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Tag: gifted-and-talented

  • Why Gifted and Talented Schools are the Wrong Approach: To diversify schools, reimagine G&T: A bill to expand segregated programs moves in exactly the wrong direction

    But we’ve already tried this, and it didn’t work. Back in 2009, Mayor Bloomberg tried to expand gifted programs and switched from multiple measures to a single test score for gifted admission. The result was actually more segregation, and reduced access for black and Latino students: The percentage of black and Latino students entering such programs in kindergarten was cut in half, from 46% of program entrants to just 22%, while the percentage of white and Asian students climbed from 53% to over 70%.

    […]

    Furthermore, the city should improve its strategy for serving students once they are in a gifted program. G&T program proponents often refer to them as a form of special education — but this ignores that research on special education overwhelmingly points to the benefits of placing students of all types in regular classrooms as much as possible.

    The city’s approach to serving students with disabilities reflects these best practices: Many schools across the city offer integrated co-teaching programs where students with disabilities are educated alongside their general education peers with special education support.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-to-diversify-schools-reimagine-gt-20180803-story.html

  • Exam High Schools and Academic Achievement: Evidence from New York City

    Publicly funded exam schools educate many of the world’s most talented students. These schools typically contain higher achieving peers, more rigorous instruction, and additional resources compared to regular public schools. This paper uses a sharp discontinuity in the admissions process at three prominent exam schools in New York City to provide the first causal estimate of the impact of attending an exam school in the United States on longer term academic outcomes. Attending an exam school increases the rigor of high school courses taken and the probability that a student graduates with an advanced high school degree. Surprisingly, however, attending an exam school has little impact on Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, college enrollment, or college graduation — casting doubt on their ultimate long term impact.

    This was done in 2011, but still important peer-reviewed research.

    http://www.nber.org/papers/w17286

  • In a wide-ranging interview, Carranza takes issue with admissions to New York City’s gifted programs

    Chancellor Richard Carranza in a wide-ranging interview with Chalkbeat.

    “There is no body of knowledge that I know of that has pointed to the fact that you can give a test to a 4-year-old or a 5-year-old and determine if they’re gifted,” he said. “Those tests — and it’s pretty clear — are more a measure of the privilege of a child’s home than true giftedness.”

    https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/08/17/in-a-wide-ranging-interview-carranza-takes-issue-with-admissions-to-new-york-citys-gifted-programs/

  • 2 Ideals at Issue

    Many teachers and principals are convinced that there should be ability grouping for the good of the most able and the least able students. But often these same educators are uneasy over the racial isolation that often results. This has put some programs for bright students on shaky ground.

    Classes for gifted children are being abolished, for example, at P.S. 152, down the block from Brooklyn College, because even though the school’s enrollment is becoming increasingly black and Puerto Rican, the gifted classes are disproportionately white.

    “There is no doubt that our classes for the intellectually gifted would have been totally segregated at that school if we had continued them,” said Dr. Ralph T. Brande, the superintendent of Community School District 22. Nonetheless, most of the district’s schools continue to have classes for the intellectually gifted.

    “District 22 is one of the last bastons of the middle‐class — both black and white —in the city,” Dr. Brande explained in an interview. “We have to do something to keep them in the schools. Will they flee the public schools and the city if they lose the classes for the intellectually gifted and the special progress classes at the junior highs?

    “I know the word ‘elitist’ is associated with these programs, but the problem that concerns me is whether we can still develop these children if we throw them in with everyene else.”

    At least one of the decentralized. districts, District 3, which reaches from Columbus Circle into ,Ilarlem on the city’s West Sides has answered the question;by banning all classes for the intellectually. gifted and operating entirely on what it says is a heterogeneous basis.

    “The families in our district are either poor or well off and everyone knows there is a correlation between economic background and how kids do in school” says Joseph Elias, the distriet superintendent. “Until we iriade the change, if You were. white you go into the ‘smart’ class and if you were not ‘,White you got into the ‘dumb’ class, Getting their children into the classes for the gifted was a way for parents to avoid having to spend $3,000 or $4,000 a year for a private school.”

    犀利士 l” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>https://www.nytimes.com/1974/05/22/archives/2-ideals-at-issue.html

  • Gifted Grade Schoolers To Get Special Instruction

    This is where NYC’s infamous Gifted & Talented program all started.

    The city school system will get its first program for teaching gifted elementary ‐school children this fall, following a vote to set up the program by’ the central Board of Education last night.

    A grant of $60,000 from the Vincent Astor Foundation will finance two experimental “early ‐learner” classes, in Brooklyn and Manhattan, for especially bright children aged from 4 to 6 years.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/16/archives/gifted-grade-schoolers-to-get-special-instruction.html

    And 2 years later…

    The two existing experimental classrooms for 4‐to‐6‐year‐old pupils are situated in Public School 116 at 210 East 33d Street in Manhattan and P.S. 114 at 1077 Remsen Avenue in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.

    Students are selected from all boroughs on the basis of interviews, recommendations and tests and, according to Dr. Ehrlich, represent the top one‐half of 1 per cent of the pupil population.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1975/05/11/archives/pilot-project-aids-gifted-children-in-city-schools.html