14 ms·

New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

111 points by jbredeche 5y ago

chatoyance 5y ago
Filed under: EDUCATION IS RACIST! Hold back the smart kids because not doing so would be "segregation" and make the others feel bad about themselves. Self-esteem and diversity equality for all. Forget merit, self-confidence, and IEPs because that's racist, sexist, and ableist.
say_it_as_it_is 5y ago
Public schools in NYC rush to the lowest common denominator to address cries of racial inequity. This only takes away futures for children who would have had any future because they weren't among the general population of future convicts or minimum wage earners. No one is better for policies focused on racial parity when the bar is vastly lower because of it.
- chatoyance 5y ago
  Diversity is our strength. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. I wonder if anyone else ever had to have a 90 minute bus ride to school each way (3 hours per day) because there were "too many white and Asian kids" at a school a block from their house.
xvilka 5y ago
Slowly progressing towards Idiocracy [1]. [1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
dilap 5y ago
Smart rich kids can continue to go to academically rigorous private schools. Smart poor kids can go pound sand. Of course, to really strike a blow for equality, they should also ban the private schools. Reminds me of the Vonnegut story. "The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal..."
- goldenkey 5y ago
  Private schools are great. They keep rich people snobby. How else are we gonna detect the asshats if they don't tribalise themselves at Poly Prep?
  - _hilro 5y ago
    > How else are we gonna detect the asshats if they don't tribalise themselves at Poly Prep? Maybe we can just judge them by what they put out in to the world? Such as naming their personal blog something really pretentious? Or you know, like, having utterly pretentious quotes in their HN bio? > churchofthought.org > Hardy couldn't have been more wrong about the innocence of pure mathematics. But we live by his legacy. In the sands of time, where do you dine? It better be divine! But sure, you could judge them on choices their parents made to maximise their childrens' potential instead? Not US but judging by the continuous amount of violence happening in certain American public schools, I would 100% be sending the kids private or moving to suburb where the threat of violence is distant.
    - goldenkey 5y ago
      Personal blog as opposed to what, a corporate blog? And it's not just a blog, it's a literal incorporated church. Wait, did you get your ass handed to you in high school and never got over the swirlies? Perhaps we should dive in to some public CBT on HN so we can cure you of your anachronistic pent-up teenage angst. That isn't a quote, it's something I wrote myself. Do you consider nuclear bombs or guided missiles to be benign? That's my point about Mathematics. If you read Apology of a Mathematician by Hardy, you'd understand the perspective I'm parlaying. There's bullying at public schools but I took the bus and train back and forth to a gifted and talented high school every day for 4 years and it made me a tougher person. If you want to raise a fluffy lapdog, then maybe prep school is ideal.
      - _hilro 5y ago
        That's great. I'm not US born/raised/domiciled. The public schools in my country (which I attended) are superb all around. Taking the bus made you a tougher person? super! I couldn't care less. I hope you seek help.
refenestrator 5y ago
Brought to you by the people who all parroted "stop Asian hate" for like 3 weeks last March until it fell off their social media feeds. Kindergarten does seem a bit early to be permanently binning children into "gifted" or "not" but I am so sick of seeing people unhappy with Asians doing well.
- civilized 5y ago
  “I just don’t buy into the narrative that any one ethnic group owns admission to these schools.” - Richard Carranza, former NYC school chancellor The bigotry from certain "progressives" is just staggering.
  - refenestrator 5y ago
    It's a test. The test, as far as I know, doesn't include the question "are you asian".
    - seoaeu 5y ago
      HN regularly has threads full of complaints about how whiteboard interviews don't test the right things and unfairly harm a subset of people that doesn't correlate well to programming ability. It doesn't seem that implausible that the test the district is using has similar flaws in selecting gifted students
      - refenestrator 5y ago
        Sure, but the motivation here is explicit, and it's not about making the test more accurate.
        civilized 5y ago
        To be fair, there are a variety of factions and motivations, and not everyone is race-baiting like Carranza. It's disturbing is that Carranza types are defended and given power within our cities, but there are also real issues with tests like the SHSAT, which are not as well-validated as other scholastic aptitude tests.
tyingq 5y ago
Interesting. There was a film in the 80's called "Fame" that was set in a NYC gifted/talented high school. The theme song was fairly popular and one line that stood out was "I'm going to live forever". Guess not.
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
It's long been a fallacy that you can sort young kids into high or low performers. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. By starting so young (kindergarten!) in NYC they were creating the division out of essentially nothing. Long ago somebody tried dividing an elementary school class into regular and advanced students. At the end of the year, the advanced students had done better. The selection was a random lottery. The difference in performance, was entirely based on expectation.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  Was the study ever replicated?
- EForEndeavour 5y ago
  Could you share a link to that random allocation of students into regular and advanced? Sounds fascinating, though not surprising: imagine the confidence hit of being told by the system you're not advanced.
  - smrk007 5y ago
    Why not just tell ALL the students they’re advanced?
    - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
      Because then they'll figure the game out and revert to baseline.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Perhaps more than just 'expectation' i.e. those who feel they are special and talented may actually strive harder. Maybe a bit of pressure as well. But there's a lot of truth to this I think people should cognize. That said, I'm wary of NYs move, in the later years of high school, providing programs where kids can be among other kids that really want to learn is powerful. At my school, they didn't actually 'vet' students in the advanced program. You just did it if you want. I think that's fair. You can have Algebra 101 and Algebra 101++, which covers more ground, at an accelerated pace, and it's your choice to join. I think that would work.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wizwit999 5y ago
Bad decision, went to these schools
- moneywoes 5y ago
  More info please, how was your experience
  - wizwit999 5y ago
    Basically, I was poor so I lived in a bad neighborhood, all the schools were bad except for the g&t one, this and the SHSAT are awesome for allowing smart immigrants in poor neighborhoods to get a good education. Now one may ask why not make all the schools good but the issue wasnt in funding, there were deeper societal issues among the students who went there, which isnt an easy problem to fix
- goldenkey 5y ago
  I did too. Though they still had the shitstorm of bullies and race gangs (leader of the black gang threw a padlock at my head at lunch ) (leader of russian gang wanted to have me jumped because they thought I was stealing their lunch money due to my computer hacking skills) I still feel like it was a step above the schools near me where pretty much everyone was a jock. I used to have to take the bus and train to and from the city, and along the way, the bus would pickup the students from James Madison High School. They always threw stuff at me and bullied me although toward my senior years I got large enough where I wasn't as much of a target. Pretty much everyone from that local school was a moronic jock or trophy wife wannabe. I can't imagine having to be surrounded by people like that for 4 years. The type of kids we are talking about would use those motorola walky talky phones on full blast. They'd have headphones, but shitty ones, so loud that everyone could hear their music. Or they'd just be blasting some garbage pop on a portable speaker. Oafs are bad and I can't imagine any of these kids grew up into people who aren't assholes. Don't get me wrong, assholes still existed at the G&T schools but in far less numbers. The word was that bunch of the assholes actually got in due to affirmative action (like the gang leader who threw a lock at my head.) Taking away meritocracy is a huge mistake. But that is the essence of the BLM and woke movement. Intelligence measures don't discriminate against anyone except those that aren't intelligent. And yes, it's unfortunate that the conscussions from street brawls or malnutrition might cause a kid from a poor ghetto to be less intelligent. But letting that child into a G&T school, or simply abolishing the schools altogether, it doesn't solve that child's problems. It just makes us all less educated. And if we are all less able, how the hell are we supposed to help that kid?
rvba 5y ago
I dont think that one can judge if a kod is gifted or not at the age of 4, but stupid people dragging smart people down with "equality" is a big problem with current system. I was a part of a gifted program and I dont understand why there arent more of them.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  So its ok to drag down smart kids with "You're not Asian in kindergarten" or some other bias? To provide better-prepared kindergarteners with more public money and better schools, for life, based on a kindergarten test, is what the objection is based on.
- jason-phillips 5y ago
  > I dont understand why there arent more of them. From my perspective, because they suck. The execution is poor. Your experience may have been better, but mine was one of missed opportunity. The course material was virtually the same, i.e., not challenging and thus insufferably boring. A dozen years wasted, GATE/TAG or not.
- lowercased 5y ago
