nycbar-2019521-CompetitiveAdmissionsDOE050119Equal access to educational opportunity and racially and economically integrated public schools are central goals of the SDAG and the larger civil-rights community. These goals cannot be achieved unless the New York City Department of Education eliminates competitive admissions to its elementary- and middle-school programs and schools.
In the elementary-school context, New York City provides separate Gifted & Talented (“G&T”) schools and in-school programs for young children who score above a certain level on what is known as the “G&T test.”[3] The decision to have a child take the G&T test is made by the parents – rather than by educators – often before a child has entered the public school system. Most children do not take the test or cannot obtain a seat in a program even if they are eligible.[4] In the middle-school context, competitive admissions take the form of school-specific criteria limiting admission based on academic “merit” and perceptions of behavior. These assessments are based necessarily on the performance of students in fourth grade when students are eight and nine years old.
Admission to the City’s official G&T programs in elementary school typically involves testing of children who are four years old. Chancellor Carranza has observed correctly that screening children in this way is “antithetical” to public education.[5] The Department of Education should work with administrators, teachers, Community Education Councils, School Leadership Teams and other groups with parent representation to eliminate screens for admission to elementary and middle schools and programs.[6]
The City Bar believes competitive admissions to elementary and middle school must be eliminated for the following reasons:
Tag: screening
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Asian Test-Prep Centers Offer Parents Exactly What They Want: ‘Results’
At GPS, as with its competitors, one of the most popular courses focuses on New York City’s Specialized High School Admissions Test, an entrance requirement for eight of the city’s nine specialized high schools. (LaGuardia High, a performing-arts school, has an audition system.) Less than 20 percent of eighth graders who take the exam clear the minimum score needed to get into a specialized school, including — at the most competitive end — Stuyvesant High School, Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School. A typical summer class for this test at GPS lasts three hours a day, every weekday, and can cost around $1,400. But Yan says virtually all his students get into a specialized high school. He knows this because he hands out Visa gift cards once results come out: $50 for Stuyvesant, $30 for Bronx Science, $20 for the others.
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To integrate specialized high schools, are gifted programs part of the problem or the solution?
“We’re working to raise the bar for all kids,” Carranza said in a statement to Chalkbeat. “We also have to think about access and barriers to entry, and that includes whether we’re creating unnecessary barriers by tracking students at the age of 4 or 5 years old based on a single test.”
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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.”