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New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

nytimes.com

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Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#71

Post by bloooop »

_hilro wrote: post #13

> But the highly selective and racially segregated program will be replaced for incoming students. Wow, using a word such as segregation, which has connotations of 'by design' sure lays bare their hand. Just to be clear, there is no segregation(of any kind) amongst the students in the program. In fact, there is no segregation at all. There's just not equal representation of the makey-uppy USA racial classifications.…

It's important to realize that the program is segregated by intent and by design. The segregation is NOT accidental.

That's true of many of the gifted-and-talented programs in the US. That's not fundamental, and not true of many of the gifted-and-talented programs worldwide. Worldwide, such programs are meritocratic pathways to socioeconomic mobility. In the US, the story is much more complex.

Most such programs were explicitly structured to keep African Americans and immigrants out. This was structured in admissions exams (which were often designed, for example, around mastery of one dialect of English, even in contexts like math, where that's irrelevant), in geographies of such programs, and in many other elements.

That this intent is no longer present today is irrelevant. Those structures remain, perpetuate, and in many ways, become self-reinforcing.

The current politically popular fix? Throwing the baby out with the bathwater and nuking the programs from orbit. At that point, no one without wealth can get ahead.

We need something more nuanced, but we're not going to get that if we don't first acknowledge the issue.

Refs: You can look at documents like this one, from over two decades ago, citing references well before then, talking about how to reduce some of the intentionally segeregatory impacts of gifted-and-talented admissions testing: https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OCR/archives/pdf/TestingResource... (and it's worth noting how little has happened in the intervening decades)

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#72

Post by _hilro »

goldenkey wrote: post #34
dilap wrote: post #2

Smart rich kids can continue to go to academically rigorous private schools. Smart poor kids can go pound sand. Of course, to really strike a blow for equality, they should also ban the private schools. Reminds me of the Vonnegut story. "The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal..."

Private schools are great. They keep rich people snobby. How else are we gonna detect the asshats if they don't tribalise themselves at Poly Prep?

> How else are we gonna detect the asshats if they don't tribalise themselves at Poly Prep?

Maybe we can just judge them by what they put out in to the world? Such as naming their personal blog something really pretentious?

Or you know, like, having utterly pretentious quotes in their HN bio?

> churchofthought.org

> Hardy couldn't have been more wrong about the innocence of pure mathematics. But we live by his legacy. In the sands of time, where do you dine? It better be divine!

But sure, you could judge them on choices their parents made to maximise their childrens' potential instead?

Not US but judging by the continuous amount of violence happening in certain American public schools, I would 100% be sending the kids private or moving to suburb where the threat of violence is distant.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#73

Post by attemptone »

Bostonian wrote: post #24

Subtitle: "Students who are currently enrolled in gifted and talented classes will not be affected. But the highly selective and racially segregated program will be replaced for incoming students." The reasons can be debated, but it's a fact that on IQ tests, American blacks score about 1 standard deviation (15 points) below whites. A common threshold for a gifted program is an IQ of 130, 2SD above average. If you de…

>The Bell Curve

I see this book (un-)ironically mentioned on /lit/ from time to time. How boring is it for a 600-pages tome?

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#74

Post by civilized »

> But teaching children with a large range of abilities in one classroom is difficult, meaning much of the success of the plan will depend on the city’s approach to training educators.

In other words, talented students will be ignored or told to "tutor other students" (with no actual support or structure to do so), and will waste most of their time in school. As they always have under such systems.

Honestly, I don't even care anymore. My expectations are so low. The best thing any teacher ever did for me was let me read, or work through an advanced math textbook supplied by my parents, in the back of the class, without interference.

Just tell every teacher to do that with their kids who they don't want to deal with because they already know everything being taught. That's the closest this country will get to "socially acceptable" G&T education.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#75

Post by endisneigh »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #68
endisneigh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> inherent differences within the capabilities of students citation needed. I agree students definition differ in abilities, but by and large you don't have to be super-smart to succeed in K-12.

>you don't have to be super-smart to succeed in K-12. Yeah, you don't have to be super smart to succeed in a warehouse-mentality K-12 system. In fact, it helps not to be. Wait, I think you just proved the benefit of advanced classes in K-12.