  I think you can, in some (many?) cases. Whether you should or not (or... how you do it) is perhaps the deeper question. My parents were pushed by others around them to get me recognized as gifted/advanced (or whatever the term in the 70s was). Other parents (and my parents' parents) all recognized something different, so my parents went to the school, right before I started kindergarten. They got a reassuring pat on the head by the teacher and principal. "Everyone thinks their child is unique/special/advanced, especially their first, but trust us, everyone needs this..." School started on Wednesday, and Friday afternoon they got a call saying "lowercased should be accelerated a grade or two - he's too advanced". So I was moved up a grade - that's the only lever the school had for "advanced" and, to my knowledge, I was the only one they'd done that for in the 20+ years the school had been open. I later learned it might have been 2 grades but my dad was concerned about socialization issues. And... 1 grade was bad enough in that respect. There were multiple programs for "behind" students - kids were taken out of class for directed reading programs, other counseling sessions, etc. But there was nothing for 'advanced' kids in our area for several years. So yeah, I think there should definitely be more recognition and support for 'gifted' students in some capacity, even if it's subtle. Perhaps moreso if it's subtle. Being visibly 'different' is difficult for a lot of kids.
jason-phillips 5y ago
This is fair. I cannot discern any justifiable reason to arbitrarily exempt a subset of prisoners from general population.
_hilro 5y ago
> But the highly selective and racially segregated program will be replaced for incoming students. Wow, using a word such as segregation, which has connotations of 'by design' sure lays bare their hand. Just to be clear, there is no segregation(of any kind) amongst the students in the program. In fact, there is no segregation at all. There's just not equal representation of the makey-uppy USA racial classifications. But why let facts and clarity rule over emotional clickbaity sub-headlines?
- bitwize 5y ago
  If a school system or program doesn't have enough black kids in it, it is by definition segregated. School antisegregation laws care nothing for intent, only for effect.
  - _hilro 5y ago
    > If a school system or program doesn't have enough black kids in it, it is by definition segregated. No, it is literally not "by definition" segregated. Using the phrase 'by definition' is not that powerful a modifier that every word that surrounds it suddenly becomes true. That's the most nonsense thing ever. Secondly, read the line I quoted: > highly selective and racially segregated program The program is not racially segregated. The NYTimes just needed to sneak in the word segregation because it's a very strong explosive word. To do that, it hammered it incorrectly to a place in a sentence which gives the impression the program itself is racially segregated.
    - geofft 5y ago
      I grew up in a school district in the deep south that was racially segregated, as found by the court system, until a month before I graduated. This was in 2006. Not last century. The school district didn't, of course, test people by race or have a Colored Students High School or whatever. What they did was to put schools and school zones in ways that happened to line up with strong demographic differences in swaths of the city. My elementary school was in a white part of the city, and I can remember maybe two black classmates. My middle school (because that's where they put the gifted and talented program, as it happens) was in a black part of the city, and from my memory it felt like a majority of the students who were zoned to be there were black. This school district was, once again, "racially segregated" in the eyes of the law. The law didn't ask whether the school district officials were motivated by racism in how they drew the lines; that's simply not what the term means.
excalibur 5y ago
Yes! Now they can fail all of the kids equally instead of possibly helping a small subset who did well on a test once.
jshaqaw 5y ago
I am all for supportive programs for really smart kids. FWIW my kids go to NYC public schools. We did not go with gifted and talented because we didn't really like the structure of the program. If the city ends up providing REAL enrichment for gifted kids past 3rd grade it will be a net gain for everyone. It is pretty ridiculous how pervasive test prep is for pre-school age kids to get them into the G&T program.
- prepend 5y ago
  I know lots of parents who “chose not to go with it” when their kids aren’t selected for gifted and talented. There are many flaws in gifted programs and they aren’t perfect. But they do have advantages like more child autonomy, more allowances for child-directed study, and more encouragement of curiosity. Not all children have academic curiosity and so gifted isn’t a good fit for everyone. But for parents who want their kids to achieve academically, I can’t imagine turning down gifted for “regular.” And not saying this is you, but when I lived in Manhattan I would hear arguments about improving all classes instead of just gifted and the parents were sending their kids to private school. Public school is rough, but taking away paths out for kids who want to be in school, but whose parents can’t afford private school seems like punishing those gifted students.
  - jshaqaw 5y ago
    Let's be clear about what G&T programs mean in NYC. There is a heavier workload and more intensive academic focus but not really so much in terms of constructivist learning, child autonomy etc... That why we skipped it. To be blunt, I wanted my kids to have a more interesting classroom experience and not waste evenings stuck doing homework when they were little. My bet/assessment was that they would be smart enough to more than catch up later on when the workload ramps in a challenging middle school. So far it looks like I was right. BTW - not all public school in NYC is tough. You have to remember the scale of NYC. Within it are insanely great schools, a lot of mediocre schools, and too many horror shows - much like the public school system in any US state.
0xB31B1B 5y ago
I am generally quite liberal but I strongly disagree with he current strain of progressive education reform. There are inherent differences within the capabilities of students, we can detect these early, and we should use them to provide students with appropriate challenges. Our education system should provide avenues for top students to excel, ad hopefully these top students become the people who create businesses or invention that improve the world.
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  The current progressive movement is highly illiberal
  - gorwell 5y ago
    The twitter mob doesn't like to hear that but it's absolutely true. It's illiberal, intolerant and regressive. Actual progressives and liberals see this clear as day. Most of us are just too afraid of the mob to say it.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  This seems to be a "present" of an older generation that fundamentally didn't put in any effort to understand their successors. With exception to the newest generation that now believes that racism is everywhere. That said, I think logistics of education today can supply almost everyone with a high quality education anyway and the role to connect people moves from universities to other places. So less elite and more broad high quality education wouldn't hold anyone back and is a better approach.
  - blacktriangle 5y ago
    Or this is the inevitable end of leftist thinking every single time. Sounds good on paper, fairness and all that, but totally ignores reality and ends up requiring large amounts of violence to enforce its idea of equal outcomes for all, where that equal outcome is always poverty and starvation.
dvdhnt 5y ago
Totally based on my experiences and opinion, this is because our society has very little appetite for prioritizing education and children over economics. In reality, we should have more programs like this and investing more resources in developing alternative, public paths for educating children. Public education itself is relatively young in human history. Invest in R&D. But that money would need to come from coffers already being drained for the sake of short term profits. Pay the teachers.
- barney54 5y ago
  Spending on schools in the US has dramatically increased in recent decades and that money isn’t going to for-profit schools but public schools. The US is investing in child R&D with more money. There is a good argument that the money is not well spent, but the reality is that spending is way up.
Bostonian 5y ago
Subtitle: "Students who are currently enrolled in gifted and talented classes will not be affected. But the highly selective and racially segregated program will be replaced for incoming students." The reasons can be debated, but it's a fact that on IQ tests, American blacks score about 1 standard deviation (15 points) below whites. A common threshold for a gifted program is an IQ of 130, 2SD above average. If you demand that all racial groups be proportionally represented, you cannot have a gifted program. You will not get proportional representation among FAANG programmers either. In general, America needs to make a choice between non-discrimination and government-enforced equal outcomes. Charles Murray's book "Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America" (2021) discusses this. He co-authored "The Bell Curve" (1994).
- endisneigh 5y ago
  It's also a fact that American blacks have several standard deviations less wealth than whites. If wealth ultimately is the driver for such a disparity, and education is the gateway to said wealth, you're effectively trapping people.
  - tomp 5y ago
    > If wealth ultimately is the driver for such a disparity Fortunately, we know it's not. Black Nigerian immigrants slightly outperform whites in many careers, and very likely start with substantially less wealth (because they're immigrants). So one variable is constant (skin color), a few are "worse" (wealth, knowledge of English), a few might be better (motivation, IQ, work ethics, cultural expectations, ...).
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      A single counterexample doesn't invalidate a trend, lol. One could say Nigerian immigrants, coming from the richest country in Africa, would show better outcomes over other African immigrants. Oh wait, they do.
      - tomp 5y ago
tapoxi 5y ago
My brother teaches at an exam school in Boston which similarly had its requirements dropped recently, and it seems like a lot of these changes are poorly thought out and done for optics. Sure, some of the exam schools in BPS are overwhelmingly White/Asian, but the school he teaches at is mostly Black/Asian/Hispanic. While he was previously able to teach classes of bright, focused students, now they need to break up fights of unruly students and divert their attention to the ones that are struggling. I imagine the parents that can afford it will likely remove their kids from the public school system if quality continues to drop, which will only hurt funding. The real issue is a much more complex socioeconomic problem, but that's hard to solve, so it's easier to point the finger at schools.
