Most New York City public schools offer a “gifted and talented” program for aspiring students. Annual performance tests are offered to identify children with superior performance in standard subjects. Those who qualify enter advanced placement programs with more demanding curricula, which gives them an easier path to admission to better colleges. The programs are open to everyone and have no additional costs, so every family has the opportunity to try to accommodate their children.
Unfortunately for Gotham’s parents, the results did not meet the expectations of the crowd that ruled the city government. Both Mayor Bill de Blasio and school chancellor Richard Carranza have repeatedly complained that the testing program is “unfair” because the students who end up in the program “do not reflect the diversity of the city’s population.” In other words, few black and Hispanic students end up in advanced programs. So, how does City Hall’s trusted team plan to “fix” this problem? Easy as a pie. They will end the admission tests. (CBS New York)
A major shift is coming for New York City’s “gifted and talented” programs for students.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and school chancellor Richard Carranza say the city will begin to eliminate the entrance exam.
Critics say the composition of the programs does not reflect the city’s diversity.
The Chancellor took to Twitter to try to paint some lipstick on this pig.
The Gifted and Talented programs serve a small percentage of children, but we know much more @NYCSchools students are exceptional. We must move away from testing and develop a system that reimagines academic and enrichment programming for our most exceptional students.
– Chancellor Richard A. Carranza (@DOEChancellor) January 13, 2021
So you go “reimagine academic and enrichment programming for our most exceptional students? ” After all, what this means? You can’t really have an advanced placement program without having a way to identify students who are really advanced and would be able to thrive in a more challenging educational environment. In addition to the placement test, how do you plan to do this?
Blasio’s mayor has been complaining about gifted and talented programs for years, but it has always been a bit of a tricky issue for him to try to deal with. The problem is that the “lack of racial diversity” that he loves to complain about doesn’t go away in the normal way. If it were just a case where most of the places in the program were for white students, he could just play the race card and step on the programs. Unfortunately for them, this is not the case. Year after year, most places were for Asian students.
The difference in results is particularly stark when you look at scores on a per capita basis. Asians make up just 14.1% of the city’s population, far behind black, Hispanic and white residents. And yet their students outperform the rest by a wide margin. So it largely deprives Blasio of the chance to play the race card. And if he eliminates the testing program, he is eliminating one of the city’s minority populations in a disproportionately massive way.
Unfortunately for the students who will be most affected, when Democratic politicians talk about minorities, they almost always forget Asians. In their minds, the word “minority” only applies to black and Hispanic residents, although both outnumber Asians in all but a few communities.
So if you are going to end the admission test system, how can you replace it with something that will produce the desired demographic result? If it works just to be some kind of lottery, then why have an advanced study program? You will not randomly choose the most advanced students. Also, how is this fair for children? If a child who fails to do well on placement tests is suddenly pushed into a significantly more advanced program, he is almost certain to have problems. Then, you must reinitialize them in the regular school curriculum or dumb down the advanced class to the point where they can pass. If you follow the latter path, you have eliminated the benefit of having a program for the gifted and talented in the first place.
This is simply another sign of the virtue of the Blasio government and the madness of racial categorization. All they will do is further erode New York’s public school system and make it even more difficult for children to enter college. But that’s obviously a small price to pay when you’re trying to make it look like you’re really fighting racism, I suppose.