like my husband, who listens & thinks, then responds laconically. Youngest, who talked late, is voluble, but his intelligence is in the emotional/ creative realm—he understands poetry better than prose, & at 28 is still building his vocabulary.
All 3 were/ are musicians: their mode of expression entails a different set of symbols, which is kinda math-y, kinda verbal, & doesn’t translate directly to the “book-&pencil” intelligence measured at school.
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bethree5: I don’t remember now at what age my husband started speaking “English,” but at the age that children were expected to talk, he consistently spoke gibberish/made up his own language, because it suited him to do so, & he understood every word he was saying. Since it was the 1950s, they took him to the “doctor” (because medical doctors knew EVERYTHING then, right?
Even that smoking was good for us! That scene in the film {sorry, but it was made by Woody Allen} Take the Money & Run where the mother takes the young Alfie to the family dr. because he’s worried about the world–& the dr. is just blowing smoke in the kid’s face…)
Anyway, his parents were told that he was “retarded,” & that was all…
Luckily, they just let it go, & my husband progressed (fairly) normally throughout school (well, he hated school…his first teacher–can you imagine?–had the name of Ms. “Papermaster” {I guess she’d come from parents who had been teachers, so it was a joke pronounced upon them at Ellis Island}. But–she looked & acted like one of those old stereotyped schoolmarms in that film–so that was enough to put him off school, as she’d been his 1st Grade Teacher.)
Anyway, point being, my husband is actually an extremely creative & industrious (i.e., productive) soul who never wanted to work for anyone else &, did, in fact, start his own, successful business.
And he still talks gibberish (no, just kidding!)
Final note: our young daughter (almost 2?) was a very good traveler: on a long car trip to New York, she amused herself not by coloring w/her crayons, but listening to music tapes & having the crayons “dance.” When she wasn’t doing that or sleeping, my husband or I would turn around to talk to her, & sucking her thumb, she’d take it out of her mouth to scold us, “Shhh! I’m having my thinking time!”
STOP.TESTING.THESE.KIDS!!!
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When I was SEVEN, I was given a “test” (not by my grade school teacher) and the results said I was retarded and would never learn to read or write. After the so-called testing experts told my mother this, we drove home and she cried all the way.
By the time she reached home, she was determined to prove those “test experts” wrong, and she did.
From my way of thinking, most of these tests used to measure individual children are dangerous and useless, because how many children that are labeled failures of some kind do not have a mother like mine?
Who did my mother turn to for advice? “My grade school teacher” who did not give me that EFFING “test”. My mother followed that grade school teacher’s advice and I learned to read and write.
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The problem as some are pointing out is that all kids have gifts, but only “book&pencil” gifts are prized in pubsch. Even in music, if kids don’t have conservatory-type skills, they are often ignored for prestigious band/ orch tracks…
I will NEVER forget the jazz musician who came to lead elemsch band when youngest was in 5th: he showcased my son’s off-script percussional talent at the big spring concert, introducing his solo w/ “Show ‘em what you got, Charles!” From age 13 on, youngest was engrossed in creating musical “beats” on computer for DJ’s. That skill, plus “freestylin’” rhyming ability, were well-known among our town’s small black cohort, but unknown at school… Eldest’s multiple talents in computer programming, keybds/ composition, & graphic arts went unnoticed until late hisch, & barely then… And middle son’s poetry, guitar & compositional talents were only recognized within his small school-w/n-a-school alternative program: At 30, his band books SXSW venues & tours extensively.
As far as the pubschsys was concerned, my three were misfits who might not make it to college: 2 had IEPS & self-contained classes, the 3rd was an “underachiever” rescued by the alternative school.
Fortunately for them, their parents had a diametrically opposed perspective. Musically, we were wannabe amateurs who recognized & encouraged their kids’ superior [non-conservatory] talents. Academically, we were grads of competitive colleges who understood how times had changed: these kids’ verbal talents would have shot them to the top in our less-tested, un-STEM-y day.
But the bottom line is that in competitive-hothouse districts like ours in NJ, students get a warped idea of what “counts”: anything short of excellence [measured by test-scores] is a problem. If your problem can be measured per IDEA law, here at least you’ll get strong support. You’ll get to a medium-selective college & may even realize your gifts were ignored—that you actually have something to offer. But if not—if you’re “average”—you’ll be ignored & think you’re “less than,” & that may dog your days & suppress your ambitions for life.