- arkades 5y ago
  This has already happened in NY. What the NYT article omits is that the elimination of advanced classes has been preceded by a couple of decades of highly restricted availability. 15 years ago (shit I’ve gotten old), when I lived in nyc_borough, there was precisely one elementary school honors class for the entire borough. 30 spots for the entire borough. I didn’t bother to wait and see if my kid managed to get a spot, we pulled her out and stuck her in private school.
- seibelj 5y ago
  Boston has one of the highest per-pupil funding in the US. Yet excluding the exam schools, the majority of the schools are awful. Here is the school my kids would have to go to if I wasn’t rich enough to go private: https://www.publicschoolreview.com/the-english-high-school-profile https://www.publicschoolreview.com/the-english-high-school-p... Ranked 1644 out of 1667 in Massachusetts. In 2018, the vice principal of anti gang violence was convicted of recruiting students there to deal drugs for him, then attempting to execute one of them with a gunshot to the head for withholding drug profits https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/05/31/shaun-harrison-guilty-boston-student-shooting https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/05/31/shaun-harrison-guilty-b... There is no talk on the left of how to fix these schools, other than giving them more money, which they are already the highest funded in the country. The progressives need to rethink their school reform plan otherwise society will continue to exit the public schools and go private or home school.
deleted 5y ago
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mgamache 5y ago
The answer is probably "more gifted programs in low-income neighborhoods". This is of course racist against Asians (they are lumped in with white when it's convenient). They make up 43% of these schools, so whites, and POCs are underrepresented. Why are Asians doing better? Are they more intelligent, work harder, value education? Let's pretend there is no problem by just eliminating the schools. Of course, there are problems with gifted programs, but assuming that factory education will maximize all the students potential is obviously wrong. This is a pollical maneuver designed t placate a segment of voters. We need every smart mind being educated properly regardless of the circumstances of birth.
deleted 5y ago
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xyzzy21 5y ago
Epic Fail. But predictable from people who wrongly believe Bell curves don't exist and that everyone is the same and capable of achieving ANYTHING.
motohagiography 5y ago
Mixed feelings about moves like this. Am a product of a related system in another city some decades ago. The pressure to "de-stream" students in education in general has been an ongoing controversy for decades. What bothers me about gifted programs is that they isolate the smartest kids from everyone else, and one can't help but think it's more to protect the system and everyone else from bored intelligent kids than to enrich their individual educations. IQ isn't a great proxy for much, but two or three standard deviations from the mean in populations of millions, you are likely dealing with different kinds of thinkers. The skills the programs emphasized are focused on abstraction and complex problem solving - and not leadership where they could scale to benefit everyone. This turns kids into talent who will ultimately work for and be managed by more average peers, which makes it a remedial program for socializing exceptional kids into functioning cogs. It's like inventing fusion reactor to plow fields, or an F1 car to sit in traffic. I get that enrichment in education is something they might not be able to get at home and the schools are providing it, but they're providing what the average of the education bureaucracy can be persuaded is right for smart people to do based on cliches about scientists and professions. There are good reasons to change how gifted programs operate, even putting phasing them out on the table, though the reasons in the article are ideological, which is practically the definition of what you have when you don't have experience - just the logic of an idea. NYC may do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and the benefits will be an unintentional side effect.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  How many of those leadership exercises would realistically carry over into IRL benefit after the students graduate? For that matter, how many G&T students would check out because they're focused on leadership rather than abstract problem solving?
  - motohagiography 5y ago
    Leadership and management are like riding a bike in that you can teach children to do it, but if you never learned, it's likely you never will. Management training programs for regular teenagers are common in the fast food industry, and it's a differentiating life skill. I think giving that to exceptional 8-12yr olds is more valuable than exploring their creativity in an isolated class away from their peers. Few people ever get bored of leadership. The net return on teaching advanced individual problem solving compared to teaching smart kids to scale their skills with leadership has a massive delta. This is probably something you couldn't do in the public system, and you would need separate schools, and arguably this is what private schools already do. Policy wise, this is equivalent to vouchers, which are immensely controversial for the same reasons gifted education is, because they stream people into opportunity - or lack thereof, when they are still just kids. You're never going to teach kids enough to overthrow you, but if you don't, what are you really educating them to become?
moron4hire 5y ago
Our oldest just started kindergarten and he is bored out of his mind. He can already read a little, he does basic addition, he even has a really good handle on some basic science facts (ask him about earthquakes and volcanoes some time) and they are spending time on learning shapes. His homework last night was "count to 20". Seriously, his preschool was more rigorous than this, yet somehow they also played a lot more. It's had a huge impact on his mood and energy levels, for no other reason than he doesn't have anything to look forward to when he gets there. He doesn't need a gifted program to "maximize his potential". What he needs is an adaptable program that can meet him on his level to "minimize learning to hate school".
gfodor 5y ago
This just means the gifted and talented programs are now only available to the children of gifted and talented parents. Great job everyone. Get your kids out of the public schools in blue states.
- asoneth 5y ago
  Related, I'm absolutely in favor of everyone moving to a state that matches their priorities, but if someone prioritizes "highly-ranked public schools" then you might want to look closely before moving to a generic "red" state. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-school-rankings-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-scho... There are absolutely "red" states like Nebraska with good public schools, and "blue" states like New Mexico with poor public schools. But there does seem to be some kind of positive correlation between how "blue" a state is and how highly their public schools are ranked. So if your "blue" state has you itching to pull your kids out of public school, a "red" state may not be significantly better.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    The gap between public and private schools is going to widen significantly - the point isn't to switch to a different public school district, but to exit the public school system given the conflict of interests they have against students.
    - asoneth 5y ago
      In my experience and talking with other parents it's often more nuanced than public vs private (or red vs blue). The best schools in our region are dominated by wealthy suburban public schools, a few elite magnet public schools, and a few expensive ($60k+) private schools. Whereas the performance of the cheaper private schools and most charters don't seem to be substantially better or worse than the average public school. However, there are definitely a couple public school districts that entered into a death spiral and the parents fleeing those are what keep the mediocre private/charter schools in business. But if there's one thing I've learned is that parents rarely base their actual school choices on their politics -- the most left-wing liberals will send their kids to a private school and the most right-wing conservatives will send their kids to a public school if they think that's in the kids' best interest.
civilized 5y ago
> But teaching children with a large range of abilities in one classroom is difficult, meaning much of the success of the plan will depend on the city’s approach to training educators. In other words, talented students will be ignored or told to "tutor other students" (with no actual support or structure to do so), and will waste most of their time in school. As they always have under such systems. Honestly, I don't even care anymore. My expectations are so low. The best thing any teacher ever did for me was let me read, or work through an advanced math textbook supplied by my parents, in the back of the class, without interference. Just tell every teacher to do that with their kids who they don't want to deal with because they already know everything being taught. That's the closest this country will get to "socially acceptable" G&T education.
WhompingWindows 5y ago
Why can't we acknowledge the simple fact: some kids are smarter, they learn faster, they remember better? I went to gifted and talented programs, and even there I felt like the pace was slow and easy for the top kids. If you put those kids into classes with even less academically apt, less focused children, those top kids are going to be bored out of their mind and wasting their time. Do we truly want to waste the time of our most bright young minds? Do we want to squander their potential when they pick up 1+1=2 in 10 seconds, but it takes other kids 10 minutes? Do we have to force our teachers to make 4-5 different lesson plans, 1 for the lowest, 1 for the highest, and a couple others for the mid-tiers? We're already asking too much of teachers, give them smaller classes with less of a range of aptitude.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  > bored out of their mind and wasting their time. Wasting their time wouldn't even be much of a problem. Many become really destructive and it can result in them dropping out. A bored kid will not have iron discipline, maybe especially not the smart ones.
