Will we ever be allowed to talk about IQ again? It’s quite obvious what the problem is. IQ corresponds directly with performance on most standardized tests. If the outcry is “4 is too young!” then push the test back to 2nd or 3rd grade. But I promise you the results will be the same. There’s a huge difference between groups with an average IQ of 115 and those with an average of 85, and that difference matters. Sorry.
12
To get into a selective PRIVATE school in New York City, children must ace a single, high-stakes exam — when they are 4 (or 3) years old. Both of my children did this. When I was 4, I did it (and that was 49 years ago). Universal pre-K should help prepare underprivileged children better so that they can compete well on the test. The way to better integrate the gifted programs is to lift up the groups who are currently underrepresented, not dumb down the entire system.
8
That's simply false. Almost all private schools phased out standardized testing a few years ago. Now they all do their own proprietary assessments.
2
Don't throw out the baby with the bath water. The current gifted programs are discriminatory, not racially but based on class. Differentiating classes for students with different skills and capabilities is appropriate. Our greatest problem is the Board of Education is totally corrupt. No administrator gets his job because he is the most qualified. It is a giant cesspool of nepotism and cronyism. Only a small fraction of the money makes it to the classroom.
4
Once again pro tracking Times readers stand loud and proud this time defending this patently ridiculous test for four year olds. Not fair criticism they say, children have other chances-when they're 5 and 6 years old! Once again I try to explain that getting rid of tracking is not about rectifying racial imbalance but giving every child a chance for a quality education. Being in a class with different achievement levels does not hurt top performing kids-that has been established by many studies and it helps the other kids a lot. Once again I will be called an ignorant fools by the supposedly educated readers of this great newspaper. So it goes.
4
@jonr But does it help high-achieving kids, academically, to reach their full potential?
1
@479 No, it doesn't. Years ago I was one of those high-achieving kids. Being the smartest in your class can be very lonely, because you are often surrounded by other students who just don't love learning as much as you do and who can't grasp the materially as quickly. I gained admission to a rigorous private high school, and couldn't wait for eighth grade to end, so I could be with people like me. I loved high school - it was challenging and I grew so much intellectually.
8
@jonr
It’s not the responsibility of gifted kids to help everyone else.
7
I sent a book about why Finland has the best schools to President- elect Trump, address Trump Towers, hoping against hope that he would reset our educational policies. This was before I learned he didn’t read. Instead of improving our system from the top down, our previous presidents gave us the idiotic “ No Child Left Behind” and “ Race to the Top”, respectively. President Trump gave us Betsy DeVos.
1
From reading these comments, it's clear NYC has more gifted kids than places for them, eg a lottery.
We don't have a lottery for appropriate education of kids with disabilities.
Why not expand the number of spots for gifted kids?
7
Miscellaneous thoughts:
IQ-type tests emphasize speed more than depth of thought. I knew a guy who did VERY well on IQ-type tests, but who rarely spent more than a second thinking about a topic before jumping to another topic. His speech was a monologue of half-sentence non sequiturs. He accomplished little work. In a sense, he tested too well. I have observed other people with slower abilities (and presumably lower standardized test scores) who persistently work at difficult topics and who end up with deep understanding.
Early during an IQ test in elementary school, I accidentally started putting all answers one row off on the answer form, as I discovered when it was time to hand in the test materials. What did the test results say about my abilities?
All schools should be magnet schools. All tracks in each school should be magnet tracks. Which children deserve less?
As a non-parent, I am happy to pay my share of public schooling for other peoples' kids.
My grandmother (who taught in a one-room school) said that educational fads dictated from above impede teaching. By the time that teachers figure out how to work around the latest fad, a new fad comes along.
Tracking or the modern equivalent should be flexible. Students should be able to move up or down a track in each subject, at least annually.
Recess should not be withheld as punishment.
4
No, I don't think any single test should decide any 4 year olds educational future.
6
Yes, we are all created equal, but equal for what? Equal for personal dignity & legal rights, not necessarily capabilities and intelligence, which have been repeatedly proved by facts. Just like say Einstein has a very high IQ, but if he commits crime, he will receive the same punishment by law like any other person with a lower IQ. IQ issue is like a taboo, especially when it is related to races, no one wants to bring it up and only pretends we are all created equal for EVERYTHING. Beating around the bush will never get you a real solution.
7
With each attempt before leaving me only a few points from success, it wasn’t until my fifth test that my school’s gifted program finally accepted me.
Through our gifted program, I was exposed to experiences I never would have encountered in a typical classroom. From dissecting sheep brains to writing a research paper, I gained confidence, knowledge, and a passion for learning. If my school had allowed me only one chance at the age of 4, I would not have had any of this.
After reading this article and reflecting upon my own gifted education, the privilege I had as a white student in a suburban public school is indisputable. And the advantages these additional experiences granted me over my peers are also indisputable.
There is no question of if my predominantly white school district’s policies excluded students, and there is also no question of if New York City’s schools are doing the same. Some may claim that standardized testing is a fair practice, but in doing so, they fail to recognize the outside factors that contribute to a student’s overall knowledge. Low-income and/or minority children are less likely to gain the supplemental education that wealthier and/or white children receive through traveling or summer camps, causing an unfair disadvantage that these tests do not consider.
Though I value my gifted education, if NYC’s current testing continues to ignore these disparities, then it is only furthering the achievement gap and should be either redesign or ended.
8
“But the plan backfired, resulting in the closing of many gifted classes in black and Hispanic neighborhoods as fewer students of color met the new requirements.”
Are Asians not “students of color”? Asian children regularly outpace students of all other races on standardized tests, including the one at issue in this article. I’m Jewish, childless, and finished my public schooling a long time ago, so I have no horse in this race. But I confess I am a bit confused by the new racial hierarchy espoused by Carranza, de Blasio, and their supporters. Not to mention the tautological thinking at work in this article. It might be helpful to just say what you mean.
12
Absolutely not. They are biased. My smart and successful son didn’t pass the ´gifted’ test at 4 and really, who cares? He was pulled away from me down to an office with a strange lady and put in a curvy plastic chair which he slid off of. All kids thrive with good teachers and small classes, please put the money there.
4
All this talk about G&T and diversity - it really boils down to having equal opportunity which the NYC system does NOT offer. My daughter scored 99 percentile on that G&T test for K but we live in the Northeast Bronx. What did that mean for my family? Nothing. Because there is no transportation for G&T outside of your district and guess what? - at the time our only option was to put our 4yr old on a 1 hour privately paid bus ride to Manhattan IF she got a spot through a lottery at the Anderson School. Not an option for my family so we passed on it. The other option was to take her daily to the only G &T program in the Bronx (at the time in Soundview) on our own BUT there was no afterschool program so as 2 working parents we passed. The Bronx has minimal choices for G and T systemwide so there is no equity in the process. Years later ... for high schools guess what? - no selective high schools in the entire Bronx. She’s a hard worker and she ended up at a specialized high school because we could afford test prep AND she qualified for DREAM summer intensive program (offered to high achievers in zip codes minimally sending kids to specialized high schools)which got her to the level of the Manhattanites from the UWS. She’s back with peers from the Anderson school but by way of lots of hurdles along the way. And she’s half Latina if you’re wondering... Bottomline - all the five boroughs should have real G &T options and selective schools- Mr Mayor!
16
Have you ever considered moving out of the Bronx? My folks moved from the Bronx when I was 5 because they saw the kind of education a gifted child would have gotten there. My dad was had a job working for the city at the time. He didn’t want me stuck in the NYC public school system, which was the same or possibly worse in the ‘80s, so he left his job and we moved to the burbs. I’m grateful for the sacrifices that he and my mom made. Education was always a they priority. Not everyone can or should move, of course.
Maybe I missed it, but how would scrapping the G&T program help children like your daughter?
6
Yes, while I have some sympathy for the original poster, I bet an Asian parent or parents would have moved within a week or found a way of getting their child to Anderson each day. Anyway, I am glad it worked out eventually.
7
@Adriana Matiz Hi Adriana - thanks so much for sharing your story. Would you mind sending me an email so we can chat more? [email protected]
The point of these tests is to measure inherent intelligence (better known as IQ.) You can't study to become more inherently intelligent- it is a part of your genetic makeup. Granted, there are factors that might make a kid from a poor family score lower than an equally intelligent kid from a better off family- like being too hungry or tired to focus on the test or having been exposed to lead. It makes sense to test at a young age- before environmental factors have even more influence. The results should give a purer picture of the kid's potential. Ideally, it would create a racially diverse group, since (I believe) the incidence of high IQ is independent of race, but, if wealthy white parents are prepping their kids for these test, then the results will be skewed.
I wish my podunk school had a GT program determined by early testing- it would have saved me a lot of agony from being bullied (as smart kids usually were). In a typical school, bright kids suffer from boredom and don't always have the advantage.
6
The assessment test consists of TWO separate tests--The Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test and verbal items from 0tis-Lennon School Ability Test (presented orally).
To 4 year olds.
Over a period of 30 to 60 minutes.
4 year olds.
The results are added together for the total score, which then becomes the standard by which the child is judged gifted--or not.
There is NO validity to that score.
What credibility is there for ADDING scores from two different tests given to 4 year olds that THEN becomes a standard which will define the educational career of a child?
Ridiculous.
I am sure that each individual test writer will insist on the validity of his own test. (Already a problem considering it is 4 year olds and exactly how many and who were in the testing group to begin with.)
But these are two different tests.
Is a higher scorer on the nonverbal equal to a higher scorer for the verbal?
What controls are given for the oral speaker of the tests?
I seem to remember a lot of lawsuits and problems when this test combo was initiated.
And that's not even bringing into account how that child felt that day--or how much prep he had to go through.
Poor little kids.
This has very little to do with their giftedness and talent.
2
Yes, get rid of the gifted schools. Then all the New York schools will be uniformly awful.
16
lBy definition there are as many children with an IQ of 130-140 (near genius level) as there are with an IQ of 60-70. We wouldn't dare to shortchange the child with cognitive disability by forcing her to learn at the wrong pace. I'm sick of unproven or disproven educational theories about gifted children lifting up kids with far lower potential. Stop sacrificing the learning needs of high-IQ kids on the alter of everyone getting a participation medal. No.
16
Yes! Why should my kids, IQ scores of 135 and 140 — they went to Hunter — be denied a good education because of liberal guilt over slavery? First, the city government needs to get its act together and work with non-Asian minority communities to get their act together. And those communities need to get their acts together, just as Asians — who are, on average poorer and just as socially disadvantaged — have done. They scrimp and save and drive their kids. Why can’t other minority communities?
8
While I went to public schools in Washington State and my husband went to public schools in NYC our children went to school in Anchorage, Alaska. The Anchorage school district used a single test to determine whether 4 year olds could enter a pre-school gifted program. That test was the sole determiner of who got into that program and who did not get in.
Our older son did not get into that program, but he was in the gifted and talented pullout program throughout his elementary and middle school years. We did not want our younger son to go into the gifted and talented program. He had a pronounced speech impediment and we did not want him to be embarrassed about his speech in a program such as the gifted and talented program. Ironically, our younger son did far better in his high school years than our older son, the one who was in the gifted and talented program. The trend continued on into college. Our older son graduated with a degree in Political Science...a field he never entered. Our younger son graduated with a degree in civil engineering, and he has worked in that field since graduating from college almost a decade ago.