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I believe we live in the same type of hothouse….I’m in MD (suburbs of DC). We live in this horrible bubble of competitiveness based on test scores. Child#1 is a Sr in public HS and she has done OK, but we pulled child #2 and put him into a private (we pay), religious, all boy HS and for the first time ever he likes school. The competition factor is gone because they don’t use standardized tests, there is no common core, the few AP (about 3-5%) kids sit in the same classes as honors and regular students but are given a different text book and they do their AP work self directed. Every child is treated with respect and the boys reciprocate. It feels refreshing to not have to deal with the crazy parents.
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You made a good choice. I often exhorted my eldest to try a different sort of school, but he’d have none of it, wanted to continue in pubsch w/the friends he’d developed. Toward the end of high school—after he’d gone through medical leave due to what turned out to be bipolar disorder, & after difficulties trying to fit into rock bands that had no patience w/his perfectionism, he admitted, maybe he should have tried a different sort of school, back in elementary. [Here in our central-NJ town, there were a couple of private options that would have welcomed his unique talents w/o making him feel so ‘different.’] He had some triumphs in late hisch, as others recognized his abilities. But I would have liked for him not to have had to suffer so much during the transit.
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I addressed one version of this “gifted and talented,” issue on this blog in 2014 when Newsweek featured a report called “The Creativity Crisis,” citing a steady decline in scores on the Torrance Tests of Creativity since 1990. The verbal and non-verbal tests have been respected and widely used, in part, because data has been kept on multifaceted accomplishments of each cohort of test takers since the late 1950s. A secondary analysis of the longitudinal data indicated that lifetime creative accomplishment (patents, publications, awards and other indicators) is more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than for traditional childhood measures of intelligence. The Newsweek caused promoters of the Common Core to gasp and set up a bizarre test of creativity and other “hard to test” thingies, like global awareness. The program, called EdSteps is dead, and good riddance. https://dianeravitch.net/2014/09/15/laura-h-chapman-on-creativity/#comments
I have no idea what tests are being used to identify gifted and talented students in New York. Early identifications in many states are by a nomination process with some standardized criteria for selection, which may also include test scores. The current discussion is muddled by fuzzy references to “enrichment” as if a bonus, luxury, or frill ( a common trope for arts programming), and concerns about suitable academic challenges for students who are adept in various forms of disciplined inquiry. Given the current obsession with academic mastery, especially as measured by standardized test, I am all in for studies and inquiries and immersive experiences in the art, and for all, not as if an “enrichment” but a criterion for excellence in education for all.
Even so, it is clear that tests for gifted and talent are money makers and widely used.
In Texas, for example, scores on any of the following tests may supplement an application for a G&T program. Some tests are strictly academic. I am only familiar with the TCT-Figural (Torrance Test of Creative Thinking), still in use with data on lifetime creativity for each cohort of test-takers since the late 1950s. Here are the recommended Texas tests:
1. California Tests of Basic Skills-A battery of tests in reading, language, and mathematics designed to provide general measures of the achievement levels of individual children.-CTB-McGraw-Hill
2. IOWA Tests of Basic Skills-An achievement test for students in grades K–8.-Riverside
3. Cognitive Abilities Test 7-Measures cognitive abilities and learning styles; section 1 is verbal, 2 is quantitative, and 3 is non-verbal. -Riverside
4. CogAT 7 Screener-An abridged version of the Cognitive Abilities Test 7 that is ideal for identifying kindergartners that might not be nominated for G/T services.-Riverside
5. TTCT-Figural (Torrance Test of Creative Thinking); -Measures creative ability; contains three 10-minute subtests; scoring takes 30–45 minutes to complete or can be scored by Scholastic Testing. (ages 5–adult)-Scholastic Testing Services, Inc.