peter_retief 5y ago
I didnt get to read it because of the paywall, can somebody please post an archived link please.
- haunter 5y ago
  https://archive.vn/AnC9m/ https://archive.vn/AnC9m/
  - peter_retief 5y ago
    Thanks.
SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
Does anyone know if there are any real serious studies about the effectiveness of gifted programs in children to actually identify gifted kids and provide them with appropriate tools that justify giving them to gifted children only and not to disseminate to the entire population of children? Despite this discussion having >70 comments in it a lot of it seems to be intuition, anecdotes and gut feel without actual data behind them.
fmajid 5y ago
In other words, gifted and talented is not enough. You need to be gifted, talented and rich to get an education suited to your needs (often gifted kids are bored at school and get into trouble).
darthvoldemort 5y ago
The inconvenient truth about NYC G&T program is that it is 40% Asian. Asians have dominated the G&T program, even "stealing" spots from white kids where 43% of NYC is white, but only 35% of spots taken by white kids. And Asians are dominating the NYC G&T program NOT because of hundreds of years of systemic racism, NOT because Asians wrote the admissions tests an inbueing cultural bias, and NOT by cheating or bribing admissions. And in NYC, Asians are the poorest demographic by a large margin. This makes the entire story extremely inconvenient for activists who want to say that the program is racist and discriminates against the economically disadvantaged. And yet, they somehow are able to get the entire program trashed because of racism against Asians is perfectly accepted in 2021. Activists have no problems openly discriminating against Asians because whites, blacks and Latinos think of "Americans" as whites, blacks and Latinos. Asians are considered foreigners. So when a prestigious program is dominated by Asians, something must obviously wrong, right? Activists have gutted admissions at Thomas Jefferson high school in Fairfax, VA, arguably the top public high school in the US because it had a high percentage of Asians. Lowell High school admissions in SF, a top 100 high school, underwent the exact same thing because of its high percentage of Asians. Now NYC is doing the same thing. At Harvard, the admissions department openly discriminates against Asians by saying they lack "courage" or less "likeable". Imagine the outrage if this happened to Blacks, but because it happened to Asians it's considered okay because Asians are unAmerican.
- peter_retief 5y ago
  It seems outrageously unfair.
- christophilus 5y ago
  One of the first openly racist interactions I ever witnessed in the US was a white guy hurling slurs at a Vietnamese friend of mine. Asians are definitely in a strange predicament here.
  - swiley 5y ago
    It's almost like you can be racist to anyone.
- 5y ago
dayvid 5y ago
I'm black and I was in a gifted program in elementary school on through honors college at university. I was surprised when I first heard someone say gifted is racist about a year ago. At the same time, though, I feel like I was raised in a time where not as many parents are actively trying to game the education system. It seems to ruin the spirit of the gifted program if parents are looking up tricks and tactics to get their kids to ace exams in Kindergarten.
MyHypatia 5y ago
When I read the headline I was upset, why get rid of a program that challenges eager young minds? Then I read that the current system tests 4 year olds, and puts these kids on separate tracks. 4 year olds! I'm all for challenging different kids with different levels of material, but the current system of testing and separating kids out starting at 4 years old is absurd. That being said, I think by age 8 (3rd grade) it makes sense to give kids different levels of material so they don't either get bored (because it's too easy) or give up (because it's too hard).
- otoburb 5y ago
  An oft-missed option that NYC offers is that children can continue testing for the G&T programs up to Grade 3. So parents can enter when the child is 7 years old to enter into grade 3 (when they usually are 8 years old).
haunter 5y ago
https://archive.vn/AnC9m/ https://archive.vn/AnC9m/
foxhop 5y ago
Gifted & Talented program isn't racist, critical race theory & social marxism redefines the term racism so they may point at any program and call it racist. My son qualifies and it costs the school system nothing. It's mostly about transport to middle school for higher math for him. Reference: "New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program. Students who are currently enrolled in gifted and talented classes will not be affected. But the highly selective and racially segregated program will be replaced for incoming students."
disambiguation 5y ago
kind of tangential.. but i'm constantly baffled by how antiquated our K-12 education system is. 8am - 2pm, a few dozen kids in 1 class room, 1 teacher, 1 white board, shuffled from one class to the next, school bells, homework, midterms, final exam. compare this side by side with schooling 200 years ago, and not much has changed. i can't understand why education hasn't been open sourced and unified.. an why there isn't even a concerted effort to do so? why are 1000s of teachers nation-wide working in silos and reinventing algebra lesson plans every year? why are kids arbitrarily locked in to schedules that don't consider their individual needs and level? resourcing is definitely a problem, and poor teacher salaries are criminal, but the whole thing is designed poorly. further the institution has doubled down on this method .. more testing, more metrics, more pedigrees. This incentivizes gaming the system. to come full circle, these G&T programs are a symptom of the core problems leading parents to desperate fight for alternative teaching because they have correctly assessed the public programs are not sufficient if you really want a shot at academic success.
- astkaasa 5y ago
  > 8am - 2pm, a few dozen kids in 1 class room, 1 teacher, 1 white board, shuffled from one class to the next, school bells, homework, midterms, final exam. It's more or less the same pattern in universities. Why do you consider it outdated?
  - disambiguation 5y ago
    true, i excluded universities because there's slightly more innovation at that level .. more ways to mix and match your education. K-12 on the other hand is very rigid. i guess "outdated" is a bad measure, because being old doesn't make it bad. just the fact that todays model hasnt updated much to 200 years is striking. things i'd like to see done differently: - abolish the linear locked in scheduling. advanced kids can move ahead, but also move in different directions. we should allow kids to pursue classes they enjoy while encouraging them to explore different specializations. - allow adults to come back to school at night. we have a significant population that doesn't have a high school diploma. they are paying the taxes after all, they should have access. https://www.censusscope.org/us/rank_education_withouths_2000.html https://www.censusscope.org/us/rank_education_withouths_2000... - teachers should collaborate instead of working in silos. we should have a singular unified model of education ex. khan academy does a great job of this. open source, always accessible, clear progression, emphasis on collaboration and support among teachers. teacherspayteachers is also good at addressing this. - students should collaborate instead of working in silos. both as peers and across grades. speaking anecdotally, i used to tutor math long ago and felt that through teaching i also improved my own fundamentals. - homework needs to be overhauled. homework is largely just busy work at the moment. it should be treated as a continuous self-assessment of strengths and weaknesses. - testing needs to be overhauled. the incentives for high scores are misaligned for both teachers and students. as a result we often see teachers teaching to the test and students/parents gaming the system. when i got in to college, i took a 2 hour math assessment that got gradually harder over the course of the session (algebra -> multi-var calculus). this was used to decide what math level i should be placed at. tests should be used as assessments that determine your level and curriculum. and these are all just high-level ideas that don't speak to specifics of curriculum. in general, we need to redesign education in the following terms: over a decade, how do we best prepare our kids for the real world.
timnetworks 5y ago
That's a terrible shame, G&T was the last reprieve from the mediocre school environment created by children whose parents don't own any books. If they did any reading they wouldn't vote for Deblasio, though..
- ng12 5y ago
  Hah, good thought. DeBlasio is quite popular among the woke bourgeoisie. Most complaints I hear are about him not being radical enough.
dragonwriter 5y ago
The segregated G&T model has been shown to make education worse for both students tracked into G&T and those not compared doing same classroom, student-adapted assignments universally—aside from the problems in identification that provide lots of opportunity for subtle and not-so-subtle social factors other than merit to play a role, so if this is executed well, it's good. And there outline I've seen in other articles (not bothering to try to bypass the Times paywall) looks good: * Eliminate the high stakes test for four-year olds that controls the entrance gate to accelerated programs. * Expand accelerated programs to all 800 schools instead of 80. * Train all kindergarten (initially) teachers in student-specific accelerated teaching. * Hire additional experienced teachers in areas where acclerated programs will be new. * Screen all students at third-grade for additional subject-area-specific accelerated programs, still to be delivered in mixed classrooms. Obviously, the details of execution beyond high-level bullet points matter a lot, but this sounds quite good. And even if the plan was excellent, starting a controversial thing on the way out without institutional and leadership continuity of vision to carry it through is very much not ideal.
deleted 5y ago
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111 points by jbredeche 5y ago