Our experience led my husband and I to believe that two hour per week pullout programs labelled as gifted and talented are rarely effective in helping students reach their potential, and that single test criteria for entering gifted and talented programs are essentially very poor predictors of whether or not students are actually gifted or not.
6
First of all, a four-year-old can show some indications of being gifted. By even the most conservative estimates, IQ is at least 40 percent hereditary. Other talents, such as verbal, mathematical or music ability, tend to show up pretty early as well. This is not to say that there are no late bloomers or that additional testing may not be necessary but I find nothing shocking in the idea of separating off gifted children at an early age. Second, the preoccupation with race is becoming tiresome. If black and Latino parents don’t apply to the programs, while white and Asian parents do, whose fault is it? Disseminate information about the programs and the testing procedures more widely and offer support to poor but diligent families. But any attempt to shut down the gifted programs in the interest on racial “fairness” is racism by another name.
20
Such melodrama! Your fate decided by the age of four! maybe New York City should consider leaving their world class schools alone instead of finding ways to lower the standards that make them great. Maybe turning your attention to the families of the students who don’t make it and what values keep them from succeeding would be in order. It’s not all about poverty because certainly that’s not holding Asian students back. Elementary school is pretty early to make a judgment, but not too early. It sure looks like it’s the families and their values, not the schools.
9
Very well said. This is about communities’ cultures and attitudes toward education. If it is not, then it is about innate intelligence. And who wants to go there?
5
Ironically universal IQ testing of 4-5 year olds has actually shown to increase diversity, slightly in gifted and talented programs where it's used. I honestly don't understand this author's obsession with diversity in NYC schools. Maybe an explanation is warranted?
13
I am so disappointed in the way the New York Times is covering this issue. Has de Blasio bought them off or does everyone at the Times have such a warped worldview that they actually can't recognize not only that this is a terrible idea but also that their reporting on it has been propaganda at best?
Article after article presents only one side of the argument and frames taking apart NY's gifted programs as some sort of anti-racist effort. The only thing racist here is the ridiculous notion that black and hispanic students are not capable of scoring as highly on admissions tests and should therefore be given a lower bar for entry. We should be working on helping students from disadvantaged backgrounds achieve, not giving students who achieve a disadvantaged background.
The obvious solution to testing too early is to test later. The obvious solution to expensive test prep is free test prep. How is getting rid of everything even an option?
I also can't help but wonder how much of these efforts are motivated by helping out the private schools and all the big money (read: election donors) consolidated there. The fact that specialized schools like Stuy exist obviously hurts the private school business model, especially when students from these excellent public schools take up their regional admissions quotas to various colleges. It seems Eliza Shapiro also attended private school. Conflict of interest much?
(Also why is Stuy the picture for this article? That's a reach.)
25
Very well said. And, yes, why is Stuyvesant the illustration when there is a much better — by any measure (SATs, ACTs, admissions to elite colleges, etc.) — G&T public school in the city, Hunter College High School. This seems to a blind spot for Ms. Shapiro, who is confused by the fact that Hunter, while it is not administered by the city’s DOE, is a public school — that is, funded by taxpayers — by any measure.
7
@Angry "The obvious solution to testing too early is to test later. The obvious solution to expensive test prep is free test prep."
The notion that you identify gifted 4 year olds with test prep is wrong. Therefore, giving "free" (i.e. not as good) test prep to 4 year olds so we can better identify their so-called "giftedness" is not a solution.
@Matthew Dowling Hi! Wanted to make sure you saw this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/nyregion/hunter-high-school-diversity-exam.html
Also, I think there's some confusion about the mayor's stance here. The mayor immediately distanced himself from the proposal and it seems highly unlikely that he will approve the plan to scrap gifted.
2
Kindergarten does seem early to create GATE classes. My former district gave the Naglieri nonverbal ability test to all 3rd graders at the end of the year. But, the results didn't reflect the demographics of the district - so they got rid of the test. Nobody claims that the test yields an inaccurate result, they just don't like the result. Then they just starved the GATE program of funds until it ceased to exist.
Gifted and Talented Education was originally meant to include various kinds of gifts - dance, music, art as well as high IQ. Most districts were not prepared to offer 'the Arts,' so GATE became based on IQ for most districts.
If you are an academic and you so much as imply that there are any IQ differences based on race, you are instantly unemployable. Anyone who researches in that area does so very carefully.
Here's an article linking SAT scores to general intelligence. They address the issue very gingerly:
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/Frey.pdf?origin=publication_detail
You can practice for a test like the Naglieri, but few people actually do so. And you can only shift your score a few points by doing so.
Rather than help those who struggle, the leadership in New York seems determined to hold back high-achieving students. That truly is a shame.
9
This is felonious, immoral, 4 years old? Segregation in its most perverse form. The secrets of a "liberal" town...Beyond any explanation...
1
Why is the word segregated used in this instance? Segregate is an active verb. Its use was correct when schools were actively segregated, as in the South pre-Brown vs. Board of Education and similar measures. But the phenomenon described in this article is not that — it is a separation of the races that arises for a variety of reasons, similar to the way neighborhoods have a differing mixes of ethnicities, incomes and classes. It is not purposeful segregation. But I guess the PC brigade needed to find a nasty-sounding word to advance their agenda, the same as illegal immigrants (entirely accurate) has been replaced by undocumented immigrants (not entirely accurate). Need to find another word, folks.
9
@Matthew Dowling
I would agree that "segregated" is a misleading term to use when discussing how best to deal with students of different abilities. It would be far preferable to simply say that students were grouped according to their intellectual ability levels. Segregation is a term that connotes one group is favored and the other is not. Gifted and talented programs are a part of schools because in many cases the only way to meet the different needs of students of widely divergent ability levels is to provide services designed to meet those specific need. That includes special education services for students on one end of the intellectual ability spectrum and gifted services for students at the other end of that spectrum.
4
I dislike the label gifted and talented. Sounds elitist. How about accelerated track or something like that? I think it would be less traumatizing for a student to hear that they did not make it to the accelerated track than that they are just ungifted. Or untalented. This test should be removed, but not the programs. Start them in first grade, after ALL public school kindergartners have been evaluated and not just with a single test. I think 4 years old is too young and doesn’t give kids whose parents might not know about this (what if English is an issue for the parents) the disadvantage of not having even been screened at all.
3
I agree. When G&T was (somewhat coyly) used in regard to my kids, who went to Hunter, I tended to feel uncomfortable. After all, until they took the Hunter test they seemed entirely normal. Like with “segregated” (see my earlier post), time to come up with another moniker.
2
Absolutely anything to avoid any real discussion of (one of) the central issues in this problem: cultural attitudes towards higher education.
18
In Buffalo kids are tested at 4 and 5 to get into the one gifted and talented elementary school in the city. They don’t test at the later ages. This method seems bizarre to me. How valid are these results for such young children? Is the test score more related to parent involvement, early childhood education, and or affluence?
2
Under the picture it should state that the road to the most selective high schools comes from access to certain specific middle schools, which filter about half the students in specialized high schools. No, not all of those middle schoolers were deemed gifted in pre-school, but they made up the difference along the way - sometimes by hard work, diligence and curiosity.
1
Uh, how do kids get in to selective elementary or middle schools? Testing at high level on IQ tests. That's why those kids then test at a high level on the SHSAT. Speaking as a mom of two of them.
2
Parents, and the example they set/interest they show, are the biggest determinant in a child’s education.
11
Entirely correct. And if you are not, then it is a matter of some groups being innately more intelligent than others. Anyone care to weigh in on that one? I think not.
2
Education is not a zero-sum game. If there are more students who would benefit from G/T enrichment, the city can adjust the curriculum in its many schools to provide it. Maryland students can accelerate 1 or 2 years in each subject to keep them challenged at the appropriate level.
It's also misleading to conflate ethnicity and affluence. Asians are the least affluent demographic in NYC and the most represented at the specialized schools. Whatever is going on, it's not clear that this is an issue of economic privilege (at least the article doesn't offer support for that thesis).
14
Yes. What is going on is that Asian parents, more economically disadvantaged than any other group in NYC, scrimp and save to get their kids into test prep and push their children to excel. There is nothing stopping other minorities from doing the same. They should learn from the example of Jews, who for the most part cane to this country with nothing other than their zeal for work and education. They did not, despite considerable prejudice (Holocaust, anyone?) — elite university quotas, for example, now shamefully being exacted on Asians — complain (much) and are now the most successful ethnic group in the US. Perhaps they have a lesson that should be followed. So far, only Asians seem to be doing that.
8
Test all the kids after 2nd, 4th, 6th + 8th grades.
Keep young kids in neighborhood schools; probably thru 6th grade.
Make more special +/or magnet schools. (I do not know the difference.) Enough so that they are in multiple neighborhoods.
6
In 2005 my first grade daughter was admitted to the NYC BOE public school Sage 31 program for high achieving students in Staten Island. She claimed one of the 75 seats in a borough population of 450,000. There was more than a test. We had to submit letters of recommendation from her Montessori preschool teachers, a portfolio of relevant educational achievements and she had to pass an interview.
In the early 70's I attended a Bensonhurst Brooklyn JHS that had forced busing. We were integrated in the school yard but segregated in the classroom. Those kids were on a bus for 2.5 hours a day for no reason. They would have better served with an eight-hour school day.
Those kids were tracked then as we're all tracked our entire lives, high school, college, employment ... you're tracked according to your ability.
Dropping middle achievers into a high achieving environment is not a good idea. Give these kids early schooling and longer days. Forced busing may have made politicians feel better but my black classmates were miserable and tired.
11
@Mike B
So you want to tell me that in 1st grade these tests know the difference of the"middle achievers" from the ones who belong in a high achieving environment? I have a 21 year old college student who was off the charts when he was young. I also have a 17 year old who could barely read her own name at 7. No test (and they were both subjected to them) could have predicted who would be higher achieving. There is so much more to consider. By the way, longer school days have never been proven to increase kid's scores. The one thing they do know helps is recess and play yet they barely make a change there.
4
@Rocky
Longer school days most certainly have been proven to increase kids’ knowledge base. Consider schools in France and Germany for examples. Their days are longer, their school years are longer, and they run circles around American students. They arrive here as sophomores or juniors in American colleges. American universities employ whole departments of people who recruit students inEurope and Asia. Why? Because they’re better prepared, better educated and respect academic achievement than American students. We should try this sometime...
6
My district screens all second graders for gifted classes. Students can be nominated for testing by parents or teachers for several years after that.
6
The author of this article suggests that the goal is to "desegregate" the NYC public school system, however, she doesn't state what a desegregated system would look like or what this goal would accomplish. Should each school have the same percentage of students by race as the city as a whole? Or should it be by borough, by neighborhood?
As the school system is made up of less than 15% non-hispanic whites, there aren't that many of these kids to spread around.
And what would this accomplish? Would the 85% of non-whites receive a better education if the whites were spread more evenly around?
11
I believe that ALL students (rich, middle-class, poor, white, black, hispanic, etc) develop at different rates. I was a middle class student whose parents were oblivious to enrichment, etc.
However, I went on to obtain 2 master degrees and now live in an upper middle class environment.
When I was 11, no one told me to "get serious" about college.
Many students have this type of experience.