6. Naglieri Non-Verbal Ability Test-Measures non-verbal ability.-Pearson Assessment
7. SAGES (Screening Assessment for Gifted Elementary and Middle School Students) -Assessment contains three subtests: 1) math/science, 2) language arts/social studies, and 3) reasoning (non-verbal). Group test takes about 2 hours to complete. (ages 5–14)-Pro-Ed
8. Scales for Identifying Gifted Students-A norm-referenced parent/teacher rating scale. -Prufrock Press
9. Slocumb-Payne Teacher Perception Inventory-An inventory that gathers teacher’s perceptions of student’s abilities. Good for identifying students from diverse backgrounds.-Aha! Process Inc.www.ahaprocess.com
10. Environmental Opportunities Profile-The profile determines the degree to which a student’s environment impacts his/her performance in school.-Aha! Process Inc.www.ahaprocess.com
11. Profiles of Creative Ability-Measures creativity.-Pro Ed
Cincinnati Public Schools has a selective admissions School for the Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA), a magnet school, in addition to about ten flavors of magnet schools beginning in Kindergarten including Montessori, Paideia, World languages, German Language, STEM, and one dubious “Digital Academy.”
SCPA admissions are by auditions or by portfolios of work with judgments made by the “artistic faculty” in the seven “Artistic Departments” at SCPA :Creative Writing, Dance, Drama, Instrumental Music, Technical Theater (Scenic, Lighting, and Costuming,) Visual Arts, and Vocal Music.
Students entering Grades 4-6 are required to audition in all talent areas, except Technical Theater.
Students entering Grades 7-12 are only required to audition in one category but may audition for all categories. About 20% of students who apply are accepted.
SPCA has a troubled history of governance. Parents parents and members of the community (especially arts patrons) want a school with professional performances extracted from students at an early age. Others want the school, located in the central city, to function more like a neighborhood school with a strong arts focus. An excellent history of the school is here. It is a troubled history and is still problematic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_for_Creative_and_Performing_Arts
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If we keep in mind the true purpose of public education, supporting democracy not economic development, having different tracks for students makes no sense at all. Universal integration is best for all. Down with GATE. (And down with Gates.)
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As a parent and a teacher, I had thought the true purpose of public education was to educate students. It is really unclear to me how any teacher can teach vector calculus and introductory algebra in the same class. Having different tracks for students is required if educating all students is the goal of education.
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Somewhere in following this thought-thread—perhaps not on this particular post—I learned that what I’d thought was the rejection & end of tracking [due to inequitable funneling of blacks to voc-tech] was… not the end of tracking. Tracking, as I experienced it as a midsch/hisch student in the ‘60’s, though [briefly] “ended” [‘80’s? ‘90’s?] was eclipsed by the testing era, which handily identified those in need of SpEd at one end, & those in need of G&T/ AP courses at the other end—all focused on the supposedly huge need for STEM college grads [see IEEE Spectrum article 8/30/13 “The STEM Crisis Myth[. That is still where we are today.
Meanwhile, what we are left with: there is no more voc-tech path, other than a few highly-competitive seats at regional voc-techs (in regions where such schools are still hanging on). Despite two generations lost to the bldg trades, w/ good-wage jobs filled by immigrants, & a system where mfg decline has led to the halving of union membership, which means trade apprenticeships—always hard to come by—have virtually disappeared. Despite crying need.
And what of the “average” students, now pressured to major in accounting or biz, whose entry-level corporate jobs—a job like I was able to get as a French major in the ‘70’s– went up in smoke when corporations went global, first offshoring mfg jobs, now offshoring everything from receptionist to customer service to purchasing, trafifc, invoicing– the white-collar entry-level jobs of the ‘70’s?
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And meanwhile, fed Dept of Ed sits on its thumbs as it has been doing for 40 yrs as this situation has been developing, allowing unplanned haywire in higher ed, preoccupied w/ developing K12 stds/aligned assessments accountability systems, & recently, libertarian school-choice fantasies.
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First, eccentric doesn’t get you into G&T. Test scores do. Second creating programs to address the needs of marginalized students accepts the dubious premise that the way to teach kids to mix with marginalized kids is to segregate them. Special Ed kids used to be sent to BOCES, remember? Regular Ed kids have learned a lot from being schoolmates with students with special needs. Similarly, couldn’t we wind up with schools that have many different programs for many different kinds of marginalized kids? In an increasingly diverse nation and world, we need to mix more, not less. Mixing generates deep social learning. It’s not as easy perhaps as not mixing, but so what? And socially and intellectually awkward kids should be as welcome as anyone else. Hard to do…you bet. So what?