Filed under: EDUCATION IS RACIST! Hold back the smart kids because not doing so would be "segregation" and make the others feel bad about themselves. Self-esteem and diversity equality for all. Forget merit, self-confidence, and IEPs because that's racist, sexist, and ableist.

say_it_as_it_is 5y ago

Public schools in NYC rush to the lowest common denominator to address cries of racial inequity. This only takes away futures for children who would have had any future because they weren't among the general population of future convicts or minimum wage earners. No one is better for policies focused on racial parity when the bar is vastly lower because of it.

chatoyance 5y ago
Diversity is our strength. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. I wonder if anyone else ever had to have a 90 minute bus ride to school each way (3 hours per day) because there were "too many white and Asian kids" at a school a block from their house.

xvilka 5y ago

Slowly progressing towards Idiocracy [1]. [1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

dilap 5y ago

Smart rich kids can continue to go to academically rigorous private schools. Smart poor kids can go pound sand. Of course, to really strike a blow for equality, they should also ban the private schools. Reminds me of the Vonnegut story. "The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal..."

goldenkey 5y ago
Private schools are great. They keep rich people snobby. How else are we gonna detect the asshats if they don't tribalise themselves at Poly Prep?
- _hilro 5y ago
  > How else are we gonna detect the asshats if they don't tribalise themselves at Poly Prep? Maybe we can just judge them by what they put out in to the world? Such as naming their personal blog something really pretentious? Or you know, like, having utterly pretentious quotes in their HN bio? > churchofthought.org > Hardy couldn't have been more wrong about the innocence of pure mathematics. But we live by his legacy. In the sands of time, where do you dine? It better be divine! But sure, you could judge them on choices their parents made to maximise their childrens' potential instead? Not US but judging by the continuous amount of violence happening in certain American public schools, I would 100% be sending the kids private or moving to suburb where the threat of violence is distant.
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    Personal blog as opposed to what, a corporate blog? And it's not just a blog, it's a literal incorporated church. Wait, did you get your ass handed to you in high school and never got over the swirlies? Perhaps we should dive in to some public CBT on HN so we can cure you of your anachronistic pent-up teenage angst. That isn't a quote, it's something I wrote myself. Do you consider nuclear bombs or guided missiles to be benign? That's my point about Mathematics. If you read Apology of a Mathematician by Hardy, you'd understand the perspective I'm parlaying. There's bullying at public schools but I took the bus and train back and forth to a gifted and talented high school every day for 4 years and it made me a tougher person. If you want to raise a fluffy lapdog, then maybe prep school is ideal.
    - _hilro 5y ago
      That's great. I'm not US born/raised/domiciled. The public schools in my country (which I attended) are superb all around. Taking the bus made you a tougher person? super! I couldn't care less. I hope you seek help.

refenestrator 5y ago

Brought to you by the people who all parroted "stop Asian hate" for like 3 weeks last March until it fell off their social media feeds. Kindergarten does seem a bit early to be permanently binning children into "gifted" or "not" but I am so sick of seeing people unhappy with Asians doing well.

civilized 5y ago
“I just don’t buy into the narrative that any one ethnic group owns admission to these schools.” - Richard Carranza, former NYC school chancellor The bigotry from certain "progressives" is just staggering.
- refenestrator 5y ago
  It's a test. The test, as far as I know, doesn't include the question "are you asian".
  - seoaeu 5y ago
    HN regularly has threads full of complaints about how whiteboard interviews don't test the right things and unfairly harm a subset of people that doesn't correlate well to programming ability. It doesn't seem that implausible that the test the district is using has similar flaws in selecting gifted students
    - refenestrator 5y ago
      Sure, but the motivation here is explicit, and it's not about making the test more accurate.
      - civilized 5y ago
        To be fair, there are a variety of factions and motivations, and not everyone is race-baiting like Carranza. It's disturbing is that Carranza types are defended and given power within our cities, but there are also real issues with tests like the SHSAT, which are not as well-validated as other scholastic aptitude tests.

tyingq 5y ago

Interesting. There was a film in the 80's called "Fame" that was set in a NYC gifted/talented high school. The theme song was fairly popular and one line that stood out was "I'm going to live forever". Guess not.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

It's long been a fallacy that you can sort young kids into high or low performers. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. By starting so young (kindergarten!) in NYC they were creating the division out of essentially nothing. Long ago somebody tried dividing an elementary school class into regular and advanced students. At the end of the year, the advanced students had done better. The selection was a random lottery. The difference in performance, was entirely based on expectation.

moron4hire 5y ago
Was the study ever replicated?
EForEndeavour 5y ago
Could you share a link to that random allocation of students into regular and advanced? Sounds fascinating, though not surprising: imagine the confidence hit of being told by the system you're not advanced.
- smrk007 5y ago
  Why not just tell ALL the students they’re advanced?
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    Because then they'll figure the game out and revert to baseline.
jollybean 5y ago
Perhaps more than just 'expectation' i.e. those who feel they are special and talented may actually strive harder. Maybe a bit of pressure as well. But there's a lot of truth to this I think people should cognize. That said, I'm wary of NYs move, in the later years of high school, providing programs where kids can be among other kids that really want to learn is powerful. At my school, they didn't actually 'vet' students in the advanced program. You just did it if you want. I think that's fair. You can have Algebra 101 and Algebra 101++, which covers more ground, at an accelerated pace, and it's your choice to join. I think that would work.

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wizwit999 5y ago

Bad decision, went to these schools

moneywoes 5y ago
More info please, how was your experience
- wizwit999 5y ago
  Basically, I was poor so I lived in a bad neighborhood, all the schools were bad except for the g&t one, this and the SHSAT are awesome for allowing smart immigrants in poor neighborhoods to get a good education. Now one may ask why not make all the schools good but the issue wasnt in funding, there were deeper societal issues among the students who went there, which isnt an easy problem to fix
goldenkey 5y ago
I did too. Though they still had the shitstorm of bullies and race gangs (leader of the black gang threw a padlock at my head at lunch ) (leader of russian gang wanted to have me jumped because they thought I was stealing their lunch money due to my computer hacking skills) I still feel like it was a step above the schools near me where pretty much everyone was a jock. I used to have to take the bus and train to and from the city, and along the way, the bus would pickup the students from James Madison High School. They always threw stuff at me and bullied me although toward my senior years I got large enough where I wasn't as much of a target. Pretty much everyone from that local school was a moronic jock or trophy wife wannabe. I can't imagine having to be surrounded by people like that for 4 years. The type of kids we are talking about would use those motorola walky talky phones on full blast. They'd have headphones, but shitty ones, so loud that everyone could hear their music. Or they'd just be blasting some garbage pop on a portable speaker. Oafs are bad and I can't imagine any of these kids grew up into people who aren't assholes. Don't get me wrong, assholes still existed at the G&T schools but in far less numbers. The word was that bunch of the assholes actually got in due to affirmative action (like the gang leader who threw a lock at my head.) Taking away meritocracy is a huge mistake. But that is the essence of the BLM and woke movement. Intelligence measures don't discriminate against anyone except those that aren't intelligent. And yes, it's unfortunate that the conscussions from street brawls or malnutrition might cause a kid from a poor ghetto to be less intelligent. But letting that child into a G&T school, or simply abolishing the schools altogether, it doesn't solve that child's problems. It just makes us all less educated. And if we are all less able, how the hell are we supposed to help that kid?