10
The NYC specialized high schools take a big chunk out of the regional quota of admission slots at top colleges, which hurts their business model and that is why they need to take them down.
4
The dishonesty of this article's title is infuriating. First, as pointed out by other commentators here, it is highly misleading since kids have several additional opportunities to be tested in subsequent years.
More importantly, it is just another excuse to demolish the only parts of the public education system that work, rather than ask the hard question of why the majority fails and how to fix it. It is palpably absurd to expect that such strategy will have any positive results.
If the current testing method for G&T programs is flawed, then *fix it*. One does not demolish the house if the door is broken, one fixes the door!
Second, I am outraged by the repeated misuse of the term "segregation". Segregation was a historical crime of legal racial discrimination. No such discrimination exists in NYC. On the contrary, many tests are racially blind, immune even from the subconscious bias that can plague "personality assessments" and interviews. It is the current political establishment in the city which advocates racist policies, judging the viability of school programs by the color of the students' skin rather than by the content of the programs.
This racist attitude, thinly disguised under Orwellian newspeak, is utterly shameful. Our children will look back on these times with horror and will rightly ask us how we put up with this hateful, harmful, destructive, disingenuous discourse.
73
@Peaceman Hi - I've spoken to many parents about this issue over the last 6 years and getting into G+T after kindergarten can be a huge lift -- there are very few spots relative to demand after kindergarten, and parents feel like it's next to impossible to get a 1st/2nd/3rd grade seat. So that's based on many years of talking to parents about their experiences - thanks.
5
@Eliza Shapiro
It’s very clear that you have an angle here. Your articles are not analytical; they are deeply biased and reveal only the opinions of certain vocal factions within the public school system. No white students, no parents of any race, no one who is happy with their education. Yet it’s clear that many who attended the specialized high schools went on to be happy and successful. Why not interview them?
13
Here's a question for those cheering for Carranza's goals: What SHOULD we do with children who are real outliers, the kids reading years beyond their grade level, turning the kitchen into a science lab whenever mom's back is turned, etc.? When I was growing up in the "tracking is elitist and therefore bad" 1970's, those kids were basically left to entertain themselves while the rest of the class learned to read for years at a time, as long as they weren't disruptive. A total waste of sponge-like child minds.
40
@Working Mama
Here is a question for you: Why are you so certain those gifted kids you are concerned about will be identified by a test they take at 4 years old?
So then what? They are outscored by a prepped kid who gets a guaranteed spot for the next 6 years?
Kids who "read years above their grade level" at age 4 are not always more gifted than kids who learn to read at age 5 or 6.
NEST+m is one of the largest NYC "gifted" schools that only takes the 4 year old students with the very highest scores on their test for so-called "giftedness". Last year, only 60% of the 3rd grade students at NEST+m got a 4 - the highest score - on the state ELA exam.
Last year in NYC there were 6,000 3rd graders with 4s on the state ELA exam. Nearly 2,000 of those 3rd graders with 4s on the ELA exam were African-American or Latinx. And most of those 6,000 3rd graders who outscored 40% of the 3rd graders isolated in a school for the most gifted students were in regular public schools.
You would probably argue the test on which 40% of the most highly gifted 3rd graders could not manage to get a 4 is a silly measurement for giftedness. But then why insist that the test those 8 year olds took a few years earlier is meaningful either?
1
Those tests are great for Chappaqua and Scarsdale real estate values. After the testing, NYC parents bee-line it up to these school districts.
5
We’ve been focusing on skin color over merit for the last 60 years of education policy in this country. What are the results? Are they good?
Maybe it’s time to focus on raising standards again, rather than consistently lowering them to avoid accusations of racism. This is probably my biggest quibble with liberals today: their worst collective fear is to be called racist.
26
If someone moves to NYC when 8, does that mean he can never enter a gifted program? Are children barred from retaking an exam? If not, is the title of the op ed really descriptive of actual situation?
3
Here in the suburbs, there are no "gifted and talented" kindergartens. And if there are none here, there should be none in New York City.
If they were doing this in Alabama instead of New York City, everyone here would be screaming racism.
5
Why is there no complaint about rooster make-up for NBA, other sports team and entertainment industry? The individual talents in these fields are recognized without much complaint by Black and Hispanic. But a different standards are applied toward the education system where socialism prevails to equalized individual efforts, talents and genetic makeup. What would happen to the NY public school in academy standard if all the Asia drop out due to lack of academic standard?
2
Until and unless these classes have fewer than 25 students per class, there really is no appreciable difference.
2
I grew up attending in public schools in Queens in the 1970-80s. I remember being tested in 5th grade for a gifted program and being informed that I had made it. A few weeks later, a teacher came to take the gifted kids out of class for a special session - my name wasn’t called. Being 10, I wasn’t about to correct a teacher but thankfully my friend did, and asked why I wasn’t included. In the ten minutes it took for them to correct the anomaly, my self-worth and confidence were shattered. I did end up being included but I can imagine what it would be like for a child to be told that they were not gifted. Indeed classmates of mine who were not included, who I know were/are extremely intelligent, felt defensive and left out.
I understand the advantages of a gifted program - certainly tracking in later grades helped me achieve an Ivy League education but in elementary school? I didn’t learn any special skills, higher math or Shakespeare in that gifted program. It was an ego boost and allowed me and my fellow “gifted” classmates privileges that we didn’t deserve more than others. It emphasized project based, hands on learning: something the other kids who were less adept at test taking may have benefited greatly from. While pretty diverse racially, our socio-economically homogeneous group would have been just as well off learning alongside classmates of varying abilities, challenging us to adapt and learn from the larger, more diverse group that made up the school as a whole.
12
My older daughter "failed" that test. She spent her entire elementary school life in a NYC public school with no gifted programs. I remember reminiscing about that while watching her receive her PhD.
24
This schooling system is absurd and they complain about having a segregated school but don't take into account that they are placing the schools into wealthy locations where there won't be much opportunity for other gifted kids who are less fortunate and will in cause also drastically decrease the amount of diversity in their school district because of the lack of transportation and opportunity that are given to parents of children who are in different regions of New York. Just so you know, 3 of their 5 schools are in Manhattan, which is considerable unfavorable to those who wont have transportation to that wealthier region of New York.
2
@Dawit Lencha students get free public transportation from any borough. I went to one of the specialized schools decades ago and it had many students from every borough...probably most from Queens.
Many folks seem to be conflating ethnicity and class. Asians are actually the poorest demographic in NYC and are the most heavily represented at the specialized schools. I had (Asian) classmates who grew up without electricity or hot water. Would it be fairer to deny that child a spot they qualified through color-blind testing for so that an affluent DeBlasio child could attend? I don't think so.
That said, there are other models that appear to work better. Montgomery and Howard County Maryland have very different systems that seem to be more flexible and work quite well.
2
Why don't they create more specialized high schools that cater to the "top 15% gets in " crowd and leaves the original specialized high schools alone?
5
A proper system is one where if you fail a test you can work your way back in.
Take, e.g. Germany. If you fail the test to get into the high school, you enter at age 14 an apprenticeship coupled with practical education. But this does not exclude you from attending University. Because, once you finish your apprenticeship, and pass the final test, you can attend a 2 year school (somewhat akin to a community college) and if you do well there you can transfer to University.
And, should you wish, study Quantum Entanglement
I.e. what is needed is a system which, should a student have been misclassified, offers corrections.
Corrections that work
10
Karl, I agree, the system of accepting 4 year old children into a school through an exam in my eyes is ridiculous, I feel as though that child might end up growing up in that school and getting a job doing what they're good at and have been trained to do since adolescence and not for something that they love waking up every morning to go to work for..
3
The city complains that G&T is too white and asian, but puts most of the G&T spots in the wealthiest districts. Even kids with 99s on the test, who are supposed to have options for the citywide schools, have more opportunities for seats if they live in Manhattan, given that 3 of the 5 citywide schools are in that borough. In addition, District 2 parents have options for Hunter elementary, and kids with 99s on the test can also go to Lower Lab. Meanwhile, for those in other boroughs, district buses to citywide schools won't cross borough lines, so parents of kids lucky enough to get seats, have to fork out thousands for private transportation. On top of it, the sibling preference rule encourages parents to do extra prep for tests once one sibling gets in, whether or not siblings are actually gifted. Then there is a lottery, and even if your kid scores a 99, there is no guarantee of a seat in a citywide school or otherwise. And district G&T is just enriched curriculum, at the same grade level, and not accelerated. So kids who get genuinely high scores, without prep, are left to the vagaries of system that does not care about meeting their needs. If we treated kids at the low end of the distribution the way we do kids at the high end, leaving so much up to chance, there would be uproar. The entire system is absurd, but fixing the test is only the start of it.
5
I have a very smart teenager who didn't start to really show it on tests until the later part of his kindergarten year. He missed admission into a GT program earlier, and we ended up home schooling him until his 5th grade year. He would have no trouble testing in the top 1% now.
At this point it doesn't matter. Our suburban district doesn't have any magnet schools. He is taking a very rigorous schedule in a high performing school. But in NYC, he would have missed an important chance.
2
The gifted and talented tests in NYC are the biggest joke going . The ‘test’ is which parents can grill their 4 year old for months and months incessantly and get them to submit to this test which neither measures a child’s smarts nor potential. It is a test of who has the most test-dedicated parents. Totally ridiculous and ineffective as is evidence by the success rates of children in the fake gifted and talented programs vs their peers not in these programs. As the parent of an NYC 4-year old who just started at a private school, I am completely in favor of an overall to the NYC system and would love for my daughter to be involved in a newly imagined school system. We need more brown and black children in the top tier programs. And the charter school thing favored by Betsy deVos is not the answer!
10
"replace its elementary gifted programs with magnet schools and enrichment programs that do not require exams for entry. "
What does that even mean? Public "non-gifted" programs that have separate "enrichment" and "non-enrichment" tracks? How do you decide which students are in which, if not through some type of exams?
I agree that there should be more chances, other than the age-4 test, to get onto the gifted track. But the solution is NOT to just get rid of the gifted program. It's to have further chances (maybe before middle school) to advance based on your scores.
2
Nine or 10 years ago our then four year old aced the shape pattern test in the 99%. She hadn't had any test prep but had the advantage of a lively preschool experience.
She entered in to the g&t class at our neighborhood school, PS 130 in Chinatown/Little Italy. She had a lovely class and did well. The kids were all nice, well behaved, and they had good teachers.
We moved out to Connecticut after her third grade to a town with a good school district. She's now in eighth grade. She's a good student but not exceptional academically, except in art.
In our experience the advantages to the NYC Gifted and Talented program were as follows: The same kids stayed together from K-5. There were no seriously disruptive or troubled children in the class, and they had good teachers each year. It was nurturing. Normal. The school had a funding trick to keep 2 teachers in the class each year. Peanut allergies, believe it or not, provided the funding for a second teacher assigned to the class.
To a degree this environment could be replicated for the other 90% across districts. IF (big if) NYC would assign the proper resources to help the hyper and distracted children who are not cut out to sit still six or seven hours a day. Two teachers should be assigned to each class with more than twenty kids. The city should pay teachers commensurate to the cost of living. Good luck prying the money out of those billion dollar condos.
