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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

#241

Post by dragonwriter »

nobody9999 wrote: post #206
seneca wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Activists have no problems openly discriminating against Asians because whites, blacks and Latinos think of "Americans" as whites, blacks and Latinos. Asians are considered foreigners. I don't think this is true. Asians are being punished because they're successful, and their existence bucks the narrative the blank-slate activists want to push. Sure, as a group they're being punished, but it's not because anyone se…

>I don't think this is true. Asians are being punished because they're successful, and their existence bucks the narrative the blank-slate activists want to push. No. Everyone is being punished, not just Asians. Ditching G/T programs is going about this completely backwards, and hurts all students regardless of ethnicity or melanin content. The problem is that schools in poor and minority neighborhoods suck . Let's f…

> Everyone is being punished, not just Asians.

No, everyone is being helped, not just Blacks and Hispanics. Even most White and Asian students who would benefit from accelerated study in one or more areas are excluded by NYC’s current program.

> Ditching G/T programs is going about this completely backwards

No, its not.

Ditching accelerated student-specific programs would be, but this plan vastly expands such programs, putting them in every kindergarten classroom, available to every student, rather than less than 10% of schools, available based on all-or-nothing test to four year olds.

> and hurts all students regardless of ethnicity or melanin content

How does making student-specific accelerated content with teachers trained in delivering it in every kindergarten classroom, and added experienced teachers in disadvantaged communities, rather than accelerated material made available to a small minority hurt everyone?

> The problem is that schools in poor and minority neighborhoods suck.

> Let's fix that problem

That’s...exactly the idea.

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

#242

Post by seanmcdirmid »

nobody9999 wrote: post #205
silicon2401 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in NYC, Asians are the poorest demographic by a large margin. Do you have evidence for this? Asians are by far the richest minority in the US so I was surprised by this statement. > Activists have no problems openly discriminating against Asians because whites, blacks and Latinos think of "Americans" as whites, blacks and Latinos. Asians are considered foreigners. So when a prestigious program is dominated by Asian…

>Diversity means increasing representation. In a situation with limited resources, increasing representation for all means decreasing representation for some. This is the natural conclusion to pushing for equality/representation. Except the problem isn't with the gifted/talented programs in NYC. And it isn't with the SHSAT[0] either. The problem is that public elementary and middle schools in majority black/hispanic…

> The problem is that public elementary and middle schools in majority black/hispanic neighborhoods have measurably much worse educational results.

Are the students doing poorly in those schools because they are poorly run/staffed/and funded, or is it the case that the students in those schools have more problems at home leading to poorer results?

In other words, is this a problem schools can fix at all?

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

#243

Post by seanmcdirmid »

darthvoldemort wrote: post #154
notwedtm wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This links to https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/opportunity/pdf/20_poverty_measu... as the original source. On page 28 of this file, you get to the actual statistics. While Asian poverty is certainly high, it is about the same as other minorities, and has been decreasing since 2014.

No, the report says that Asians poverty is underreported in the data. EDIT: I think that the report shows that Hispanics in 2020 have a higher percentage of poverty than Asians, but it seems like a lot of the articles showing Asians had the highest poverty rates came from before 2017. It looks like in the last 5 years prior to 2020, Asians had improved the poverty rates. Regardless even in 2020, Asian poverty in NYC…

It depends on what Asians we are talking about. I bet if you correlate income to gifted access, you’d get a lot of Indians and Chinese in those programs, and many fewer Vietnamese, Filipinos, and Indonesians (doubly so if we break out Chinese ethnicities from those countries).

In Seattle, Asians dominate both the high end and the low end (south Seattle has a lot of poorer southeast Asian immigrants, north Seattle has more East and richer south Asian immigrants). It all depends on NYC’s racial mix over the broad term Asian.

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

#244

Post by ng12 »

carabiner wrote: post #240
darthvoldemort wrote: post #119

The inconvenient truth about NYC G&T program is that it is 40% Asian. Asians have dominated the G&T program, even "stealing" spots from white kids where 43% of NYC is white, but only 35% of spots taken by white kids. And Asians are dominating the NYC G&T program NOT because of hundreds of years of systemic racism, NOT because Asians wrote the admissions tests an inbueing cultural bias, and NOT by cheating or bribing…

> And in NYC, Asians are the poorest demographic by a large margin. False. Asians are the second highest income demographic, second only to whites: https://wherewelive.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2019... So you can still make a case that the tests for G&T measure the wealth available for test preparation.

In NYC Asians have the second-highest rate of poverty behind Hispanics.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/opportunity/poverty-in-nyc/data-to...

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

#245

Post by moron4hire »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #213
moron4hire wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you're reading, but Thomas Jefferson High School is not in Fairfax. It's here in Alexandria. Fairfax would be half an hour drive for me and I live on the extreme, western edge of Alexandria. There's a whole, other city in between (Annandale). It'd be like saying something was in Brooklyn when it's actually in Queens. Virginia is a weird state. Fairfax and Alexandria are classified as "independent ci…

No, it's in Fairfax County. Its address is Alexandria, but it's not inside the City of Alexandria[1]. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thomas+Jefferson+High+Scho...

Well, chalk one up for "Virginia politics are stupid and unnecessarily complicated". I just learned that our school "divisions" (not districts like the rest of the country) have no correlation to our municipal structure, but also are incapable of doing their own revenue collection. We still can't afford basic stuff for our schools, despite NoVA being regularly ranked one of the richest areas in the country. Urban schools get about 1% more per student than rural schools from the state. They claim to incorporate cost of living adjustments, but it's clearly not enough if we can't do basic things like hire enough bus drivers.