rvba 5y ago

I dont think that one can judge if a kod is gifted or not at the age of 4, but stupid people dragging smart people down with "equality" is a big problem with current system. I was a part of a gifted program and I dont understand why there arent more of them.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago
So its ok to drag down smart kids with "You're not Asian in kindergarten" or some other bias? To provide better-prepared kindergarteners with more public money and better schools, for life, based on a kindergarten test, is what the objection is based on.
jason-phillips 5y ago
> I dont understand why there arent more of them. From my perspective, because they suck. The execution is poor. Your experience may have been better, but mine was one of missed opportunity. The course material was virtually the same, i.e., not challenging and thus insufferably boring. A dozen years wasted, GATE/TAG or not.
lowercased 5y ago
I think you can, in some (many?) cases. Whether you should or not (or... how you do it) is perhaps the deeper question. My parents were pushed by others around them to get me recognized as gifted/advanced (or whatever the term in the 70s was). Other parents (and my parents' parents) all recognized something different, so my parents went to the school, right before I started kindergarten. They got a reassuring pat on the head by the teacher and principal. "Everyone thinks their child is unique/special/advanced, especially their first, but trust us, everyone needs this..." School started on Wednesday, and Friday afternoon they got a call saying "lowercased should be accelerated a grade or two - he's too advanced". So I was moved up a grade - that's the only lever the school had for "advanced" and, to my knowledge, I was the only one they'd done that for in the 20+ years the school had been open. I later learned it might have been 2 grades but my dad was concerned about socialization issues. And... 1 grade was bad enough in that respect. There were multiple programs for "behind" students - kids were taken out of class for directed reading programs, other counseling sessions, etc. But there was nothing for 'advanced' kids in our area for several years. So yeah, I think there should definitely be more recognition and support for 'gifted' students in some capacity, even if it's subtle. Perhaps moreso if it's subtle. Being visibly 'different' is difficult for a lot of kids.

jason-phillips 5y ago

This is fair. I cannot discern any justifiable reason to arbitrarily exempt a subset of prisoners from general population.

_hilro 5y ago

> But the highly selective and racially segregated program will be replaced for incoming students. Wow, using a word such as segregation, which has connotations of 'by design' sure lays bare their hand. Just to be clear, there is no segregation(of any kind) amongst the students in the program. In fact, there is no segregation at all. There's just not equal representation of the makey-uppy USA racial classifications. But why let facts and clarity rule over emotional clickbaity sub-headlines?

bitwize 5y ago
If a school system or program doesn't have enough black kids in it, it is by definition segregated. School antisegregation laws care nothing for intent, only for effect.
- _hilro 5y ago
  > If a school system or program doesn't have enough black kids in it, it is by definition segregated. No, it is literally not "by definition" segregated. Using the phrase 'by definition' is not that powerful a modifier that every word that surrounds it suddenly becomes true. That's the most nonsense thing ever. Secondly, read the line I quoted: > highly selective and racially segregated program The program is not racially segregated. The NYTimes just needed to sneak in the word segregation because it's a very strong explosive word. To do that, it hammered it incorrectly to a place in a sentence which gives the impression the program itself is racially segregated.
  - geofft 5y ago
    I grew up in a school district in the deep south that was racially segregated, as found by the court system, until a month before I graduated. This was in 2006. Not last century. The school district didn't, of course, test people by race or have a Colored Students High School or whatever. What they did was to put schools and school zones in ways that happened to line up with strong demographic differences in swaths of the city. My elementary school was in a white part of the city, and I can remember maybe two black classmates. My middle school (because that's where they put the gifted and talented program, as it happens) was in a black part of the city, and from my memory it felt like a majority of the students who were zoned to be there were black. This school district was, once again, "racially segregated" in the eyes of the law. The law didn't ask whether the school district officials were motivated by racism in how they drew the lines; that's simply not what the term means.

excalibur 5y ago

Yes! Now they can fail all of the kids equally instead of possibly helping a small subset who did well on a test once.

jshaqaw 5y ago

I am all for supportive programs for really smart kids. FWIW my kids go to NYC public schools. We did not go with gifted and talented because we didn't really like the structure of the program. If the city ends up providing REAL enrichment for gifted kids past 3rd grade it will be a net gain for everyone. It is pretty ridiculous how pervasive test prep is for pre-school age kids to get them into the G&T program.

prepend 5y ago
I know lots of parents who “chose not to go with it” when their kids aren’t selected for gifted and talented. There are many flaws in gifted programs and they aren’t perfect. But they do have advantages like more child autonomy, more allowances for child-directed study, and more encouragement of curiosity. Not all children have academic curiosity and so gifted isn’t a good fit for everyone. But for parents who want their kids to achieve academically, I can’t imagine turning down gifted for “regular.” And not saying this is you, but when I lived in Manhattan I would hear arguments about improving all classes instead of just gifted and the parents were sending their kids to private school. Public school is rough, but taking away paths out for kids who want to be in school, but whose parents can’t afford private school seems like punishing those gifted students.
- jshaqaw 5y ago
  Let's be clear about what G&T programs mean in NYC. There is a heavier workload and more intensive academic focus but not really so much in terms of constructivist learning, child autonomy etc... That why we skipped it. To be blunt, I wanted my kids to have a more interesting classroom experience and not waste evenings stuck doing homework when they were little. My bet/assessment was that they would be smart enough to more than catch up later on when the workload ramps in a challenging middle school. So far it looks like I was right. BTW - not all public school in NYC is tough. You have to remember the scale of NYC. Within it are insanely great schools, a lot of mediocre schools, and too many horror shows - much like the public school system in any US state.

0xB31B1B 5y ago

I am generally quite liberal but I strongly disagree with he current strain of progressive education reform. There are inherent differences within the capabilities of students, we can detect these early, and we should use them to provide students with appropriate challenges. Our education system should provide avenues for top students to excel, ad hopefully these top students become the people who create businesses or invention that improve the world.

throwaway6734 5y ago
The current progressive movement is highly illiberal
- gorwell 5y ago
  The twitter mob doesn't like to hear that but it's absolutely true. It's illiberal, intolerant and regressive. Actual progressives and liberals see this clear as day. Most of us are just too afraid of the mob to say it.
raxxorrax 5y ago
This seems to be a "present" of an older generation that fundamentally didn't put in any effort to understand their successors. With exception to the newest generation that now believes that racism is everywhere. That said, I think logistics of education today can supply almost everyone with a high quality education anyway and the role to connect people moves from universities to other places. So less elite and more broad high quality education wouldn't hold anyone back and is a better approach.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  Or this is the inevitable end of leftist thinking every single time. Sounds good on paper, fairness and all that, but totally ignores reality and ends up requiring large amounts of violence to enforce its idea of equal outcomes for all, where that equal outcome is always poverty and starvation.

dvdhnt 5y ago

Totally based on my experiences and opinion, this is because our society has very little appetite for prioritizing education and children over economics. In reality, we should have more programs like this and investing more resources in developing alternative, public paths for educating children. Public education itself is relatively young in human history. Invest in R&D. But that money would need to come from coffers already being drained for the sake of short term profits. Pay the teachers.

barney54 5y ago
Spending on schools in the US has dramatically increased in recent decades and that money isn’t going to for-profit schools but public schools. The US is investing in child R&D with more money. There is a good argument that the money is not well spent, but the reality is that spending is way up.

Bostonian 5y ago

Subtitle: "Students who are currently enrolled in gifted and talented classes will not be affected. But the highly selective and racially segregated program will be replaced for incoming students." The reasons can be debated, but it's a fact that on IQ tests, American blacks score about 1 standard deviation (15 points) below whites. A common threshold for a gifted program is an IQ of 130, 2SD above average. If you demand that all racial groups be proportionally represented, you cannot have a gifted program. You will not get proportional representation among FAANG programmers either. In general, America needs to make a choice between non-discrimination and government-enforced equal outcomes. Charles Murray's book "Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America" (2021) discusses this. He co-authored "The Bell Curve" (1994).

endisneigh 5y ago
It's also a fact that American blacks have several standard deviations less wealth than whites. If wealth ultimately is the driver for such a disparity, and education is the gateway to said wealth, you're effectively trapping people.
- tomp 5y ago
  > If wealth ultimately is the driver for such a disparity Fortunately, we know it's not. Black Nigerian immigrants slightly outperform whites in many careers, and very likely start with substantially less wealth (because they're immigrants). So one variable is constant (skin color), a few are "worse" (wealth, knowledge of English), a few might be better (motivation, IQ, work ethics, cultural expectations, ...).
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    A single counterexample doesn't invalidate a trend, lol. One could say Nigerian immigrants, coming from the richest country in Africa, would show better outcomes over other African immigrants. Oh wait, they do.
    - tomp 5y ago

tapoxi 5y ago

My brother teaches at an exam school in Boston which similarly had its requirements dropped recently, and it seems like a lot of these changes are poorly thought out and done for optics. Sure, some of the exam schools in BPS are overwhelmingly White/Asian, but the school he teaches at is mostly Black/Asian/Hispanic. While he was previously able to teach classes of bright, focused students, now they need to break up fights of unruly students and divert their attention to the ones that are struggling. I imagine the parents that can afford it will likely remove their kids from the public school system if quality continues to drop, which will only hurt funding. The real issue is a much more complex socioeconomic problem, but that's hard to solve, so it's easier to point the finger at schools.