20
The “funding trick” to get 2 teachers into 1 g&t classroom is one of the following: PTA fundraising to pay for the principal to hire “assistant teachers” under DOE’s process (but paid for by the PTA ie the parents) or 2nd teacher is specifically there to assist an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) student (learning issue). However G&t classrooms in NYC usually don’t have IEP students, so parents were most likely paying for the “second” teacher who was an assistant teacher - basically a college grad looking to go into education or who was starting or doing a masters. No DOE principal can put 2 full time teachers into a 25 student elementary school classroom, not even 10 years ago
1
I remember my child taking a test for getting into gifted program at our local public school. He didn't get in, went on to being a Fulbright Scholar.
23
@Judy Petersen
My child wouldn't cooperate. Refused to do what was asked. His IQ is at the top of the superior range.
4
Right there with you. A child’s mindset the day of the exam has a profound effect, and can prevent qualified kids from being identified. We parents can only look back when they achieve as adults and say “I knew that one was capable,” - more than capable - yet the school failed to catch it.
But I have to admit that I echo what some others have said, these programs are sometimes more for stroking parental ego than for taking kids to the levels their actual talents might allow.
All schools need to be more demanding of kids who can reach higher, more supportive of kids who, for whatever reason, are struggling, and must not fail to recognize the needs and strengths of those in the middle.
I also suggest that teachers should be required to come up with new lesson plans every year rather than repeating the same old-same old with each incoming class. My three were at two-year intervals. Can I tell you how tired I was of the gelatin-based model cell in grade 7, the repeated playing of the same violin concerto in grade 4-5-6-whenever, the “ageless” halftime performances of the high school band? Six years of Friday night staleness... I realize there may have been some value in this to students who never encountered it before, but - is this all those vaunted educators were capable of?
1
Testing math concepts at 4 years old? Until we have universal preK and all kids have access to that learning prior to entering school, this is nonsense. Testing a little bit older, say 2nd or 3rd grade, would even the playing field a bit. No system will ever be perfect, but this is pretty demented.
7
@northeastsoccermum there is universal pre-K in NYC.
1
Good reporting. Made me laugh years ago all the crazy moms obsessing over their ‘gifted’ 4 year olds - they actually believed the test proved their kid was a genius. Anderson and Hunter moms were particularly crazy. Yes, get rid if that stupid test!
9
Public school is supposed to be the great equalizer, the definition of democracy. But the whole gifted and talented program undermines this idea/ideal. The test and the GnT programs are class-ist, racist, out-dated, unprogressive and discriminatory. The test is entirely biased toward high income earners who are highly educated and most likely are white-- these are also the ones who attempt to get their kids into public school and hold on to their dollar bills. Their next option is private school that they can well afford. You can't have it both ways. If you want public school, then you should get public school-- the good, bad, ugly, rich, poor; the healthy, those with food insecurity; those with low scores, those with higher scores; those in Brownsville and those in Bed Stuy Heights. You don't get to have your own mini private school within the public school, where you get the best teachers, the best students, the best books, the best, the best, gifted and talented. And if you have a smart kid and can't afford public school, share your child's brilliance with the rest of the general ed population. It takes a village, yo...
8
Expand g/t everywhere and increase seats. That’s leveling the playing field. Not chopping of kids legs
4
All parents, educators and others who buy into the ridiculous idea that you can tell who is gifted at any early age have once more failed their own IQ test.
6
The NYTimes loves to lump Whites and Asians into the same pool, as if to imply that they comprise a monolithic racial group. But to be clear, Asians are one of the poorest demographics in New York City, often coming from homes with poverty and where English is not the primary language of immigrant parents.
So why is it that, despite these circumstances, Asians are overrepresented in G&T and the specialized high schools? When all the tinkering is done (removing the test, pretending we're San Antonio, and whatever other red herrings the NYTimes wants to proffer), and Blacks and Hispanics are still underrepresented in these high-performing environments, will we finally ask the question of whether culture values may, just may, play a role in educational success? Or are we going to keep pretending that Asians are as privileged as Whites in order to avoid that line of interrogation?
58
@InAllFairness
Agree all - education begins at home - nuff said
8
I am a product of NYC public schools from the 1950's. There was no gifted and talented program in my elementary school and I remember being truly bored. However, I was enrolled in a special progress class in junior high (7,8 & 9 in 2 years. ) I was fortunate enough to go to Hunter College High (for gifted girls at the time) and still under the Board Of Higher Education) That was the best 3 years ever all my schooling including undergraduate and graduate school. Don't kill the Gifted and Talented programs.
21
One of the big problems is the eradication of tracking within schools. Before, you could take regular math and honors English, or vice versa, and you could easily move up or down as needed. This creates lots of opportunities for kids who bloom later than age 4! If the whole school is only general education or only G&T, where does that leave kids who excel in one area but are average or struggling in another?
7
When my child was in preschool, one day a good friend ( white) was absent, we found out later she went to take the GNT test. What's that? What kind of gift and talent was she being tested for? Singing? Dancing? Story telling? Oh nothing, just a way to get into good schools her mother said.
Gradually we learned about the Hunter test etc. So who were on the inside track to be informed of such things? Certainly no one told us. ( teacher's recommendation, the rumor goes)
This was almost thirty ago.
From GNT to affirmative action, the path to success through American public education is perilous, all our children deserve quality education, not Darwinian selection from age 4.
5
@Ruth Info for GNT programs is on DOE website for everyone to see. It's not hidden. It's not secret. parents just need to be curious and look.
16
@john q public
I know a decent many who don’t have a computer at home to look up such information. Often working (sometimes multiple jobs) and taking care of young kids, they lack the time to gab with other parents to find out the information is on the DOE website (not obvious if you’re not accustomed to the system) or even the time go to the library to use their computers.
Knowledge of the system is currently exclusionary but that can easily change. Requiring that a parent have a job that will allow them to take off for these tests is another aspect of the exclusion.
2
@john Q Public
There was no internet or website 30 years ago, now there is nowhere to hide. Still I am against the idea of GNT, it’s a cruel and mindless selecting process that demeans the purpose of early childhood education. It has to go.
Non-Hispanic white children now make up about 150,000 of about 560,000 New York City children under age five, but many attend private schools. But even if all NYC’s non-hispanic white children attended NYC public and even if they were evenly distributed throughout NYC schools, there would not be enough non-Hispanic white children to achieve more than token integration. All schools would be about 75 percent minority.
Demographic change has already made a mockery of school integration in our most populous states—California and Texas. Only about 20 percent of California K-12 students and 26 percent of Texas K-12 students are non-Hispanic white. There are no longer enough non-Hispanic white students to go around.
NYC should accept its demographic destiny. It should stop worrying about about race and ethnicity and start working to make all schools high-performing schools.
https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/population-geography/pop-demography.htm
17
I was blessed that my parents were able to send me and my siblings to Catholic school
12
@NYC Dweller Good for you, but how does this help with resolving the dilemma of gifted and talented programs? Also, what if someone is not Catholic?
2
@NYC Dweller
I was cursed that mine were. Brainwashing children into religious beliefs may not be as devastating as sexual abuse, but it is abuse nonetheless. Run as fast as you can.
2
At 4 y/o, why not a lottery?
3
In my school district they use Raven Progressive Matrices in second grade. Lo and behold at one of the wealthiest elementary schools fully one third of the kids score at the 99.5 you need for the extra-gifted “Seminar” section. Ironically that section of third grade always has to scramble the last month or so of the school year to cover the curriculum because they spend most of the year being special.
It’s all a racket, sorry.
7
We diagnose many kids with learning problems at a young age--and others are not identified until later on.
I'm not sure why we can't be doing the same for gifted kids. Identify some early, and others later on.
11
In NC. students are tested in 2nd grade. There are multiple tests and a portfolio students create over several months to demonstrate their abilities in math, writing, reading, and art. I had a student several years ago who was a recent immigrant from Cambodia. He spoke little English and struggled with literacy, but his skills in math were phenomenal. A one day test would've missed this. He was allowed to participate in gifted classes and in 2nd grade created a working robot out of scrap materials in my classroom. He is now in high school and thriving.
5
I am a Chinese American mom. Over a decade ago, I refused to let my 4-year old daughter take the test as I believed the test was nonsense. Later, I regretted as I found out that the difference is not only the student body, more importantly, the TEACHERS. Apparently, one needs a special license to teach GT students. My daughter took the test later and got in the program in 4th grade. The GT teacher she had in 5th was a life-changing mentor for her and remained her favorite teacher after she went to private schools for middle and high schools. I believe raising the bar of teachers for all students should be included while we discuss the quality of education for ALL KIDS.
39
While the issue of segregation by race is uppermost in the Mayer's Commission, the examples they studied showed the need and value of integration by class, students with disabilities and English as a second language.
The media and mostly those who criticize the Commission recommendations seem fixated on race while ignoring how class advantages some families in the current standardized test system.
By all accounts New York should scrap that system whether they do so for reasons of school integration or simply because it's outmoded and dysfunctional.
So why did an educationally unsound testing regimen last so long in New York? I think the answer lies in the fact that everyone knows the test is biased toward highly educated and high earning parents, who happen to mostly be white.
Their kids get into high performing public schools and save their parents a ton of money since their next choice would be a private school charging 25k a year in tuition.
These are families that have political clout, have big mortgages in million dollar condos and are used to bending the system to their advantage.
The good points from this article are that the system can be made better for all kids and integration will be a byproduct of that, not its sole purpose.
1
@Drspock
Good points, however we know the city is more the haves than it has ever been. We live in segregated zip codes and dont interact unless we are forced ie riding the subway when the elites Uber is delayed. The rich do not go out of there way to engage with the servants.
Bloomberg helped in creating this segregated system under his leadership, I dont see how in the next ten years despite what the commission stated anything truly improves we are tinkering around the edges of major problems rolled into the educational system
We should make it illegal for any governmental organization in the United States to classify anyone by race or sex unless there is some objective reason (e.g.studying breast cancer). Objective tests or ability should be the only measure for programs like gifted school programs. Class room participation should not be used because it can be gamed. The scandals in Washington, DC over teachers and school administrators letting unqualified students graduate from high school make it clear that they cannot be trusted to administer these programs.
15
It is illegal! The Supreme Court has said so time and again that race-based laws are unconstitutional unless they pass strict scrutiny, and are enacted to meet a “compelling government interest.”
I’m very confused as to how this “desegregation” policy (really an effort to punish high-performing white and Asian students) will ever hold up if it’s challenged in court. But then again, no one on De Blasio’s team is actually um... educated. Because being educated n’ stuff is elitist, yo.
7
Eliminate the single-test for 4 year-old admission standard, but not gifted programs. Back in the ‘60s, my sister and I were enrolled in what were then the equivalent of NYC G&T. We were tracked into enriched classes based on classroom performance and test scores. Our parents were not affluent- far from it, neither had graduated from high school.
In the 6th grade, we both tested into accelerated programs - “special progress.” My class of 21 kids, at JHS 142 in Brooklyn - “special progress,” it was called - included 8 children children of color, both African-American and Hispanic. They were in the class, because they took the same test that I did and qualified.
We need these classes. That my class was integrated, shows that with a good elementary education and support at home - I recall the names of nearly all my classmates in SP, and virtually all of them came from intact, 2-parent homes — children of all backgrounds can qualify for gifted programs. Moreover, if the programs begin in elementary school, more kids will qualify at the middle and high school levels.
