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Comment by bradleyjg | Hacker News Reader

A lot of negative reactions here. There's gifted and there's gifted. Should Hunter College Elementary School which requires off the chart scores being eliminated? No. Do somewhere between 10 and 20% of students need to be pulled out into separate programs? Also no.

The cutoff for district G&T programs in NYC is currently 90 percentile. For reference 90th percentile on the SAT in a nationally representative sample is 1290 / 1600.

Sorry, but I don't think at that point we are looking at special needs that come with extreme precociousness.

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That 90th percentile doesn't guarantee a slot in a G&T program. It's kind of an elaborate system, but depending on what district your child is in or what school you're considering, the effective cutoff can be much higher. For example, my son's program only admitted children with either a 98 or 99 when he got into it 4 years ago. In a district like ours (District 3, which is basically the Upper West Side), a score of 90 won't get you a spot anywhere, unless...

...you have a child with a 90 with a sibling already in a program. If one child tests into a program, then later siblings are given preference over children without a sibling in the school, as long as they have a score over 90.

> but depending on what district your child is in

Which just goes to show another way that the system in NYC is totally screwed up. We all live in the same city, under the same law, and pay the same tax rates, so why is the city carved up into tiny little zones that have such a big influence on which schools kids go to? We aren't talking about hour long bus rides here, but mere blocks.

Let's combine the catchment districts of 199 and 191 and send students to each randomly. Why not?

>...I don't think at that point we are looking at special needs...

What is the societal loss incurred because of, say, the worst 1% of your hypothetical top 10% (i.e. just the 90th quantile) getting bored/discouraged/checking out before middle school? Are those kids precocious? No. Are we disproportionately better off if the 90th quantile thrives? Yes.

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