arkades 5y ago
This has already happened in NY. What the NYT article omits is that the elimination of advanced classes has been preceded by a couple of decades of highly restricted availability. 15 years ago (shit I’ve gotten old), when I lived in nyc_borough, there was precisely one elementary school honors class for the entire borough. 30 spots for the entire borough. I didn’t bother to wait and see if my kid managed to get a spot, we pulled her out and stuck her in private school.
seibelj 5y ago
Boston has one of the highest per-pupil funding in the US. Yet excluding the exam schools, the majority of the schools are awful. Here is the school my kids would have to go to if I wasn’t rich enough to go private: https://www.publicschoolreview.com/the-english-high-school-profile https://www.publicschoolreview.com/the-english-high-school-p... Ranked 1644 out of 1667 in Massachusetts. In 2018, the vice principal of anti gang violence was convicted of recruiting students there to deal drugs for him, then attempting to execute one of them with a gunshot to the head for withholding drug profits https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/05/31/shaun-harrison-guilty-boston-student-shooting https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/05/31/shaun-harrison-guilty-b... There is no talk on the left of how to fix these schools, other than giving them more money, which they are already the highest funded in the country. The progressives need to rethink their school reform plan otherwise society will continue to exit the public schools and go private or home school.

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mgamache 5y ago

The answer is probably "more gifted programs in low-income neighborhoods". This is of course racist against Asians (they are lumped in with white when it's convenient). They make up 43% of these schools, so whites, and POCs are underrepresented. Why are Asians doing better? Are they more intelligent, work harder, value education? Let's pretend there is no problem by just eliminating the schools. Of course, there are problems with gifted programs, but assuming that factory education will maximize all the students potential is obviously wrong. This is a pollical maneuver designed t placate a segment of voters. We need every smart mind being educated properly regardless of the circumstances of birth.

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xyzzy21 5y ago

Epic Fail. But predictable from people who wrongly believe Bell curves don't exist and that everyone is the same and capable of achieving ANYTHING.

motohagiography 5y ago

Mixed feelings about moves like this. Am a product of a related system in another city some decades ago. The pressure to "de-stream" students in education in general has been an ongoing controversy for decades. What bothers me about gifted programs is that they isolate the smartest kids from everyone else, and one can't help but think it's more to protect the system and everyone else from bored intelligent kids than to enrich their individual educations. IQ isn't a great proxy for much, but two or three standard deviations from the mean in populations of millions, you are likely dealing with different kinds of thinkers. The skills the programs emphasized are focused on abstraction and complex problem solving - and not leadership where they could scale to benefit everyone. This turns kids into talent who will ultimately work for and be managed by more average peers, which makes it a remedial program for socializing exceptional kids into functioning cogs. It's like inventing fusion reactor to plow fields, or an F1 car to sit in traffic. I get that enrichment in education is something they might not be able to get at home and the schools are providing it, but they're providing what the average of the education bureaucracy can be persuaded is right for smart people to do based on cliches about scientists and professions. There are good reasons to change how gifted programs operate, even putting phasing them out on the table, though the reasons in the article are ideological, which is practically the definition of what you have when you don't have experience - just the logic of an idea. NYC may do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and the benefits will be an unintentional side effect.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago
How many of those leadership exercises would realistically carry over into IRL benefit after the students graduate? For that matter, how many G&T students would check out because they're focused on leadership rather than abstract problem solving?
- motohagiography 5y ago
  Leadership and management are like riding a bike in that you can teach children to do it, but if you never learned, it's likely you never will. Management training programs for regular teenagers are common in the fast food industry, and it's a differentiating life skill. I think giving that to exceptional 8-12yr olds is more valuable than exploring their creativity in an isolated class away from their peers. Few people ever get bored of leadership. The net return on teaching advanced individual problem solving compared to teaching smart kids to scale their skills with leadership has a massive delta. This is probably something you couldn't do in the public system, and you would need separate schools, and arguably this is what private schools already do. Policy wise, this is equivalent to vouchers, which are immensely controversial for the same reasons gifted education is, because they stream people into opportunity - or lack thereof, when they are still just kids. You're never going to teach kids enough to overthrow you, but if you don't, what are you really educating them to become?

moron4hire 5y ago

Our oldest just started kindergarten and he is bored out of his mind. He can already read a little, he does basic addition, he even has a really good handle on some basic science facts (ask him about earthquakes and volcanoes some time) and they are spending time on learning shapes. His homework last night was "count to 20". Seriously, his preschool was more rigorous than this, yet somehow they also played a lot more. It's had a huge impact on his mood and energy levels, for no other reason than he doesn't have anything to look forward to when he gets there. He doesn't need a gifted program to "maximize his potential". What he needs is an adaptable program that can meet him on his level to "minimize learning to hate school".

gfodor 5y ago

This just means the gifted and talented programs are now only available to the children of gifted and talented parents. Great job everyone. Get your kids out of the public schools in blue states.

asoneth 5y ago
Related, I'm absolutely in favor of everyone moving to a state that matches their priorities, but if someone prioritizes "highly-ranked public schools" then you might want to look closely before moving to a generic "red" state. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-school-rankings-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-scho... There are absolutely "red" states like Nebraska with good public schools, and "blue" states like New Mexico with poor public schools. But there does seem to be some kind of positive correlation between how "blue" a state is and how highly their public schools are ranked. So if your "blue" state has you itching to pull your kids out of public school, a "red" state may not be significantly better.
- gfodor 5y ago
  The gap between public and private schools is going to widen significantly - the point isn't to switch to a different public school district, but to exit the public school system given the conflict of interests they have against students.
  - asoneth 5y ago
    In my experience and talking with other parents it's often more nuanced than public vs private (or red vs blue). The best schools in our region are dominated by wealthy suburban public schools, a few elite magnet public schools, and a few expensive ($60k+) private schools. Whereas the performance of the cheaper private schools and most charters don't seem to be substantially better or worse than the average public school. However, there are definitely a couple public school districts that entered into a death spiral and the parents fleeing those are what keep the mediocre private/charter schools in business. But if there's one thing I've learned is that parents rarely base their actual school choices on their politics -- the most left-wing liberals will send their kids to a private school and the most right-wing conservatives will send their kids to a public school if they think that's in the kids' best interest.

civilized 5y ago

> But teaching children with a large range of abilities in one classroom is difficult, meaning much of the success of the plan will depend on the city’s approach to training educators. In other words, talented students will be ignored or told to "tutor other students" (with no actual support or structure to do so), and will waste most of their time in school. As they always have under such systems. Honestly, I don't even care anymore. My expectations are so low. The best thing any teacher ever did for me was let me read, or work through an advanced math textbook supplied by my parents, in the back of the class, without interference. Just tell every teacher to do that with their kids who they don't want to deal with because they already know everything being taught. That's the closest this country will get to "socially acceptable" G&T education.

WhompingWindows 5y ago

Why can't we acknowledge the simple fact: some kids are smarter, they learn faster, they remember better? I went to gifted and talented programs, and even there I felt like the pace was slow and easy for the top kids. If you put those kids into classes with even less academically apt, less focused children, those top kids are going to be bored out of their mind and wasting their time. Do we truly want to waste the time of our most bright young minds? Do we want to squander their potential when they pick up 1+1=2 in 10 seconds, but it takes other kids 10 minutes? Do we have to force our teachers to make 4-5 different lesson plans, 1 for the lowest, 1 for the highest, and a couple others for the mid-tiers? We're already asking too much of teachers, give them smaller classes with less of a range of aptitude.

raxxorrax 5y ago
> bored out of their mind and wasting their time. Wasting their time wouldn't even be much of a problem. Many become really destructive and it can result in them dropping out. A bored kid will not have iron discipline, maybe especially not the smart ones.

peter_retief 5y ago

I didnt get to read it because of the paywall, can somebody please post an archived link please.

haunter 5y ago
https://archive.vn/AnC9m/ https://archive.vn/AnC9m/
- peter_retief 5y ago
  Thanks.