The key is to find admission criteria that make sense, not to eliminate the programs. Some children, including those from all racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds, are academically gifted. The programs made available to my sister and me prepared us to become our family’s first college graduates. Don’t end the programs; make them better.
23
I am a minority who lived in a minority neighborhood for many years. After getting a higher education and earn a middle class income i moved to a middle class neighborhood which was made up of Asians, Whites, few Hispanics and Blacks. I can tell you that when i went to PTA meetings in the minority neighborhood it was sometimes half full at most. When i went to PTA meetings in the middle class neighborhood, there were no seats available, people would be sitting on the floor. And, many of the minority family were home but just did not attend. The middle class people took time off or made arrangements to be involved
41
As a Latino parent whose kids went to a G&T program it was clear that the difference between G&T and regular class kids was the amount of enrichment and the quality of Pre-K education they were able to obtain before elementary school. In the UWS in particular, where you have a large diverse population, most of the white kids went to the G&T programs while minority kids went to the general class. This is because of the socioeconomic differences between these two family groups. On one hand you have families that can pay upwards of 20k for a pre-K school and also can pay classes to teach their kids pass the test. On the other hand you have families that barely make ends meet and cannot afford pre-K and early enrichment programs. Eliminating the G&T classes is not the solution. Perhaps providing universal PRE-K schools that teach and not just work as babysitting.
14
If there's ever been a headline that shows how broken the system is, this is it.
Fact is, there are a lot of "educational futures" for students that are healthy, that develop them as deep learners and problem solvers, and where cooperation, not competition the focus of the experience. The emphasis on high stakes and competition is no doubt one of the main reasons we see a spike in teenage depression, anxiety, and suicide. According to Pew, 65% of teens say the most stress they feel is related to "getting good grades." And according to Gallup, two thirds of our kids say their not engaged in school by junior year in high school.
But obviously, that's their problem, not ours. Right?
How about we focus on helping every student identify their individual gifts and talents and put our focus on helping them use those to contribute meaningfully to their schools, their communities, and to the world?
1
I believe very few children are actually gifted. It’s actually a cultural issue. If the culture in which they reside do not recognize the value of an education the child will perform to the norm in their society. Let’s try changing society a bit by making studious kids hero’s in pop culture not scapegoats to be made fun off.
15
@Jerry Davenport --
about 2.5% of the population has an IQ above 130, the same 2.5% of the population that has an IQ below 70.
It's not just about being studious. It's about having a higher level intelligence that requires a different learning environment. The same way that kids with "special needs" get IEPs, special assistants, etc., we need to be enriching the experience of and nurturing kids who have above average intelligence.
14
Gifted in what? What kinds of talent? Playing the piano with emotion at age 3 is a gift, speaking 3 languages at age 2 is a gift, making an expressive artwork at age 4 is a talent, writing a funny poem at age 3 is a talent. But identifying a square? A triangle? This is rote memorization.
Get rid of those ridiculous and insulting labels please. Everyone knows where the real problems lie, poverty and class, race on top.
Stop beating around the bush and make meaningful changes,leaving education in the hands of politicians and clueless people will only prolong the problem, America can't wait any longer.
16
I'm of the camp that thinks the test should be required of all students during school hours to more evenly level the playing field. There is no way we can ever prevent parents from prepping their children as much as they can, aside from changing and randomizing the test.
That said, I find it surprising that people are saying that 4 years old is too early to test. I was tested to get into Kindergarten — not to get into a gifted program, but to ensure I met the criteria. That said, the school recommended I go up one grade based on my results. I did not, only because I had an older brother and did not want to be in the same grade as him. However, I distinctly remember how bored I was until about 6th grade because I wasn't being challenged at all in the classroom. In hindsight, I likely wasted these formative years. So I do think there is a place for some kind of gifted/accelerated course, perhaps in conjunction with classes with the rest of the students, with a more fair entry system.
6
Why do very few people seem to question an underlying assumptions of intellectual inferiority of black and brown children in the NYC public school system?
I would not be surprised to find the by and large these children come from poorer, less educated households than their white peers. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the majority of white students in Manhattan public schools are in G &T programs. Working class and lower middle class parents in NYC have little discretionary time or income to tutor their 4 year olds.
The arms race to prestigious college admissions starts at pre-k folks and the decks are stacked against those of limited resources from the very start. As someone with a close-up view of the admissions process to some of the most selective schools in the country, when it comes to admissions, the very best thing you can do for your child is to be able to (at least) pay full-price.
2
Children can test into G&T programs every year for the first few years of elementary school in NYC. There is another chance to shift into advanced classes in middle school, and again in high school. My Bronx Science student wouldn't take the test at 4, he just wanted to chat with the tester about trains all afternoon. His opportunities weren't over.
16
There is an assumption that there is a real dividing line at the 99th percentile that separates those who could handle and benefit from a special program from those who could not. This is not really the case. They would do better to lower the bar to a lower percentile and then randomly select students for the program, getting a more diverse group in the process.
While on average a child in the 99th percentile might be more gifted that at the 93rd percentile this is not necessarily true for individual children. So many factors go into how a 4 year old performs.The pool should be broadened and childen selected from it on some sort of random basis. A 4 year old in the 90th percentile might have some other special gift that would make her a welcome addition to the program.
2
Four years is too young. The obvious solution is to offer color blind tests at intervals through high school so that kids who mature slowly have an opportunity to join the G&T program. That would require more seats -- but it is inexcusable not to have enough seats for qualified students.
3
@Josh Hill this is something of how the SHSAT works--kids who are late bloomers often test in after earlier more modest achievement and do well. But then, the current mayor and schools chancellor are demonizing the SHSAT also.
6
Public education is irreversibly broken in this country. At the heart of it is the NCLB law. Not every child will test well enough to enter elite schools but those children should be given an enrichment curriculum they deserve. A curriculum that is dumbed down with a bar set so low that only the most challenged cannot make it over serves no one. The disparities between the haves and have nots will continue to grow as more parents pull their children from these low performing factories. That NY chose Carranza to lead the school district shows the total ineptitude that infects their entire system.
9
Stop the testing and go to a neighborhood school system.
Seems so much easier
Neighborhood schools is part of the American Dream. Work hard and move to a better part of town = better school for your kids.
8
@Prudence Spencer, it definitely is easier but the income disparity is so great here in NY and the density is so high that this leads to extremely segregated schools. At my son's Upper West Side elementary school there was almost no diversity. Although there were around 1,000 students, they all came from a few block radius and those blocks are very wealthy.
Should a Single Test Decide a 4-Year-Old’s Educational Future?
Why not, since in another article a few days ago, the NYT touted and defended a 4 year olds assertion to its parents that it is non-binary.
If a 4 year old can determine it is non-binary, I'm sure the test for education will be equally as accurate for the rest of the person's life.
18
@bored critic I can see why you draw that conclusion but gender identification ability is not tied to being gifted.
@Rebecca The only reason why a 4 year old can determine to be non-binary, is because the thought was put in his her head by foolish parents and the professional enablers.
7
I have a novel thought. Why not bring Black and Hispanic schools up to par with White and Asian schools? I guess that is too hard for DeBlasio.
13
Doris: it’s not the schools that need to be ‘brought up’. It’s the students - and that begins at home.
22
You really have to hand it to White people. They always find a way to not have their kids sit next to minority kids in a public school. After Brown, it was moving to the suburbs. Now its deciding their kids are so "gifted" that they deserve separate classrooms.
In Seattle, my kids used to attend Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, where we bused "gifted" white children from their neighborhood school to a historically majority-black school, so they can attend segregated white-kid classes. The late Justice must be rolling in his grave.
6
A single test isn't going to have false negatives.
Our story - on the Brigance, the screener wanted to know what a particular body part was. Instead of using a complete sentence to ask, it was a short phrase, as if one was talking to a two year old -- 'what's this', with a point and touch. Kid gave 'tibia' while the interviewer wanted 'shinbone'. Kid was marked wrong. Reading chapter books in kindy? Clearly he is memorizing. It just goes on and on. Takes an educated tester to interpret the results, and there just aren't that many.
Open more seats in noninclusion. These children want to learn more than what to do if the child next to them tantrums because they can't tell its almost lunch time.
1
@ARL
Reading chapter books in kindergarten can only be done through memorization? This claim reflects an ignorance of the true range of intelligence. Both my children read fluently by age three. Chapter books--simple children's chapter books--were a great source of delight (and increasing vocabulary) by age four. What's to memorize? They loved the stories and couldn't wait for the next book. How narrowminded your observation is. You should get out into the real world more often.
2
@Mickeyd
For someone who reads with such gusto, you missed the point of the original comment.
1
“If you want to do anything except give special advantages to people who already have special advantages, tests aren’t the way to do it.”
Translating this sentence should be the new admissions exam.
8
ONLY if you permit it to be. I am a retired teacher with 34 years before the mast. The idea that a four year old is being pigeon holed by some “test” of potential is, in my mind borderline animal cruelty. It’s my observation that, for one reason or a dozen others, there are more “late bloomers” than ever before. It’s also my feeling that there are a lot more parents who live in a Lake Wobegon world. As in, “she’s gifted, you know” or, “yes, he’s the one you’ve probably heard about”. When it’s more about your genetic superiority than the kids actual ability you have a problem. Here’s a familiar pattern...Sissy is a precocious 1st grader. She measures above grade level on all the standard assessments, etc. But as time passes and other kids start maturing, what used to “well above” settles into kind of ho hum. It’s always come easy for Sissy, but now others have upped their game and in order to compete, she actually has to put some effort into it and then you, more often than. It, tend to see, “the heck with it”. The only meaningful measure of potential would reveal hunger, desire and effort and there ain’t such a thing.
4
Question I did not see answered in article: Is the test an IQ test that you cannot prepare for? Or is an aptitude test for which you can study? The article implies that parents of wealthy white children are somehow gaming the system, but how so? Are they hiring tutors and if so can the tests be prepared for? And if so why not offer the poorer kids or minorities the resources to study for the tests. Proponents of IQ tests say you cannot raise your scores significantly by preparing for the test. Seems like we're dancing around the issue of IQ among groups (with whites performing better than blacks, and Asians performing better than whites), with people afraid to broach the topic.
14
So your college doesn’t matter but your preschool does? Which is it?
3
Although I completely disagree with everything else the diversity panel recommended for middle and high schools, I agree with not testing 4yr old children. They are too young! Perhaps this recommendation would have been better received if the group was not called “Diversity panel” considering the mayors obsession with eliminating SHSAT for specialized high schools.
They should hire a panel to help improve overall schools in the city instead of focusing on diversity.
12
You are testing 4 year olds. Four year olds, let that sink in. Has anyone been around a room of four year olds lately. Really, is that the best you can do?
Let me make a modest proposal. Allow ALL children access to the "advanced" curriculum in Kindergarten and First Grade. Let the child guide you with choosing their ability to handle challenging work. If they can't, subtly, gently steer them into a level of work that they can handle.
11
@Tony -- I know this is hard to accept, but not all kids come to kindergarten at the same level of readiness.
Some kids barely know the alphabet. Some kids don't speak English. Most kids have probably mastered the alphabet and can read a few words. And then there will be the one or two kids who are reading on a 3rd or higher grade reading level.
