Most public schools in New York City offer a “gifted and talented” program for aspiring students. Annual performance tests are offered to identify the children who are overachieving in the standard disciplines. Those who qualify enter advanced internship programs with more demanding curricula, providing them with an easier path to admission to better colleges. The programs are open to everyone and don’t cost anything extra, so every family has the opportunity to try and get their kids in.
Unfortunately for Gotham’s parents, the results fell short of the expectations of the awake crowd that led the city government. Both Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza have repeatedly complained that the testing program is “unfair” because the students entering the program “do not reflect the diversity of the urban population.” In other words, not enough black and Spanish students end up in the advanced programs. So how does the brain at City Hall plan to solve this problem? Very easy. They will abolish admission tests. (CBS New York)
A big change is coming for the “gifted and talented” programs for students in New York City.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza say the city will begin to phase out the entrance exam.
Critics have said that the composition of the programs does not reflect the diversity of the city.
The Chancellor took to Twitter to try and paint some lipstick on this pig.
Programs for gifted and talented children serve a small percentage of children, but we know many more @NYCSchools students are exceptional. We need to step back from the test and develop a system that rethinks academic and enriching programming for our most exceptional students.
– Chancellor Richard A. Carranza (@DOEChancellor) January 13, 2021
So you go to “a new take on academic and enriching programming for our most exceptional students? What does that mean at all? You can’t really have an advanced placement program without having a way to identify the students who are truly advanced and could thrive in a more challenging educational environment. ?
Mayor de Blasio has been fighting the gifted and talented programs for years, but it has always been a bit of a tricky issue for him to try to cope with. The problem is that the “lack of racial diversity” that he likes to complain about doesn’t break down in the normal way. If it was just a case where the lion’s share of the spots on the program went to white students, he could just play the race card and stomp on the programs. Unfortunately for them, that’s not the case. Year after year, the majority of seats go to Asian students.
The difference in results is especially large when you look at the scores per capita. Asians make up just 14.1 percent of the city’s population, far behind black, Hispanic, and white residents. And yet their students far outperform the rest. This largely deprives the Blasio of the chance to play the race card. And if he scraps the testing program, he will cut off one of the city’s minorities in a hugely disproportionate way.
Unfortunately for the students who will be most affected, they almost always forget Asians talk about minorities when Democratic politicians. In their minds, the word ‘minority’ only applies to Black and Hispanic residents, even though there are more than Asians across the board in nearly all localized communities.
So if you are going to do away with the admission screening system, how do you replace that with something that delivers the desired demographic outcome? If it turns out to be just some sort of lottery, why do you have an advanced studies program at all? You are not going to randomly pick up the most advanced students. Furthermore, how is that fair for the kids? If a child who cannot score well on the placement tests is suddenly shoved into a significantly more advanced program, they will almost certainly collide. Then you either have to boot them back to the regular school curriculum, or keep the advanced class stupid to the point where they can pass. If you go the last route, you have eliminated the benefit of a gifted and talented program in the first place.
This is just more of the de Blasio administration’s virtue signaling and racial madness. All they are going to do is further erode New York City’s public school system and make it even more difficult for children to attend college. But that’s clearly a small price to pay for trying to make it seem like you’re fighting racism, I suppose.