New York’s gifted and talented program is saved – for now
I’m a product of New York City’s gifted and talented program in the public schools, although I think it was called something slightly different back then (if memory serves, it was “intellectually gifted children” or “IGC”; forget the “talented”). Not all that many years later I heard of the first attempts in NY and elsewhere to stop such programs, and I had no trouble imagining what a disaster that would be for the “smart” kids, who would transition from being somewhat bored (as I often was) to being unutterably bored, and who would learn less and less and less.
But some people apparently thought they should be the sacrificial lambs to the idea of “self-esteem” for the greatest number – or some such thing.
Such efforts certainly haven’t stopped in the decades since. Here’s what happened in the latest skirmish:
A New York state judge this week shot down an activist organization’s lawsuit against New York City’s Gifted and Talented (G&T) program in a single-paragraph ruling, noting that such decisions are better left to state legislatures–and ultimately, voters.
As reported by the Washington Examiner, IntegrateNYC in its lawsuit claimed the G&T program created a racial “caste system” through a school curriculum that “centers white experience.” In addition, the activists accused the City of “failing to recruit diverse staff and dismantle racism.”
The group’s lawyer said it was ““the first case in the nation to seek a constitutional right to an anti-racist education.” That’s “anti-racist” in its new meaning, not the old.
If I’m not mistaken, the NYC school system is already at the point where there aren’t many white kids left in public schools – this site says it was 15% as of 2017-2018. As far as I know, most people in NYC – white or black or Asian or of any other ethnicity – who can afford to send a child to private school there do so rather than allowing the child to enter the public school system.
My first exposure to the NYC elite high schools came during my freshman year in college, where there there were two Bronx Science grads – one my roommate-on my form corridor.
Mayor Bill’s attempt to do away with such schools for “equity” reasons was one of the reasons I had nothing but contempt for him. (His support of the Sandinistas was the initial reason.)
I don’t like the term ‘gifted’…the focus should be on something you *do* rather than something you *are*.’
david foster:
In my experience, it doesn’t matter much what you call it because everyone in the school knows who the “dumb kids” are and who the “smart kids” are. In my day they used number designations for the classes in a tracking system for the earlier grades (the “IGC” designation only started at grade 5), but it fooled no one.
Your comment does get into the interesting nature/nurture question for intelligence and achievement.
“…there aren’t many white kids left in public schools…”
That might be true overall but I doubt very much that it’s true for the special schools—Stuyvesant / Bronx Science / Brooklyn Tech / maybe Music and Art.
(I.e., especially if one considers the 70+% Asian student population in at least the first three of the above schools…as “White Privileged”…)
In any event, might one wonder how many Asians in NYC still consider themselves Democrats?
There may be fewer white and Asian kids in the public schools, but surely they will not lose Harrison Bergeron!
In my schools in Phoenix they were called advanced classes, and they started in about fifth grade. Through high school I took very few classes that were not advanced sections. Failing to provide for students who can do, and want to do, advanced work will destroy them without helping students who can’t or won’t.
Barry Meislin:
The special public schools are now predominantly Asian. For example, Stuyvesant was 66% Asian in 2019. Smart white kids are still usually sent by their families to private schools if the families can afford it. I believe the same would be true of other groups except that those groups (including Asians) have a lower percentage of rich parents, and therefore tend to go to the special exam public schools instead.
Kate,
Yep, Advanced or College Prep was what they were called in the 1980s in WA state. I think ours started in middle school.
I too was exposed to grads of Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant when I entered one of the 4 year colleges of the CUNY sometime last century (OK, it was 1969).
I always thought these students chose CUNY because they did not have the money to go to elite colleges that surely would have accepted them. Back then, CUNY tuition was zero !! and, of course, books (even big fat ones) cost about $15.
About two years after I entered college, CUNY began an open admissions policy, in which any grad of a NYC high school could enter any 4 year CUNY college.
This forced the 4 year colleges to begin teaching JHS math to the open admission freshmen (as well as remedial writing and English courses).
I got a job with the math dept. as a tutor and pretty much all I dealt with was teaching open admissions students JHS math.
Yep, almost all the open admission students were black or puerto rican and the drop out rate was very high. They were woefully unprepared and they really had zero concept of how to study.
I learned that 10 years of a substandard education in grammar, JHS and HS cannot be made up in one year of “intensive” course work, esp, in math.