Even in kindergarten and first grade, you can't offer a single curriculum to the entire class. My classmates were reading at the "This is Sam. This is Ann. This is Sam and Ann" level. I narrated the Thanksgiving play we put on, reading at a 4th grade level.
There's a difference between smart and gifted. There's a difference between "works hard to get good grades" and gifted. And those differences can be apparent even among kids as you as 4 or 5 or 6.
10
Many kids takes these tests at an age when they are very shy and uncomfortable sitting with a stranger. My daughter is a great student but she flunked the g&t spectacularly. She was terrified of the tester. This same process happened at the Special Music School. They have some "secret" way of figuring out which kids are musically gifted at 4. I suspect the secret has to do with finding out which parents are musicians and will force the kids to practice.
The whole school system is stacked against kids who don't have huge parental involvement in their education, whether it's reading to them every night or hiring a tutor. There are truly gifted kids out there, but the tests should be done at an older age, if at all.
When I was in elementary school in the 70s, we had tracking. Based on your kindergarten performance you were tracked into "fast, medium, slow" and you tended to stay there for the rest of your school life. Haven't we progressed in 50 years? I was in the fast track. Other kids were not so lucky.
8
They should change the name of the program, from Gifted and Talented to Rich & Privileged. I've raised children in New York for fifteen years, and have yet to meet even one child in a test-in school who did not tutor their way through the test. Not one child.
7
@LongTimeFirstTime
I was in both the IG elementary and SP middle school programs and also attended Bronx Science. I did not "tutor" my way in. My parents could not afford any test prep. We were far from "rich and privileged".
My story is not unique. You're not looking hard enough.
14
Folks, please! This is NYC, liberal open-minded progressive NYC that we are talking about with a population of adults smart enough to know, I hope, that true giftedness and talent is spread throughout the population and is not limited to any particular ethnic or racial group!! That’s science, people!! So we obviously have a very unscientific system that somehow decides through one test (about which most of us have no idea what’s in it) can determine who—at a tender age—is gifted or talented. Really? Can we seriously say that a single manufactured test (and what does such a test have to do with gifts like creativity, artistry, musicality, wit, inventiveness, perspicacity?) can determine that? Time to change the system. Time to invest teacher gifts and talent in developing curricula throughout the schools that awakens, excites, stimulates, and challenges all kids. (Many of the G&T classrooms are just more of the same blah-blah-blah.) Time to get off the test prep bandwagon foisted upon us by those who know no better (how many of them have taught? Have spent time listening in classrooms?) or who have made huge profits from this billion-dollar industry. We have so many better options for reaching and educating kids!
20
@Nicky Able
Many parents will choose to send their kids to private school if they can afford it. The reason is not about race composition of the school, but the quality of the school, in other words, the teachers. As an adult, we all know a good teacher can change our life. The focus should be on the teachers. We need to improve the quality of teachers for all kids, not just a few in the GT or specialized schools.
11
Nicky: I hate to break it to you but while we might all be created equal, the environment in which we grow up significantly impacts what we become. And, based on the results of the standardized testing employed by the NY school system, Asian and white students end up performing better on the tests used to grant entry into the ‘gifted’ schools. It’s a fact.
9
@Nicky Able --
what do things like artistry and musicality have to do with being intellectually gifted?
Look, I can't draw worth a darn and I am in awe of people who can. I am a competent musician, but far from a gifted one. But the notion that you can teach kids with an IQ of 130 or above the same way you teach kids with an average IQ between 90 and 100 makes as little sense as putting kids with an IQ of 70 or lower in a class and expecting them to just pick things up with no extra help or specialized teaching approaches.
We can and should do what we can to identify kids who are intellectually gifted and give them the learning environment they deserve.
16
It's amazing hearing conversations at the playground, when left-leaning seemingly open-minded parents in NYC talk about their children in schools and gifted programs. There's no better way to see privilege and suppressed racism rise to the surface.
25
i have an idea- let's focus less on segregation, and more on rising the quality of the teachers and schools.
oh wait- in public ed, no one gets fired.
never mind. yea-- let's focus on segregation using the same teachers. that oughta work
6
What the article doesn't address is why black and Hispanic students cannot do as well as others on this ridiculous "test" taken at the age of four. This is actually a profoundly serious question not even barely raised by the Administration.
19
Wealthy parents pay for tutors
1
@Dena Harris. you cant be serious. tutors for 4 year olds?? that's why they excel?? gimme a break. furthermore, there is no good data proving that tutoring helps in any standardized test. anecdotally, i have never seen it help. not once. ifsomeone has trouble to read or write, and hardly reads books in general, and goes to a school where there is little decorum and no culture of excellence, no tutor in the world woulsd make him do better on a test like SAT. you cant possibly be serious. it reflects a profound mkisunderstanding of IQ and education
8
@Ari Weitzner
I attended Bronx Science and met kids who had tutors their entire academic lives. I had never heard of regular tutors before then. I got a tutor to take the SHSAT and I thought that was a big deal, but apparently some students went to Sat school and had tutors after school since elementary. Not knocking it, but let's not pretend it's unheard of.
7
I cannot see how punishing Asian and white children furthers the goals of a good education in the NYC public schools.
And who made up the panel appointed by the Mayor? What are their areas of expertise?
26
@fritz the essential idea in socialism is equal results, not equal opportunity. so if we can bring the whites and Asians down a notch, that evens things out, and to a socialist/progressive, thats heaven, while the normal people can't stop throwing up. that's why they are obsessed with segregation, instead of firing incompetent people and raising quality across the board, like charters/catholic schools do at less cost.
14
@fritz the co-chair of the panel is Hazel Dukes. Remember her? Look her up.
3
From outside of NYC, this looks insane. As an educator of young children for over 30 years, I had to read this several times to believe it.
Are you kidding? A single test for four year olds that could potentially determine their education pathway and life success? Everything I know about child development, cognitive development and best practices for choosing schools for children points to this being a damaging and completely ineffective system designed to segregate children.
42
@Castle they are misstating it. There are multiple entry points to gifted education in NYC, with several years during which one can try for elementary G&T programs, the Hunter High School test, several different application processes for selective middle schools or honors programs within general middle schools, and many different processes for access to advanced work in high schools.
13
@Working Mama
Since there are multiple entry points, there is no reason to have an entry point at age 4. Later admissions to "selective" middle schools makes more sense.
7
Anyone who thinks that a single test--or any test, for that matter--can decide if a child is "gifted" is ignorant, sub-literate, and deeply uninformed. The use of the term "gifted" guarantees that the speaker has no idea of what he or she is talking about. I say this after many years teaching in this country and abroad, and being the principal of a school in Maine. "Gifted" is a term used by those protecting class interests. The term is a good index to racism and sexism, but of nothing in the positive interest of children. Why is that not entirely obvious? Our job--as parents and community members and teacher--is to educate all children.
3
Get rid of the G&T programs and watch middle-class whites and Asians flee the NYC public system, either by sending their kids to privates and moving to the suburbs, resulting in the further decline of the city schools. Many G&T classes are in struggling schools and have been shown to improve the quality of the overall school (by bringing in parents who are more focused on and dedicated to education).
It's a myth that G&T tests are "racist' or don't mention anything or can be gamed. Results on G&T tests are highly correlated with those on IQ tests in general, and the effect of prep is minimal.
42
@Alice I agree completely. That said there are things that can be done. They can do testing a year later, in school, and test all children. A big part of the problem seems to be the percentages of different populations who are taking these tests in the first place.
3
@Alice
"Results on G&T tests are highly correlated with those on IQ tests in general, and the effect of prep is minimal."
Please explain your source for this, especially any source that claims an IQ test given at age 4 is highly accurate to identify which kids are gifted and which are not.
1
Once again, in a city full of failing schools, full of pupils who graduate high school functionally illiterate, the times decides that the high-performing kids are the problem. Clearly any kids performing above grade level need to be held back so their peers don't feel bad, especially if the high-performers are white or asian.
Once again, the progressive ideologues at the times and the NYC DOE have shown that they have no idea how to improve actual learning. So they focus dragging down the smart and motivated, and rearranging student by race to fit their quotas.
Any parent who cares about their child's education and who can't afford private school should get out of the city now. Unless by some miracle a Republican takes over the mayor's office and can undo all this racist social engineering.
56
@KM I agreed with you totally until you said "Republican takes over the mayor's office"... Do you really think Republicans are able to do a better job? Since when?
4
@KM
NYC is not "full of failing schools". What an insulting thing to say. It isn't true. In fact, overall NYC has the highest performing urban public school system in all of NY state. (Obviously, "urban" means large cities).
This is about the fact that testing a student for "giftedness" at age 4 is nonsense. Perhaps the Republicans you admire believe that they can find and identify the most gifted children at age 4, but like most Republican policies, it would ignore all evidence and invent new facts to suit whatever those in power want.
3
"Should a Single Test Decide a 4-Year-Old’s Educational Future?"
Yes! It wouldn't be a Nanny State otherwise.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
1
Einstein would have flunked this test. Seems ridiculous to me. Kids could be schooled on how to pass the test by their parents, before they take the test. In my day it was called, 'rope learning'. Ask yourself, would Einstein have passed this test?
4
@CK Ooops! typing error - should read ROTE learning - not rope learning.
3
Stop the ridiculous trope that Albert Einstein was a late bloomer. He excelled in all his classes where he chose to excel. He did not like school or many teachers, like many of the gifted children. In spite of his disdain, all his teachers gave him highest marks. He read college physics texts when he was 11. He failed one entrance exam that he took early because he did not know the language of the exam. Yes, he did not get a tenure track position after getting his doctorate in his early 20’s. He used the Patent Office job, like most government bureaucratic positions, because it had ample downtime, to work out his Theory of Relativity. This “failure” corresponded with the best of the best European physicists, eager to assist him when he was not date stamping patent applications.
13
4 years old testing to enter a school? Pure and evil segregation...
2
But should an intellectually gifted child's future be dragged down by a school system that continues to reward mediocrity?
This misguided move by de Blasio and Carranza to diversify the public schools here in the city will drive countless families to move to the suburbs or send their kids to private schools.
And those who can't afford these two options will have their kids left languishing in failing schools.
22
Question should be why is there such a clamor for the "gifted and talented" programs? The answer is obvious, if your child is in that program, he/she is relegated to subpar educational experience. Why don't we ever try to hold the educational system to perform better across the board?
4
The problem is not the test and how it is administered. Tests will always be selective, in varying degrees. Is not that the whole point of tests, to separate the wheat from the chaff?
The writer points that these tests filter out too much of the chaff and the chosen wheat are too homogenous, too too smart, too (adjective here). And this extremely selective process, the kds who are so-so are not chosen because the tests use data based purely on intellect to filter students.
The City need to create more G&T programs so the acceptance rates goes from 98% to 96% and so on down the line. What is the point of taking into consideration other factors to accept more students when the classrooms and class sizes are limited. It would be like harvesting more apples (even the not so ripe ones) but not adding more Bushels to store your apples.
It sounds like a basic IQ test. I remember doing this when I was in 1st grade, back in the '70s. But everyone in 1st grade took the tests, in the classrooms. Our parents didn't have to do anything. Why does testing have to be such a big production in NYC?
4
@JamesP
Testing is “such a big production” because testing is such a big busine$$.
5
@JamesP
Testing is a HUGE market in NYC.