This comment doesn't make any sense. A gifted and talented program is not the same as the existence of "advanced classes" and isn't what article is referring to.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#76

Post by endisneigh »

_hilro wrote: post #13

> But the highly selective and racially segregated program will be replaced for incoming students. Wow, using a word such as segregation, which has connotations of 'by design' sure lays bare their hand. Just to be clear, there is no segregation(of any kind) amongst the students in the program. In fact, there is no segregation at all. There's just not equal representation of the makey-uppy USA racial classifications.…

Segregated doesn't mean "by design." What definition are you using? Segregation can exist as a manifestation of some process. It doesn't have to be some person manually dividing people.

Your entire comment rests on a false premise.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#77

Post by WhompingWindows »

Why can't we acknowledge the simple fact: some kids are smarter, they learn faster, they remember better?

I went to gifted and talented programs, and even there I felt like the pace was slow and easy for the top kids. If you put those kids into classes with even less academically apt, less focused children, those top kids are going to be bored out of their mind and wasting their time.

Do we truly want to waste the time of our most bright young minds? Do we want to squander their potential when they pick up 1+1=2 in 10 seconds, but it takes other kids 10 minutes? Do we have to force our teachers to make 4-5 different lesson plans, 1 for the lowest, 1 for the highest, and a couple others for the mid-tiers? We're already asking too much of teachers, give them smaller classes with less of a range of aptitude.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#78

Post by arkades »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #26
refenestrator wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current stats include a ridiculously large number of Asians, and the changes are racially motivated according to the proponents' own words. It doesn't sound like the system was perfect, I'm all for reform that helps everyone. Hurting Asians to create equality isn't it.

Equality, to the priviledged, looks like persecution. That many Asian kids got a golden ticket, and now won't get a golden ticket, seems like not such a problem to those who were denied any such chance at a golden ticket for generations.

Having come out of the gifted and talented programs in question in NYC:

The privileged go to private school. Our programs are dominated by first generation immigrants, mostly SE Asian. Even the white component tends to be poor immigrant families.

If hard-working and intelligent poor people clawing their way upwards is a stain on equality, something has gone deeply deeply wrong with our conception of equality.

It’s always been a problem for NY liberals that these programs were so massively underrepresenting the black population. The fact that they were highly diverse had to be ignored. The fact that they were rife with poor first generation immigrants had to be ignored (it undercut the “rich people buy exam prep to get their kids in, which is why so few black kids get in” narrative). (The few black kids that did get in were almost /all/ first generation immigrants, too).

The only thing that mattered was the optics: not enough black kids, kill the program.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#79

Post by BeFlatXIII »

motohagiography wrote: post #61

Mixed feelings about moves like this. Am a product of a related system in another city some decades ago. The pressure to "de-stream" students in education in general has been an ongoing controversy for decades. What bothers me about gifted programs is that they isolate the smartest kids from everyone else, and one can't help but think it's more to protect the system and everyone else from bored intelligent kids than…

How many of those leadership exercises would realistically carry over into IRL benefit after the students graduate? For that matter, how many G&T students would check out because they're focused on leadership rather than abstract problem solving?

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#80

Post by tomp »

endisneigh wrote: post #27
Bostonian wrote: post #24

Subtitle: "Students who are currently enrolled in gifted and talented classes will not be affected. But the highly selective and racially segregated program will be replaced for incoming students." The reasons can be debated, but it's a fact that on IQ tests, American blacks score about 1 standard deviation (15 points) below whites. A common threshold for a gifted program is an IQ of 130, 2SD above average. If you de…

It's also a fact that American blacks have several standard deviations less wealth than whites. If wealth ultimately is the driver for such a disparity, and education is the gateway to said wealth, you're effectively trapping people.

> If wealth ultimately is the driver for such a disparity

Fortunately, we know it's not. Black Nigerian immigrants slightly outperform whites in many careers, and very likely start with substantially less wealth (because they're immigrants).

So one variable is constant (skin color), a few are "worse" (wealth, knowledge of English), a few might be better (motivation, IQ, work ethics, cultural expectations, ...).

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