Of all the course work I took in college (I was in a 5 year degree program), I do not recall seeing any blacks or Puerto-Rican students in any of my classes.
And it was “normal ” to see classes almost exclusively populated by blacks and/or puerto rican students (you could see this during class changes).
Anyway, the open admission policy was a total failure and was scrapped several years after I graduated.
As for removing entrance requirements in the elite HS’s of NYC, it obviates the need to address the real problem, which is addressing the inadequate education minority students are forced to deal with from Grade 1 thru 12.
In the old days, students were left back if they flunked ; this policy went out the window years ago and functionally illiterate kids are just promoted until they graduate.
The Catholic schools in NYC have a very good record in educating minority students, which tells us that a lower socio-economic status is not a barrier to academic achievement.
Of course we all know that; check out the income levels in NYC’s China Town and then look at their academic achievement. They qualify in very large numbers for any of the “specialized” high schools in NYC (much to the chagrin of the left).
One of my high school classmates had an IQ of 170. He was bored out of his mind even though our high school taught a college prep curriculum and had advanced classes for those who could do the work. He never attended college. I ran into him a few times in later years and learned that his only pleasure in life was going to MENSA meetings and talking with people on his IQ level. He worked mostly administrative jobs but became an alcoholic and died quite young. A very sad story of how his potential was never achieved because he was too smart and didn’t get the academic challenge he needed. Whenever I hear about these schools for talented/gifted children, I often wonder if he might have had a much better life if he had been able to attend that kind of school.
“As far as I know, most people in NYC – white or black or Asian or of any other ethnicity – who can afford to send a child to private school there do so rather than allowing the child to enter the public school system.” neo
If things continue as they have, the left will eventually succeed in outlawing first charter schools and then homeschooling. As ‘equity’ demands it.
But of course with the exception of elite private schools. Some animals are after all, more equal than others.
In the 1950s and 60s there were no advanced classes available to me in South Fla. public schools. I imagine that was the case in many of the States.
Neo: This would a whole ‘nother project, but have you looked into how (if at all) the NY Regents Exam system has become less vigorous over the decades since you were in the system? (I was maybe a decade behind you, though not in NYC.) My understanding is that they’ve watered it down.
Watt @ 5:24: “Regents…watered it down.” I did not do HS in NY but thought I had gotten a pretty good grounding in chemistry (Ontario HS, a bit in colleges, subsequent readings: I am a science aficionado). I recently found a text preparing kids for the NY Regents Chemistry test circa 1980. Wow. They really covered a lot of ground with merciless questions on everything from atomic orbitals to redox to a strong start on organic chem. Much respect.
I had no trouble imagining what a disaster that would be for the “smart” kids, who would transition from being somewhat bored (as I often was) to being unutterably bored, and who would learn less and less and less.
A lot would either move to the suburbs or, if their families can afford it, to private schools. What’s left of the NYC public school system would end up looking like Detroit’s. As would the city’s tax base.
Of course, failure to track results in gross inefficiency as one segment of the class is being held back by an instructional pace which is too slow and another segment is losing ground because the instructional pace is too quick. Tracking presumes that performance varies and that you can measure performance. This flouts the rancid social ideology of the schools of education.
Again, blow up the schools of education. Close them and put their faculty out on the curb with the rest of the rubbish.
May I put in a plug for Thomas Sowell? The recent biography (“Maverick” by Jason Riley) is a quick and illuminating read; and Sowell’s “Charter Schools And Their Enemies” is a data-packed indictment of the tireless efforts by the Progs and teachers’ unions to smother any academic meritocracy.
““the first case in the nation to seek a constitutional right to an anti-racist education.”“The first case in the nation to seek a constitutional right to not have your performance evaluated, because a performance evaluation would consist of people of lower status judging people of higher status”.
FIFY
What is your IQ? Do you know? What were the requirements for entering the gifted program when you were a child?
shadow:
That’s a good question. I don’t know whether it was based on IQ or achievement or some combination of the two. They tested our IQs but they were kept secret.
@ shadow > “What were the requirements for entering the gifted program when you were a child?”
Our children were in a school district that had a G&T program (just a pull-out for X hours on Y days, but better than nothing), and the first four kids were put in it as soon as possible — I have no idea what the IQ tests showed, but most of the rest of the usual panel put them in the upper ranges.
When Number Five was in the queue, the counselors or whoever made those decisions said he didn’t qualify for the program, although he was clearly at or above his brothers on the tests.