In the first month of my now adult daughter's 1st grade year, the teacher recommended to me that she be tested for intelligence based on the fact that she was reading long chapter books independently and performing multi-digit math operations. The school psychologist administered a battery of tests, including the Wechsler Intelligence Survey for children. Is that the same test NYC 4-y.o.'s take? It was a lengthy evaluation that I can't imagine studying for and it required one on one w/ the psychologist. In our case, it confirmed our knowledge that my daughter has exceptionally high intelligence, though it merely added a number to back up her demonstration of precocious learning.
3
We used to have a "gifted" program in our public school system. It started in 1st grade and there was a test. Then they dropped the test and it started in 3rd grade and was based on grades and teacher recommendations. Then they decided it would be "gifted" ONLY for math - not for all subjects. Then they decided that it could only teach what was normally taught in the non-gifted math - no further material could be taught.
When I went to a meeting to explain this all to parents, I asked what the difference was if it was only the same material? I was told that in the gifted class they "moved faster". Okay then - if they move faster but can go no further and have finished the curriculum by the first of April, what do they do for the next 10 weeks?
The principal changed the subject as she clearly could not answer this question. The entire program has now been dropped. Why? Not enough minority students in it. And then we wonder why parents take their children out of the public schools if they are truly bright...
23
Gifted and accelerated programs need to be scrapped. I have two amazingly bright kids. My older one got through the entrances to gifted programs and we opted to keep her in ordinary classes because those programs seemed vague, not all kids were on the same page with every subject and the amount of tutoring parents employed was staggering. Instead, we encouraged her to study anything extra from books and online classes by herself. One thing she said was that many of those gifted kids were lost in college without the enormous tutoring help. For our son, he too is in ordinary classes. Why is there such a hurry to learn? Its better to assimilate, comprehend and view subjects slowly as you develop. He too is far ahead, never brings home much homework, has plenty of free time to occupy his mind in novel pursuits. Most importantly, they are happy kids. Gifted programs are for parents with chips on their shoulders. All kids are bright and will profit if guided steadily.
6
You sound d like someone with some common sense!
Thank you!
1
Huh? Both my kids tested into the gifted and talented programs in NYC, I don’t have a chip on my shoulder? Care to explain?
5
Not all children are bright. At least 49.999 per cent are below average.
6
The answer to this question is easy: no.
Among other things: a four-year-old might have undiagnosed hearing or vision issues, or undiagnosed learning disabilities. A four-year-old simply can't be fairly evaluated for "gifted & talented," especially considering income and other disparities.
And a child's special talents might not be at all apparent at that age. Every kid deserves equal opportunity to go as far as they can academically.
15
I’m surprised that the test wouldn’t be randomized enough to prevent coaching on the questions, but even if that helps students score higher...
Wouldn’t the kind of parents who are motivated to coach their kid also be motivated to increase their vocabulary and teach them to read and write? There are lots of kids who can read by the age of four, so it doesn’t seem unreasonably early for them to be tracked into a more advanced curriculum.
3
I could have sworn that DeBlasio promised to address under resourced families (in terms of parents unable to navigate the system) by ensuring that ALL kindergarten children would be tested for gifted and talented placement in every classroom in every district in NYC. This was intended to identify talented students who otherwise may have passed under the radar. I also remember his promise to expand the number of available gifted and talented classrooms throughout the city to allow for kids in all communities to have local gifted and talented education options. And then later still with the success of his pre-k initiative there was talk of assessing kids universally for talent at a younger level and continuing to allow for identification of talent throughout each student’s career allowing for placement in gifted and talented programming at older ages as well. Not sure what is going on now; switching from Fariña to Carranza is clearly part of the problem— a distracted mayor (who seems to be happy to gamble with the future of today’s children now that his adult progeny have safely and successfully navigated and exited NYC public schools) may just play a bigger part.
4
A family friends son tested in the 99th percentile and got into the top elementary school. The child was from an affluent, very educated Jewish family with several PhDs college professors and researchers. His parents had been planning for his education well in advance of this exam.
While he is a very bright boys and is a terrific student, I can’t image how an equally talented child of a laborer or new immigrant is expected to compete with him at the age of 4. It is clearly skewed to favor the well educated.
16
"I can’t image how an equally talented child of a laborer or new immigrant is expected to compete with him at the age of 4."
What about all the Asian kids who have barely gotten off the boat who test so well?
3
NYC can never integrate its schools at meaningful levels because only 15% of the students in the NYC public schools are white.
That means in a class of 26 students there will be only 3-4 white students and 22-23 students of color.
Achieving an even distribution of 15% white students across all schools will require extensive busing, which has proven toxic in the suburbs and will lead in NYC to even further white flight and enrollment in private schools.
The answer is not to destroy existing quality NYC programs like Gifted and Talented, or the specialized high schools, but to improve ALL schools.
By the way, San Antonio schools have about 1/10 the number of students as those of NYC, and will have even greater difficulty trying to integrate its schools, which are 90% Hispanic, 6% black and 3% white. This means that in San Antonio if all white students were distributed evenly across all schools, there would be about 1 white student per class of 31 students.
As in NYC, the need in San Antonio is to improve all schools.
81
You want to change the gifted program by changing it to a race oriented admissions? What is the point of a "gifted" talent- based program, if color of skin rather than talent is the test? Talent has nothing to do with skin color or race. If you think otherwise why not require the football and basketball teams to integrate whites?
100
@logodos "Talent has nothing to do with skin color or race." Not race per se but parents not as well educated, or parents working two jobs, or parents without the time or money to have enrichment classes for their children. These things have been proved to make a difference over and over and over again.
7
@logodos If NYC adopts this plan parents will start will send their kids to private schools in the city. If that's not available they will bus their kids to private schools outside the city. Or leave NYC & move to the suburbs. I've done it, my sister has done, my brother has done it, all my friends have done it. This is a nationwide phenomenon happening all over America. The reason our public schools are becoming more segregated is that more parents are fed up with "high-level panels" trying to impose rules on our kids that are irrational. No child should be forced to be bused across town to achieve some absurd statistical racial balance. I would argue that it is racist to believe just placing non-whites with whites alone will improve educational outcomes. There's no hard evidence to prove this cause and effect. When government policy continues to use education to engineer social outcomes, a school can't successfully impart vital skills & knowledge to its students. American kids don't possess the communication & computational skills they need to succeed in college & the working world let alone life. That is a fact beyond debate. The DOE says a huge percentage of students graduating from high school can't read or write on a college level. This is fraud. A high school diploma should mean something. It doesn't anymore. That fact is an outrage. You can't fault parents for running away from schools that don't work anymore. We don't have to put up with this nonsense anymore.
6
Ask yourself would Einstein have passed this test; and the answer would be, 'no'.
Seems ridiculous to put 4 year olds into a gifted school if they had been previously trained on how to answer the test by ambitious parents who can school their children on how to answer the questions by rote learning in this one specific test.
Ask yourself how many of these 4 year old have gone on to invent new inventions and patents for USA? Are there any Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg's in this school? Would they have flunked the test? Check out the progress of the kids in the programme and see how they are doing; or are they doing better because they are getting the type of education EVERY New York city child should be getting and they'd do better as well.
16
Both my kids tested into a city wide G&T school and they are doing fine, sorry to break it to you...
4
@CK FWIW Zuckerberg was mathematically precocious as a child. He would have been classified as gifted.
5
Our kids did really well with NYC Public schools - son graduated Stuyvesant, daughter now in Hunter. But this reflects a lot more than their ability.
We decided to live near PS6 on the Upper East Side, which we could do based on our financial resources. We researched middle schools extensively. We never paid a cent on tutoring, but we diligently prepped the kids ourselves for tests, which we were able to do because of our educational backgrounds.
Most kids don't have these advantages. We should stop punishing them by limiting opportunities to those with parents having the background and money to get their kids into selective schools. And it is perverse to start doing it at the age of four.
31
@cornell You said it, "perverse". I agree.
@cornell Easy for you to say, now that your kids are grown and out of the system. Would you have been ok with your kids being denied a spot in Stuyvesant or Hunter that they had earned because they wanted to bring in more black or hispanic kids to hit a quota?
13
@cornell
Maybe you can help advancing equality and desegregation by demanding the dismantling of district 2 priority high school admission, right here in your home district.
District 2 of Manhattan has some of the best high schools that do not use one uniform test to determine admission. However, due to priority for district residents, most of whom white and privileged, virtually no students from outside the privileged zone can get in, even though their grade would have qualified them for admission. I have been amazed by how the debate to integrate NYC high schools misses out the great white elephant-district 2 priority. The Times headquarter physically located inside district 2, and many Times staff live within the border of district 2 as well. Another do as I say, but not as I?
4
It seems odd that not a single article so far on G&T topic mentioned that even if our 4 year old gets the required score that is just a beginning of the process. There are applications to be filled out and schools to tour and after all of that there is only 30% chance of getting into the citywide program and only slightly higher one (depending on the number of district seats in your district) into a district one. DOE made a decision not to provide seats for every student with high enough score and left it all to chance. Also, not only 4 year olds take the test, the G&T programs accept students all the way to 3rd grade. The current set up requires enormous effort for 30% success rate. If DOE actually wanted to attract students into G&T from high poverty areas and students of color all the needed to do would be to provide seats for every student that scores above the cutoff, it would feel a lot less like fools errand then it does now.
47
There absolutely should be encouragement and resources for kids who show aptitude in ANY discipline. However the G&T program for such young kids identifies the savviest parents more than the truly 'gifted' kids and probably does harm to boot.
Carol Dweck's studies tell as that labelling kids like this makes them afraid of losing this label and afraid to take risks. Our society needs some risk takers and new ideas right now.
We're also hearing that the gifts and talents the society of the future will need have as much to do with empathy as they do about calculus. Where is the recognition for those kids?
So get rid of the stupid test - but ensure that teachers and schools are empowered to recognize and develop strengths in ALL their kids.
17
Absolutely not, children should have numerous chances to take tests and gain entry to any school. The nature of tests should be varied and not solely depend on SAT/ACT style evaluations. Children are often differently enabled and develop at different rates and times.
Tests are not a reliable indicator of educational fitness, especially when test prep is allowed. Test prep is a waste of time and energy and produces no long term educational benefit. It's a way to game the system, to effectively cheat.
4
Do other countries have similar tests for 4-year-olds? The tradition of do-or-die tests for placement at all levels of schooling is much more ingrained in some societies than in ours.
1
My children would have failed this test. Although able to identify all of their letters before 2, find a good number of states on a map by 3, and acquire excellent fine motor skills prior to developmental guidelines, it would not have been apparent as they were slow to warm up kids. They would have been wary of the most crafty test administrator, and left the test to repeat the entire thing at home with their stuffed animals. Let me tell you, those stuffed animals didn’t miss a thing by never going to the library because they were treated to the whole program at home, complete with inflection and laughter. Years of quality preschool and warm, understanding elementary school teachers allowed them to grow at their own pace. They are now risk takers in the best possible way, and their judgement and intuition couldn’t be better. So if this gifted class overlooks kids like mine, it will not have diversity of personality types, not to mention the idea of labeling kids gifted and testing them at such a young age feels wrong. Finally, my youngest was suggested for a gifted program in the third grade and she blatantly refused, despite my encouragement, as I felt that being with other intellectually curious types would be good for her. Her reasoning? She didn’t want to miss recess. Turns out she’s just as gifted with all that recess under her belt!
