NYC Scrapping Gifted and Talented Program Is a Triumph of Redefining Language
reason.com
reason.com
Meanwhile in Atlanta, there were bunches of magnet schools filled with bright, special kids. My envy was intense. We didn't even have a fucking physics class.
The problem was that our school was poor, because the neighborhood was poor (three housing projects), and schools are paid with property taxes. The projects were built in the Black neighborhoods, since that's how the city was laid out during segregation. There was no school breakfast and a lot of kids didn't get dinner, so school lunch was their only meal and they bombed morning classes as a result.
Magnet schools are built where there's money, so kids in the ghettos never get access. That's not meritocracy.
- don’t piss your pass - don’t hit - don’t sexually assault - this is basic reading and grammar
This is also my problem with the program...
Not sure what you are referring to but they don't allow older kids to test for it in NYC (the PA program) so if you moved or weren't thinking about this program 9 months before they started kindergarten you missed out.
Ideally, every student should get a personalized education. In practice, it’s not feasible due to limited resources. So it makes sense to segment kids in 2-3 groups (regular, gifted, special needs) and teach them accordingly. Tests are not perfect but they are a decent objective and non-discriminating criteria to achieve that segmentation.
This program certainly wasn’t perfect, but that’s not the reason it was scrapped. Or else it would have been improved through an iterative process. The reason it was scrapped is leftist progressive dogma. The idea that equity is more important than equality. Jordan Peterson is certainly the best voice on why this equity or equality of outcome is an awful idea.
I am an arab that gew up in a western country and went thru a gifted program at a high school where most students were first generation immigrants. And it’s only today that, looking back, I realize we had a “lot” of Asians in our class, I never saw it like that before, they were just my schoolmates, and they were in the same gifted class as me because they were… gifted.
Are we still talking about four year olds?
China does other things as well, like totally ignore environmental issues. You want to go down that road?
In most cases there were no differences in the curricula between G&T and non-G&T, just differences in the skin color of the students.
Over the last decade the DOE has become quite adept at delivering differential learning in classroom, dependent on only one thing- how many adults can be in the classroom at one time. G&T program operation actually detracted from that capability. Again, it is good it is gone.
In terms of the bullshit equality of outcome argument- it's a strawman. Complete garbage. The NYC wants all students to graduate, but meeting students where they are, then enabling differentiated experience and outcome is entirely what the system is designed for, and, better than any other education system in the country, delivers.
In terms of Jordan Peterson- JFC, the best thing I can say is- he is not an education advocate. In terms of philosophy he tells fanciful fictional stories that have nothing to do with reality. Best find other sources for your education about education.
Best wishes.
If your argument was true, that the program is a vehicule to bring white families, then why is it being dominated by asian students?
But 60-70% of private school kids are white, compared to 5-10% per other groups.
When G&T was re-established under Bloomberg, the implicit goal was to bring as many of those families from private to public as possible. Bloomberg supported charters for the same reason. White families and white wealth bring donation dollars, volunteer energy, community connections (most community board members are white), etc, etc.
I understand the intuitive difficulty people have with the idea of differentiated classrooms. It's both deeply in the weeds from a teaching practice perspective and it also did not exist when today's parents were themselves in school, so few really understand what it looks like.
Not to generalize but many Asian families are deeply upset about the removal of these programs. It will not impact the quality of their education but it will mean more integration for a deeply insular community. As an education councilmember what I heard first hand was as much a reflection of the latter as a false perception of the former.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, this seems fairly common knowledge around these parts. Maybe it’s the Jordan Peterson dig?
Nice, I had not heard this term before. It's a very apt description of the current system of un-motivated learning.
> "Just in time",
This has a lot of potential in conjunction with project-based learning (PBL). Instead of "pushing" knowledge down into student's heads, we could let them "pull" the knowledge they need, when they need it (e.g. need to learn exponential function to complete some calculations in a personal project).
> "Just for me"
Is this referring to personalized lesson plans? If every kid has a private tutor it would be nice (two-sigma effect), but if anyone is hoping for ML solutions for education, then hey will wait for a long time. Education and learning is very nuanced and complicated, so we'll need A LOT of training data to make recommender systems and automated learning pathways work anywhere close to what a trained teacher/mentor can do.
We’ve never had a meritocracy in the US. It is a lie that is told to enable disequitable. treatment.
I grew up in poverty, spent time as a child looking for dropped coins in McDonald’s drive-troughs, eventually graduated from MIT.
You could redefine meritocracy to not include my case, but that is left as an exercise for the reader.
It's an absolutely pointless argument that can be applied to any system that exists in the real world, instead of that of spherical cows.
Those are different. It isn't that meritocracy does or does not function - it is that it doesn't exist
I'm happy they are winding these things down.
people look for proof of altruism, like they look for proof of burn (remember ethereum distribution and hashcash aka Bitcoin ).
I mean if you can’t afford ESG… DYEL ?