That’s when I found out that the official qualification was high scores PLUS poor performance in the classroom (not working up to potential, as they so diplomatically put it).
Since most of us are somewhere on the autism/Asperger’s spectrum, and one had legitimate ADD, they had easily made that bar, but the fifth one was cruising in the classroom.
As #5 put it a few years ago, he is the only neural-typical member of our very neuro-divergent family, which we already knew but took him a while to realize.
However, his teachers strong-armed the counselors and had him put in the program anyway, because staying in the normal classes for those years would totally bore him, as most of us here have testified.
We were very grateful they went through school in the late-80s & nineties, with teachers in elementary and middle school who actually did have the best interests of the kids in focus.
And no CRT or BLM Inc. or LGBTQWERTY nonsense in the curriculum.
But of course with the exception of elite private schools. Some animals are after all, more equal than others.
Have you been following the controversy at the Dalton School in New York? Fancy people are also being put upon by ed school graduates, and put upon in milieux for which they’ve paid top dollar for a berth. Page through The Naked Dollar and you can see accounts of the controversy at Dalton and other schools as well.
https://thenakeddollar.blogspot.com/
Neo: thanks for including the complaint by IntegrateNYC et al. seeking to abolish the G&T program. I have barely started to read it (need to take some blood pressure meds) but it looks to be a gold mine that shows how these people operate rhetorically, who is in their network (Ben Crump is on the legal team; Sidley & Austin also; lots of others), and what their template arguments look like (80-odd pages).
It would be nice to think the court threw this out with prejudice and referred all the members of the legal team to the Bar committee for sanctions, but of course that’s not happening. Still, despite the profusion of “plaintiffs” (no names, just initials) in the complaint, I question whether anyone has standing to bring this action. Who exactly has been harmed, and how, by a program that offers *more* than the usual, without regard to race, creed, etc?
Owen:
My guess – and it’s only a guess – is that the people claiming harm are the people not qualifying (or whose kids are not qualifying) for the G&T program. The school system has a finite amount of money, and I suppose the claim is that funds and teachers going to the G&T program aren’t going to those other programs, plus of course that it’s not a system that’s racially “equitable.”
I went to a lot of different schools (six grade schools, one Jr HS and three HS in seven states). Some had tracks, some had AP and some had nothing. I pretty much hated them all. I didn’t really have friends, just brief acquaintances.
I did have 10th and 11th at the same school in Virginia. I had actual friends. I had a girlfriend. I had a good job at a chain drug store that I worked Fridays after school and all-day Saturday and Sunday. And I had friends there too.
Part way through 11th, the school created a special self-directed class for me with its own course number and everything. Five hours a week of ‘Independent Study in Electronic Data Processing’. For my senior year, the class was going to be extended to ten hours a week. I was literally in a class of my own.
For the first time in my school life, I was sad that school was ending and I was already looking forward to the next year. I was looking forward to a great summer. The event of the summer for me and my girlfriend was to see ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ at the Kennedy Center. I was happy in school. I was happy at work. I was happy in romance. I was happy at home. I was happy.
That all changed on Friday, two days after the end of the school year. As I was getting ready for work, my mother told me that Sunday would be my last day working there. We were moving to Seattle and we were leaving in five days. I was stunned. Goodbye summer, goodbye senior year, goodbye job, goodbye friends, goodbye girlfriend.
My guess – and it’s only a guess – is that the people claiming harm are the people not qualifying (or whose kids are not qualifying) for the G&T program. The school system has a finite amount of money, and I suppose the claim is that funds and teachers going to the G&T program aren’t going to those other programs, plus of course that it’s not a system that’s racially “equitable.”
An answer is to sort all the youngsters for whom conventional classroom instruction in English is apposite into one of four tracks. The other 15-20% would be in off-site programs adapted to their specific problems (severe intellectual deficits, perceptual disorders, lack of English proficiency, bad behavior). The assignment of each student would be determined by impersonal city-wide examinations. Teaching staff would be apportioned according to the distribution of students between the four tracks. (Posit about 12% in track A, 33% in track B, 22% in track C, 15% in track D, and the rest off-site).
Here’s a prime candidate for a G&T program – eventually.
https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-25-at-10.24.02-PM.png?resize=768%2C934&ssl=1
Related (on the university level):
New university in Austin, Texas being founded to fight back against the “mind virus”:
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6306991694112#sp=show-clips