New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by mc32 » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:22 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #113

mc32 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among humans it's likely evenly distributed, but... the blame for unevenness should fall more on the parents who rear their kids to fail rather than on the system who fails to find those rough diamonds. The parents should suffer most of the culpability. They are the ones steering their kids to poor outcomes via parenting styles.

Parents do not exist in a vacuum. If we accept racism did (or does) exist, it presumably would affect the parents of said victims which would lead to the poor outcomes for the kids. Said disparity would grow as the kids would be then denied said opportunity on the basis of their parents' failure. The kids' kids would then suffer the same, and so forth. In other words, how would you "punish" (if that's even necessary)…

It's not about punishment but blame. Educate the parents. Have classes that guide them on child rearing. When parents neglect their children nutritionally or behaviorally, the state intervenes. Have programs all through K-12 that inculcate this idea. Work to turn that ship around.

Have them break out of a bleak culture. They are the PARENTS, it's their responsibility to rear their kids, not the state's responsibility. They made the decision to have kids.

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

#122

Post by motohagiography » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #79

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?

Leadership and management are like riding a bike in that you can teach children to do it, but if you never learned, it's likely you never will. Management training programs for regular teenagers are common in the fast food industry, and it's a differentiating life skill. I think giving that to exceptional 8-12yr olds is more valuable than exploring their creativity in an isolated class away from their peers. Few people ever get bored of leadership. The net return on teaching advanced individual problem solving compared to teaching smart kids to scale their skills with leadership has a massive delta.

This is probably something you couldn't do in the public system, and you would need separate schools, and arguably this is what private schools already do. Policy wise, this is equivalent to vouchers, which are immensely controversial for the same reasons gifted education is, because they stream people into opportunity - or lack thereof, when they are still just kids. You're never going to teach kids enough to overthrow you, but if you don't, what are you really educating them to become?

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

#123

Post by dayvid » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

I'm black and I was in a gifted program in elementary school on through honors college at university. I was surprised when I first heard someone say gifted is racist about a year ago.

At the same time, though, I feel like I was raised in a time where not as many parents are actively trying to game the education system. It seems to ruin the spirit of the gifted program if parents are looking up tricks and tactics to get their kids to ace exams in Kindergarten.

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

#124

Post by darthvoldemort » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

flexie wrote: post #95

_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.…

Even if it's not intended by design to segregate based on color, but just an unfortunate effect, when that effect is known for years and nothing is done, then I think it's OK to call it segregation. Many of the parents I know who has kids that were accepted in the gifted and talented program had very expensive tutoring in order to be accepted. We are talking thousands of dollars for toddlers. That's tutoring that mos…

The G&T program in NYC is mostly ASIAN not white. This is the problem for activists. Also, Asians are the poorest demographic in NYC so activists can't blame systemic racism or economic disadvantages. So better to just destroy the program than explain why Asians who are non-white and poor are able to succeed when other minorities can't.

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

#125

Post by darthvoldemort » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:27 PM UTC

bloooop wrote: post #71

_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…

This is completely BS. The activists have been trying for decades to bump up the percentage of Blacks and Latinos, and yet it's dominated by Asians. Asians are "stealing" spots from White, Blacks, and Latinos and it makes it hard to justify racism, especially when Asians are not only 40% of the G&T but also the poorest demographic in NYC.

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

#126

Post by christophilus » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

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…

One of the first openly racist interactions I ever witnessed in the US was a white guy hurling slurs at a Vietnamese friend of mine. Asians are definitely in a strange predicament here.

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

#127

Post by InitialLastName » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

0xB31B1B wrote: post #18

I am generally quite liberal but I strongly disagree with he current strain of progressive education reform. There are inherent differences within the capabilities of students, we can detect these early, and we should use them to provide students with appropriate challenges. Our education system should provide avenues for top students to excel, ad hopefully these top students become the people who create businesses o…

The problem with the G&T program was that it did a better job of selecting for parental affluence (the ability to pay 4-5 figures for test prep for your toddler, and the time to navigate a byzantine system) than for inherent differences in student capabilities.

Strangely enough, there were also a very limited number of G&T programs, including none in many of the poorer areas of the city, so if you lived in, say, the west side of the Bronx (as a friend of mine did) and wanted to send your kids to a G&T school, your best case was a 1.5 hour transit commute to East Harlem. My friend and his spouse could do that because they had work flexibility (including the flexibility for one of them not to work), but poor people don't usually have that either.

Effectively, this works out to socio-economic desegregation masquerading as racial desegregation (because, for various historical and structural reasons, race in NYC is correlated to affluence).

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

#128

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

refenestrator wrote: post #32

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You realize a lot of those Asians are from poor, immigrant families, right? You ever spend time in Flushing? Rich white liberals should not be tearing them down in the name of "antiracism".

And yes, they were not denied the golden ticket. But others were. Equality can look like persecution, if you used to be a lucky winner.

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

#129

Post by silicon2401 » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

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…

> 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 Asians, something must obviously wrong, right?

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.

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

#130

Post by mrblampo » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

_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.…

Look up segregation in the dictionary, it does not have to imply intent.