This bullshit is a vestige of the Civil War when West Virginia split of to be an abolitionist state. I don't understand the fetishization of such "culturally important" (sarcasm) things like municipal structure when what we have is not working. "This hammer was my great, great grandpappies, that he bought from the Sears Robucks Catalog in 1887. Yes, the handle is cracked and the claw can't grip modern nail heads, but by God, it was good enough for him, it'll be good enough for us".

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

#246

Post by moron4hire »

darthvoldemort wrote: post #200
moron4hire wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you're reading, but Thomas Jefferson High School is not in Fairfax. It's here in Alexandria. Fairfax would be half an hour drive for me and I live on the extreme, western edge of Alexandria. There's a whole, other city in between (Annandale). It'd be like saying something was in Brooklyn when it's actually in Queens. Virginia is a weird state. Fairfax and Alexandria are classified as "independent ci…

My friend lives in Fairfax and her school district feeds into TJ, so I assumed it was in Fairfax. This is a front-and-center issue for her.

My apologies. I've since learned that TJ is a Fairfax County School Division school. TJ is smack dab in the middle of Alexandria. I didn't realize how unrelated Virginia's school division system is to its municipal structure. I didn't grow up here, so it seems absurd to have a completely different county's schools in our city.

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

#247

Post by TheCoelacanth »

moron4hire wrote: post #246
darthvoldemort wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend lives in Fairfax and her school district feeds into TJ, so I assumed it was in Fairfax. This is a front-and-center issue for her.

My apologies. I've since learned that TJ is a Fairfax County School Division school. TJ is smack dab in the middle of Alexandria. I didn't realize how unrelated Virginia's school division system is to its municipal structure. I didn't grow up here, so it seems absurd to have a completely different county's schools in our city.

It's not in the City of Alexandria. It's in Fairfax County. It has an Alexandria postal address, but it is not inside Alexandria's political borders.

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

#248

Post by darthvoldemort »

dragonwriter wrote: post #241
nobody9999 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think this is true. Asians are being punished because they're successful, and their existence bucks the narrative the blank-slate activists want to push. No. Everyone is being punished, not just Asians. Ditching G/T programs is going about this completely backwards, and hurts all students regardless of ethnicity or melanin content. The problem is that schools in poor and minority neighborhoods suck . Let's f…

> Everyone is being punished, not just Asians. No, everyone is being helped, not just Blacks and Hispanics. Even most White and Asian students who would benefit from accelerated study in one or more areas are excluded by NYC’s current program. > Ditching G/T programs is going about this completely backwards No, its not. Ditching accelerated student-specific programs would be, but this plan vastly expands such program…

You know nothing about teaching and education if you think this is going to help. It's going to hurt even more. The reason why you group children with similar learning abilities together is so that they can progress together. If you stick advanced kids with less advanced kids, both sets of kids will suffer because the advanced kids will be extremely bored and the less advanced kids will get discouraged because the advanced kids are so much better than them. It goes against the fundamentals of education.

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

#249

Post by darthvoldemort »

rafale wrote: post #225
darthvoldemort wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asians are not genetically more intelligent than other races. If this were the case, Asia would be more of a powerhouse than just the "factory workers of the world". Only a small amount of innovation is coming out of Asia compared to the US. Asians in the US are more motivated to study, it's the culture. It doesn't take a lot of dedication to studying to get a major advantage over those that don't study as hard.

China used to be the first world power and economy a few hundred years ago. And they are slowly but surely reclaiming that title.

100 years ago China was barely a country, ripped apart by opium, politics and various countries that occupied China. It took Dr. Sun Yat Sen and subsequently Chiang Kai Shek and then Mao to get China back on its feet and now is a global power because of its 2 billion people.

But you can't compare the innovation of China to the US... for the time being. Admittedly the inflection point is coming soon if the US doesn't get it's head out of its ass.

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

#250

Post by dragonwriter »

darthvoldemort wrote: post #248
dragonwriter wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone is being punished, not just Asians. No, everyone is being helped, not just Blacks and Hispanics. Even most White and Asian students who would benefit from accelerated study in one or more areas are excluded by NYC’s current program. > Ditching G/T programs is going about this completely backwards No, its not. Ditching accelerated student-specific programs would be, but this plan vastly expands such program…

You know nothing about teaching and education if you think this is going to help. It's going to hurt even more. The reason why you group children with similar learning abilities together is so that they can progress together. If you stick advanced kids with less advanced kids, both sets of kids will suffer because the advanced kids will be extremely bored and the less advanced kids will get discouraged because the ad…

> You know nothing about teaching and education

That is incorrect.

> The reason why you group children with similar learning abilities together is so that they can progress together.

Yes, that's the thinking that justified tracking. Among the problems with segregated G&T programs, however, is that G&T-identified and non-G&T students are not, within each group, “of similar learning abilities”; Both have wide variation within groups, and individuals very often aren’t in the same relative position within their group in different specific subject areas.

As much as tracking would make (simple, binary) varying ability fit into the industrial assembly-line model of education, it doesn't work well with real people in the real world (it works very slightly better than the industrial assembly-line model without tracking, and when that was the norm, it was an improvement.)

But what works significantly better (though it takes more work) is to provide baseline curriculum with supplementation to individuals (in small groups of similar ability in the subject, where possible) based on ability. Which is what this proposes training all (initially) kindergarten teachers in, and hiring additional teachers in particular areas of need, in place of a high-stakes tracking exam for four-year olds. Its what has proven better than binary tracking in many places. (And it is, incidentally, what decided my family’s choice of schools for my son, who is now in kindergarten.)

It’s not the 1980s any more. Education has moved forward. Whether NYC will execute this well is, of course, up in the air. But that what it has identified is what has been widely used and proven better than binary tracking already, for the students that would be tracked into G&T, for the students that would not, for racial and socioeconomic class equity, and in basically every other conceivable manner is not up in the air.

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