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We had a terrific G & T program in the low-to-middle income school district in which I taught. Sure, there was some looking at test scores, but the majority of kids were admitted on the talent pool side; i.e., they exhibited many other forms of ability, in the arts, linguistically &, of course, twice exceptional (kids diagnosed w/learning disabilities and high intelligence/talented). This was such a wonderful program I’d often thought of pulling my kid out of our home school district & enrolling her in the one in which I taught, because our home school district was the only s.d. in the ‘burbs that did not have any G & T program.
(We eventually enrolled her in a private school for G & T in Grade 7–after trying a Summerhill type of school–because, for lack of a better word, she went ballistic in 5th Grade at her public school, & refused to go {at least it was May, & school was almost over; my husband worked from home, so she stayed home for a month &, because I was teaching in middle school, & so provided her w/schoolwork, which I graded/corrected & went over w/her}. But–all of that being said–it was quite an {unnecessary} ordeal for all of us.)
Clearly, public schools should–no, must–have G & T programs, but NOT at age 4 or Kdgtn., & not choosing participants solely through testing.
I could tell you another looong horror story about yet another student I’d had, labeled as “retarded” (in 1974) &, because of so much fighting, was retested, most certainly was not “retarded,” but still was shafted because his parents weren’t available to stick up for him & then he was misplaced in an unsuitable classroom. To the best of my recollection, he dropped out of school early in high school &, from what people have told me, he did not do very well in adulthood.
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What I don’t understand is why regular instruction can’t be of the quality you mention. All it takes is some courage, a good board, and hard work.
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Please read this brilliant response to NY’s desire to eliminate gifted programs by a gifted black man who was in them.
https://www.the74million.org/article/equity-does-not-mean-everyone-gets-nothing-theres-a-better-way-to-address-new-york-citys-gifted-gap/
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So we should recognize that, because the school system fails to meet the needs of “gifted” students, we need to improve the G&T program. True enough. But doesn’t the same argument apply to the needs of all those “not-gifted” students, needs that are also not being met by the school system?
At bottom, these arguments approach public education as a triage problem. Any way you slice it the only way to fix this problem is to get much more serious about public education. Anything else is some kind of triage.
Disgraceful in the richest country in world history.
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And that’s what No Child Left Behind was all about.
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I want to add that for close to twenty years in NYC Schools, it was all about teaching to the bottom third.
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The first sentence is problematic:
“Equity does not mean that everyone gets nothing. But the recommendations of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group would do just that when it comes to gifted and talented education.”
That completely mischaracterizes what the committee was suggesting. Where did they say “we don’t want anyone to have anything”? In fact, they offered an assortment of alternatives that are much more sound.
However, it is quite interesting that many of his suggestions are more similar to what the committee suggested than to what is in place now. He is certainly not claiming that the way to find the most gifted children is to give a test to the 4 year olds whose parents know to ask for it (and even prep their child) and use that result to conclude that the child is either gifted or not gifted.
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A few quick thoughts:
First, the whole “gifted & talented” schtick is mostly bogus. Always has been. In essence, it’s been promoted by parents-with-income who want special privileges and status given to their kids. Sadly, it’s also promoted by educators who are either clueless or enamored of being labeled a “gifted” teacher. Sigh.
Second, like Advanced Placement courses and the SAT (or ACT), research just doesn’t support the money that’s funneled into “gifted & talented” programs. A study of 14,000 fifth-graders found that, after a year and a half of gifted and talented classes, the scores of marginal students — students who barely made the “gifted & talented” cut-off test scores — were basically the same as those of other marginal students who has just missed the cut-off and rather than “gifted,” had taken regular classes. You’d think if the “gifted” classes were so helpful, they would have helped those who’d taken them. Nope.
Research from the National Center for Research on Gifted Education (yeah, there is such a thing) has found that “gifted classrooms are preoccupied with activities to develop critical thinking and creativity such as holding debates and brainstorming… Teaching academic self-confidence, leadership skills and social emotional learning all ranked higher than teaching above grade level content.”
Now, why shouldn’t ALL students be taught to think critically and creatively? And why shouldn’t leadership and self-confidence and social-emotional learning be on the plate for all students?
Basically, the so-called “gifted & talented” programs are about family income…and not a whole lot else.
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