Number of Children Entering Gifted Programs Drops by Half

New York Times ^ | October 29, 2008 | Elissa Gootman and Robert Gebeloff

[reaganaut1]

The number of children entering New York City public school gifted programs dropped by half this year from last under a new policy intended to equalize access, with 28 schools lacking enough students to open planned gifted classes, and 13 others proceeding with fewer than a dozen children.

The policy, which based admission on a citywide cutoff score on two standardized tests, also failed to diversify the historically coveted classes. In a school system in which 17 percent of kindergartners and first graders are white, 48 percent of this year’s new gifted students are white, compared with 33 percent of elementary students admitted to the programs under previous entrance policies. The percentage of Asians was also higher, while those of blacks and Hispanics was lower.

Parents, teachers and principals involved in the programs say the new system has generated waste and frustration, with high-performing children in the smallest classes in a school system struggling with overcrowding.

“They took the knees out of a program that was working,” complained Christopher Spinelli, president of the Community Education Council for District 22 in southeastern Brooklyn.

For years, the Bloomberg administration has struggled to rationalize the gifted programs, long derided by critics as bastions of white privilege yet seen by many middle-class New Yorkers as a refuge from low-performing schools. In his 2005 State of the City address, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg promised to maintain all of the city’s existing gifted programs while creating more in “historically underserved districts.”

[joma89]

If the demo-rats economic plan is trickle up poverty, then their education plan is trickle up stupidity.

JoMa

[hinckley buzzard]

"Everybody has won, and all must have prizes."

[diefree]

My daughter was put into the LARC (Learning Activites etc. I forget, it’s been a long time) program in kindergarten.
All the parents had to go to a meeting with a child psychologist who explained that gifted children are those who dance to a different drummer. They don’t think like “normal”’ people. The giftedness is not just IQ, it is artistic talent and maturity. She said that it had been found that gifted children are more likely to become drug he’saddicts, alcoholics, suicidal. She said that LARC was a sort of intervention program to get gifted children together, coach them, and help them to shine.

My daughter is grown-up now and one day I asked her how the others kids turned out. She said some of them are druggies and alcoholics.

My daughter is fine though.

[Rooivalk]

Many moons ago I was in a majority Black elementary school (Holy Cross, grades 1-8)Los Angeles, and remember testing grade 13 on the standardized tests (in the sixth grade)along with several other students

The reason: The nuns (Sisters of St Joseph)would lay a stick on you if you misbehaved and you would get more when your parents found out.

Plus the nuns drilled you on how to take a test ( “...don’t get stuck on one question....learn to budget your time)

Invaluable advice

[Silly]

75 percent of all children are above average.

[SpookBrat]

Right, and per your description, my children are gifted, especially my son. He is strong willed and his own person. My daughter is very free spirited, does her own thing, etc. I'm glad we homeschooled, because as you described, I think staying in school, they would have been heavily influenced and insanely bored to the point of hysteria (like I was). My son has a highly addictive personality and doesn't always use good judgement. I'm glad they were both at home.

It's all good.

[diefree]

I despised school. I was very, very bored. The teachers were drones. But we didn’t have AP or fast-tracking when I went.

I sent my daughter to boarding school in France for her last two years of high school. It wasn’t that expensive, it would have cost more money here. She was enrolled in the Baccalaureate program and that got her into an Ivy League Univ.

[LibertarianLiz]

I live in a south suburb of Seattle, Federal Way. I was also surprised, although I never considered it a great loss.

You see, some years back there was a controversy here in Federal Way when one of the "honors" students came to a school board meeting and informed the school board that although she took all advanced placement and honors classes, and was the high school valedictorian, when she got to the University of Washington she found herself unprepared for the college level science courses. She was interested in majoring in some sort of science career. Now, this girl was actually speaking to the school board to help them, perhaps, re-evaluate the program and improve it. The school board was not impressed and decided that the problem was (yes, you guessed it), her.

She was informed that not all students adjust well to college. Now, if their valedictorian can't "adjust" to college what are the rest of the graduates from this school system doing? After much discussion in the local paper and elsewhere, it was revealed that the "honors" classes had exactly the same curriculum and textbooks as the regular classes, it was just that you were in a class with other highly motivated students. No real extra challenge.

[Joe 6-pack]

The West Georgia School For Boys...