15
Testing to see if a child is ready to enter school at five-years of age makes sense if it includes a psychological assessment as well as an intellectual one.
However, testing a four-year old to track them already into "gifted & talented" is now, in hindsight, not the best tool to track kids and their abilities. Full disclosure: I was in those programs in the NYC school system from 1984-1994 and it’s basically shorthand for high socioeconomic status with little to no challenges either intellectually, psychologically or physically, or with adequate and effective supports for any challenges.
You need to give children time to adjust to school, to learn socialization skills, etc. You can assess what level of knowledge they have to see if they should complete a pre-K preparation program and to see if the family has any special situation requiring support.
Give the child opportunities to expand their knowledge by doing things of their own initiative to avoid punishing the kids who are ahead with those who didn't win the parent lottery. People are gaming this system with test prep, so it's really not an objective intellectual measure anyway. We really should be looking at the kid's performance across time, as it can vary according to their health and family's circumstances.
And let's reserve that label of "gifted and talented" to the real "little man Tates" of the world.
2
PS 6, a coveted school on the UES, used to have a G&T track. The principal many, many years ago discontinued the program. Why? She said that all students should be exposed to learning at the higher level.
She was right - all kids, regardless of neighborhood, should have equal access to a high quality curriculum with high quality teachers from the beginning.
But then what happens to the kids who will inevitably fall behind or who could move ahead? People reject tracking, reject honors classes, reject testing into schools, reject x,y,z.
5
You say that only 66 students in District seven took the gifted and talented exam. Why so few? If this is an important statistic, please investigate why parents in district 7 do not have your children take the test. The test is free. Please explain.
41
@C
I am the 4th generation of women in my family to be college educated, and my parents both have advanced degrees from Ivy League universities. I need an Excel spreadsheet to track my children's NYC public school admissions processes (K, Middle, High). It is complex and you have to plan almost a YEAR in advance. The cut off to apply for G&T testing is November 1st. Most low income, low resource families don't have the luxury of being able to spend the time to plan ahead for all of the scheduling and the prep required.
Some communities are more active in making sure the information is out there, but not all.
There shouldn't be one high-stakes test. It's ludicrous and how can low-resource families compete against families paying thousands to prep their 4 year olds?
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I can think of lots of reasons why low income families might find it difficult to participate in the testing. You must sign up online way in advance. It’s not offered during the regular school day which could create issues with work, childcare, etc. It’s not always offered at a conveniently located school. Unless the gifted child has an organized, advantaged parent it’s not likely they’ll be tested. If the DOE wants to offer gifted programs, the IQ screening should be for all kids, and take place during the school day when the kids are actually old enough for it to be accurate, 2nd or 3rd grade.
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I’m still not sure how the selection process worked back in the 50s and 60s when the programs were IGC (intellectually gifted children) in primary grades, SP (Special Progress) in Junior High, and Honors in high school.
But I know that I wasn’t tested at any age, leading me to conclude that we were chosen on grades and evaluations by the teachers.
Subjective? Yes. But preferable to absurd, which totally understates what a test at age 4 is.
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@Paul’52 -- Seems to me that if you attended NYC public school in the 50's or 60's and attended grades 1-6, you were given at least two standard "Iowa" IQ tests, which contributed to the profile for "IG" students. I know I was.
4
Who decided that once "Gifted" always "Gifted" ?
Children's brains can mature at different rates.
I knew a friend of my son who barely graduated from
High School, at age 17 all he wanted to do was play
Rock n' Roll and the day after he graduated he went
to Los Angeles to become a "Rock n' Roll God".
Three years later he came back to the neighborhood
and said:
There are a lot of really good guitar players in L.A.
He attended Community College, I used to help him
with his Math.
5 years later he graduated from U.C. Berkeley with
a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
If you had told that was even the remotest possibility
when he was a Senior in High School, I would have
bet you any amount of money against it ever happening.
Much, but not quite all, about being "Gifted" is having
an abiding and ongoing curiosity about whatever is being
studied, mix in sheer determination and drive - and you have
students who do well on "Gifted Entrance Exams" but you
leave out all those who have not yet matured.
Open the doors wide to Gifted Programs, let students
enter or leave during any of their school years.
Childhood is the time for opportunities to be explored.
52
A lot of the success my children have achieved in NYC public schools so far have had to do with my successful navigation of the system, and that seems unfair. I agree that gifted and talented testing shouldn't be left to the parents' discretion. Test every child in universal pre-k and kindergarten. Open honors programs in each elementary school that children can be placed in without a test, but based on teachers' recommendations. There's a lot that can be done short of throwing out the G&T program entirely.
30
From the brief description of the test, it sounds like it’s a way to separate our children who are getting actual help and learning at home from those whose parents can’t or don’t do the same. In which case, the dichotomy is obvious and was obviously designed. It makes sense to put kids who do well with other kids who do well- I’ve seen bad kids turn good kids bad and good kids turn a bad kid good. It all depends on the environment at home and at school. It’s why so many black kids end up not achieving anything and so many Chinese kids do. It all starts and ends at home- we need programs and initiatives to help and convince black families to do more to ensure that their kids do well in school and stay away from gangs. All it takes is 1 generation to get rid of a gang by starving it of members. Too many black communities believe the police to be the enemy yet don’t help them arrest drug dealers and other criminals. They need to change their thinking, not the exam.
Disclaimer: I was one of those who did not get into any gifted programs in my life, though I started doing super well in HS and beyond.
11
Our December baby was almost a year behind other children taking g&t tests for the same year. A smart kid but clearly young, he did terribly on the verbal but 98% on the other. We imagine he would have gotten in if the date ranges were different.
There was a total lack of transparency with the testing. We were not allowed to observe and no feedback was provided on site. We would have loved some feedback to see where our son needed more knowledge.
5
@Christine An excellent point. A December baby at age 4 has almost 25% less experience and exposure and development than a January baby.
My understanding is the child is scored based on his or her birthdate and not against children who are older or younger.
1
I don't know how the test works today, back in the early 90's my children were tested first my son who at the time was 5, few years later my older daughter and then couple years later my youngest daughter. None of my chikdren we able to read, or do math when they were tested. All three were accepted to the program. Their classes were at that time a mix of all ethnic groups. My kids went to a school in the inner city(Coney Island). They were tested and went to a Gifted Junior High school . the program was good. they all went to regular High Schools and then to college. Again I don't know about today but in my children's day there were white children Africian American children , Indian and pakistani children, latin children. Which I liked they had exposure to all cultures,
8
You still beating this drum?
At private schools, children are "tested" for entrance to kindergarten.
Can they draw a circle? Use a scissors? Sing a song? Recite a little poem? Talk in decent little sentences? Separate from their mothers without screaming? Play nicely with others? Share toys?
Possibly spell c-a-t and add 1 1? They should. Even my hardworking father made time to make me flash cards, which I still have.
In other words, are they holding their own and better for their age group?
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@B. All tests that measure what a child knows, which is fundamentally different from testing whether a child is “gifted.”
6
Nowadays politicians and educators can't seem to be able to tell the difference between gifted and what used to be normal for a child's age -- what you call knowing things.
The bar has been lowered, Paul.
2
Four-year old’s, this is totally the most stupid educational testing I have ever read about.
How about teaching them for a few years and letting the teacher tell you who the gifted kids are. I trust the teachers can easily identify the exceptional students.
Education today is so focused on testing, I am surprised students today actually manage to learn anything, other than the answers to the last test they took.
14
I disagree, kids are too young to see who will do well when that young. The best case scenario is that the teacher sees the best behaved kids and those who do the best on tests. It’s the parents job to teach their kids, even if they have to sacrifice for it. Too many black families won’t sacrifice anything to teach their kids, and other treat kids as a burden. One can cry racism or slavery all they want, but it doesn’t change the fact that these people need a change of mindset that doesn’t draw from a trauma their grandparents or earlier had felt.
4
I would say no. My son was deemed a “pokey learner” in junior primary and almost lost his seat in the school we enrolled him in. He graduated first in his final year in 8th grade, graduated with honors from a private high school, and graduated with honors in three years from his university. Sometimes the engine needs time to perform at a high standard.
42
Our four-year-old did great on the G&T tests, but we kept him in the neighborhood so he could walk back and forth to school. Now that he's nine, we're more comfortable with him commuting to a more distant school, but our next chance to get into gifted education is two years away.
Most kids come in kindergarten and you can enter a few remaining spaces in first, second and third grades. This process didn't serve us well.
7
Let’s delay G&T testing to second or third grade. G&T programs should run from late elementary through middle school (say fourth through eighth). That’s the way it was back when I was growing up in Queens in the 1980s. Also, do away with all sibling preferences and special accommodations. If the G&T program is really about serving the narrow goal of meeting the special needs of academically high-achieving children, these changes should not be controversial.
26
Get the fact straight first. You don’t have to ace the test at the age of 4 to get into the G&T program. There are tests held for Kindergarteners and first graders as well for entry into the program the following year, should you pass the test and receive an offer.
75
True, in NYC, you can take the G&T test all the way up to second grade. Relatively few seats open up though in the higher grades after kindergarten, particularly at the more coveted citywide G&Ts. Kindergarten is the main (and for some citywides, nearly exclusive) entry point.
33
@RG Hi! That's in the story.
7
@Eliza Shapiro
While the first paragraph is misleading. " To get into a gifted and talented elementary school program in New York City, children must ace a single, high-stakes exam -when they are 4 years old."
16
In a single word: no.
Children need to be allowed to be children. Their world should be experiential. Adults can guide them on this path, but they must be allowed to try all activities, not just academic ones. Social and emotional growth is very important and that is what these children need at that age. Let them play, let them fall down and scape their knees, let them negotiate in and out of situations with their peers. Let them explore the world around them, not place them in artificial situations.
27
While I agree that testing four year olds sounds absurd, many other countries with high performing students do just this, and not to their detriment apparently. Perhaps we could also include this in corporate hiring. Companies should be required to not always take the best or most prepared applicant for a job, instead making sure that all geographies, nationalities, religions, etc. are represented proportionately to the population. We could apply this to clergy - why not have atheists be equally represented here as well?
24
Of course a 4-year old's test results should not determine their future. But still, the emphasis here is so misguided. The city is failing large segments of the population across the public school system. Yet somehow the "problems" it has chosen to focus on during the past few years are the handful of areas where students are actually being served well. Can we please focus on the students who are getting sub-par educations and try to fix those problems first. Maybe we can look at the gifted and talented programs and the elite high schools but we should do so in a way to see what works (in classrooms and homes, with teachers with teachers and parents) and try to replicate these successful programs more broadly.
The current trend in the media and among politicians is to look at the NYC public schools and say "we really need to fix Stuyvesant and the G&T programs." This couldn't be more misguided and it's a distraction from the real and truly difficult problems that plague the majority of students.
195
@SJG
Fixing the bottom-ranking students' educations is not attainable given the Chancellor's resource set. He can't print more money.
His stated goal is equity. The only achievable solution is to lower the highest-ranking students' educations.
13
@SJG
thank you for saying this!
6
@SJG
What a cogent comment. Having worked for many years in public schools for poor children, some containing mold, it resonates with me. How about it, New York Times?
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