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago

Does anyone know if there are any real serious studies about the effectiveness of gifted programs in children to actually identify gifted kids and provide them with appropriate tools that justify giving them to gifted children only and not to disseminate to the entire population of children? Despite this discussion having >70 comments in it a lot of it seems to be intuition, anecdotes and gut feel without actual data behind them.

fmajid 5y ago

In other words, gifted and talented is not enough. You need to be gifted, talented and rich to get an education suited to your needs (often gifted kids are bored at school and get into trouble).

darthvoldemort 5y ago

The inconvenient truth about NYC G&T program is that it is 40% Asian. Asians have dominated the G&T program, even "stealing" spots from white kids where 43% of NYC is white, but only 35% of spots taken by white kids. And Asians are dominating the NYC G&T program NOT because of hundreds of years of systemic racism, NOT because Asians wrote the admissions tests an inbueing cultural bias, and NOT by cheating or bribing admissions. And in NYC, Asians are the poorest demographic by a large margin. This makes the entire story extremely inconvenient for activists who want to say that the program is racist and discriminates against the economically disadvantaged. And yet, they somehow are able to get the entire program trashed because of racism against Asians is perfectly accepted in 2021. Activists have no problems openly discriminating against Asians because whites, blacks and Latinos think of "Americans" as whites, blacks and Latinos. Asians are considered foreigners. So when a prestigious program is dominated by Asians, something must obviously wrong, right? Activists have gutted admissions at Thomas Jefferson high school in Fairfax, VA, arguably the top public high school in the US because it had a high percentage of Asians. Lowell High school admissions in SF, a top 100 high school, underwent the exact same thing because of its high percentage of Asians. Now NYC is doing the same thing. At Harvard, the admissions department openly discriminates against Asians by saying they lack "courage" or less "likeable". Imagine the outrage if this happened to Blacks, but because it happened to Asians it's considered okay because Asians are unAmerican.

peter_retief 5y ago
It seems outrageously unfair.
christophilus 5y ago
One of the first openly racist interactions I ever witnessed in the US was a white guy hurling slurs at a Vietnamese friend of mine. Asians are definitely in a strange predicament here.
- swiley 5y ago
  It's almost like you can be racist to anyone.
5y ago

dayvid 5y ago

I'm black and I was in a gifted program in elementary school on through honors college at university. I was surprised when I first heard someone say gifted is racist about a year ago. At the same time, though, I feel like I was raised in a time where not as many parents are actively trying to game the education system. It seems to ruin the spirit of the gifted program if parents are looking up tricks and tactics to get their kids to ace exams in Kindergarten.

MyHypatia 5y ago

When I read the headline I was upset, why get rid of a program that challenges eager young minds? Then I read that the current system tests 4 year olds, and puts these kids on separate tracks. 4 year olds! I'm all for challenging different kids with different levels of material, but the current system of testing and separating kids out starting at 4 years old is absurd. That being said, I think by age 8 (3rd grade) it makes sense to give kids different levels of material so they don't either get bored (because it's too easy) or give up (because it's too hard).

otoburb 5y ago
An oft-missed option that NYC offers is that children can continue testing for the G&T programs up to Grade 3. So parents can enter when the child is 7 years old to enter into grade 3 (when they usually are 8 years old).

haunter 5y ago

https://archive.vn/AnC9m/ https://archive.vn/AnC9m/

foxhop 5y ago

Gifted & Talented program isn't racist, critical race theory & social marxism redefines the term racism so they may point at any program and call it racist. My son qualifies and it costs the school system nothing. It's mostly about transport to middle school for higher math for him. Reference: "New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program. Students who are currently enrolled in gifted and talented classes will not be affected. But the highly selective and racially segregated program will be replaced for incoming students."

disambiguation 5y ago

kind of tangential.. but i'm constantly baffled by how antiquated our K-12 education system is. 8am - 2pm, a few dozen kids in 1 class room, 1 teacher, 1 white board, shuffled from one class to the next, school bells, homework, midterms, final exam. compare this side by side with schooling 200 years ago, and not much has changed. i can't understand why education hasn't been open sourced and unified.. an why there isn't even a concerted effort to do so? why are 1000s of teachers nation-wide working in silos and reinventing algebra lesson plans every year? why are kids arbitrarily locked in to schedules that don't consider their individual needs and level? resourcing is definitely a problem, and poor teacher salaries are criminal, but the whole thing is designed poorly. further the institution has doubled down on this method .. more testing, more metrics, more pedigrees. This incentivizes gaming the system. to come full circle, these G&T programs are a symptom of the core problems leading parents to desperate fight for alternative teaching because they have correctly assessed the public programs are not sufficient if you really want a shot at academic success.

astkaasa 5y ago
> 8am - 2pm, a few dozen kids in 1 class room, 1 teacher, 1 white board, shuffled from one class to the next, school bells, homework, midterms, final exam. It's more or less the same pattern in universities. Why do you consider it outdated?
- disambiguation 5y ago
  true, i excluded universities because there's slightly more innovation at that level .. more ways to mix and match your education. K-12 on the other hand is very rigid. i guess "outdated" is a bad measure, because being old doesn't make it bad. just the fact that todays model hasnt updated much to 200 years is striking. things i'd like to see done differently: - abolish the linear locked in scheduling. advanced kids can move ahead, but also move in different directions. we should allow kids to pursue classes they enjoy while encouraging them to explore different specializations. - allow adults to come back to school at night. we have a significant population that doesn't have a high school diploma. they are paying the taxes after all, they should have access. https://www.censusscope.org/us/rank_education_withouths_2000.html https://www.censusscope.org/us/rank_education_withouths_2000... - teachers should collaborate instead of working in silos. we should have a singular unified model of education ex. khan academy does a great job of this. open source, always accessible, clear progression, emphasis on collaboration and support among teachers. teacherspayteachers is also good at addressing this. - students should collaborate instead of working in silos. both as peers and across grades. speaking anecdotally, i used to tutor math long ago and felt that through teaching i also improved my own fundamentals. - homework needs to be overhauled. homework is largely just busy work at the moment. it should be treated as a continuous self-assessment of strengths and weaknesses. - testing needs to be overhauled. the incentives for high scores are misaligned for both teachers and students. as a result we often see teachers teaching to the test and students/parents gaming the system. when i got in to college, i took a 2 hour math assessment that got gradually harder over the course of the session (algebra -> multi-var calculus). this was used to decide what math level i should be placed at. tests should be used as assessments that determine your level and curriculum. and these are all just high-level ideas that don't speak to specifics of curriculum. in general, we need to redesign education in the following terms: over a decade, how do we best prepare our kids for the real world.

timnetworks 5y ago

That's a terrible shame, G&T was the last reprieve from the mediocre school environment created by children whose parents don't own any books. If they did any reading they wouldn't vote for Deblasio, though..

ng12 5y ago
Hah, good thought. DeBlasio is quite popular among the woke bourgeoisie. Most complaints I hear are about him not being radical enough.

dragonwriter 5y ago

The segregated G&T model has been shown to make education worse for both students tracked into G&T and those not compared doing same classroom, student-adapted assignments universally—aside from the problems in identification that provide lots of opportunity for subtle and not-so-subtle social factors other than merit to play a role, so if this is executed well, it's good. And there outline I've seen in other articles (not bothering to try to bypass the Times paywall) looks good: * Eliminate the high stakes test for four-year olds that controls the entrance gate to accelerated programs. * Expand accelerated programs to all 800 schools instead of 80. * Train all kindergarten (initially) teachers in student-specific accelerated teaching. * Hire additional experienced teachers in areas where acclerated programs will be new. * Screen all students at third-grade for additional subject-area-specific accelerated programs, still to be delivered in mixed classrooms. Obviously, the details of execution beyond high-level bullet points matter a lot, but this sounds quite good. And even if the plan was excellent, starting a controversial thing on the way out without institutional and leadership continuity of vision to carry it through is very much not ideal.

deleted 5y ago

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