Like many parents with the means to do so, Anastasia Cordova hired a tutor for her son when he was four years old. Cordova told Gothamist that her son, who is now in first grade, displays symptoms of ADHD, and would be better off in a classroom with more structure and a challenging curriculum. The tutor helped him prepare for the New York City Gifted & Talented test that would determine whether or not he would qualify for one of the five specialized schools that cater exclusively to gifted children.
“I think it helps them get the higher scores they need to get into those top five schools,” said Cordova. Still, his grade of 97 percent was not high enough to land one of those coveted seats. Considering that there are only 2,500 slots in these schools, it’s unsurprising that even children who receive a 99 percent on the test aren’t guaranteed admission. Instead, Cordova’s son attends an elementary school in Queens that places gifted children in classrooms that are separate from the rest of the student body.
Last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group [SDAG] issued their second set of recommendations for integrating New York City’s public schools, which are among the most segregated in the nation. Although the report is full of ideas for enriching schools in ways that would both narrow the achievement gap and offer more substantial learning opportunities to all students, the reporting and subsequent outcry have largely been focused on the task force’s recommendation to eliminate the city’s existing gifted and talented (G&T) programs. Parents took to social media and public meetings to express their outrage. “I stand behind the overarching goal to integrate schools and achieve diversity but I don’t think cutting out specialized programs is the way to go,” says Cordova, echoing the opposition.
The Department of Education estimates that just 1 percent of NYC’s public school students—about 16,000 of 1.1 million—are currently enrolled in gifted classrooms. Amy Hsin, a co-author of the SDAG proposal, thinks the anger is misplaced. The New York Times headline that broke the news to the public suggested that the advisory board wanted to eliminate all gifted programming, but Hsin explained that the SDAG is simply looking for better ways to challenge students that don’t exclude the low-income and minority students that dominate the public school population. "We're not saying that we should eliminate classes or programs for advanced learners,” said Hsin. “Our recommendation is to replace what we have, which is broken, with alternative models of advanced learning."
New York City’s version of gifted and talented programming operates in ways that are notably peculiar. As Hsin pointed out, it is the only major school system that uses a test that is administered to four-year-olds as the sole means of identifying gifted children. Besides the fact that young children are not suited for such an experience — Cordova noted that a large part of the tutoring her son received was simply about preparing him for the process of going into a room with a stranger in order to take a test — standardized testing has been shown to be a generally inaccurate method of assessing capabilities and predicting professional achievement. It’s also a practice that some experts say is inherently discriminatory, because the test is geared towards English-speaking students. While the NYC Gifted & Talented test is available for students in a variety of languages, only 2 percent of gifted students in New York City are non-native English speakers.
Even for families that successfully maneuver through the system, there’s no guarantee that their children will receive a superior education. “There is no consistent curriculum or standard of pedagogy that gifted teachers are required to invest in,” said Matt Gonzales, the Integration and Innovation Initiative Director at NYU Metro and a member of the SDAG panel.
One of the many problems, it seems, is that the general population has a misguided conception of what being “gifted and talented” means. “It's not something that we discovered, it's something we invented about a century ago,” said James Borland, a professor at Teachers College at Columbia University and a prominent researcher in the field. Although there is no agreed-upon definition among experts (a well-known anthology called Conceptions of Giftedness has 24 chapters, each of which offers a different theory of giftedness), one popular definition proposes that children who are truly gifted and talented have above-average levels of intelligence, high levels of creativity, and an inherent drive to commit oneself to a task. If we are to follow that definition, a test of a person’s intellect is not an adequate tool for identifying these children.
Another theory proposes that there are different types of intelligence that range from interpersonal and linguistic to logical-mathematical and musical. If that is the case, separating children on the basis of the broad identity of being gifted or not gifted is unhelpful for promoting the distinct capabilities of each student. “The idea that some kids are gifted all the time and you have to do something different for them, to me, makes very little sense,” said Borland.
Students protesting the de Blasio administration's integration policies this past summer.
Although many parents are aggravated by the hoops they have to jump through in order to get their child into screened classrooms, some believe that the system is fine the way that it is. Cordova argued that some children are “more capable than others” and need opportunities to cultivate their abilities, even if it means testing kids at young ages. “All of the kids in the class are more or less on the same level academically, so the teacher doesn’t have to teach to the lowest denominator,” she said. “I think it makes for a smoother classroom experience.” She suggested that there are other ways to deal with any inequities such as offering more seats in gifted classes or providing free test prep to lower-income families.
Jennifer Gaboury, who lives in southern Brooklyn and decided to opt her four-year-old out of the G&T assessment, suggests that the reason so many parents are angry about the proposal has more to do with race than they would prefer to admit. “This is a sorting system that purports to benefit one group of people as opposed to another,” said Gaboury, who teaches gender studies and political science at Hunter College. “For people who are interested in maintaining white supremacy, that is significant.” The National Association for Gifted Children admits that gifted research has been intertwined with eugenics and white supremacy since its conception. That history has undoubtedly manipulated our perception of giftedness and the strategies we use to educate children with special abilities.
After the Soviet Union successfully launched the first man-made satellite into orbit, the U.S. government became especially paranoid about competing for scientific and technological superiority on a global scale. The quest to identify and develop the “innate” talents of gifted children as potential resources incentivized the implementation of G&T education. Around the same time, Brown v. Board of Education made school integration a requirement. Gifted and talented classrooms allowed segregation to continue under the guise of accelerated programming.
Many opponents to the SDAG’s report have expressed concerns that the middle class will abandon public schools if New York’s current system of screening students is dismantled. “That has always been the threat of white parents and people with privilege, that they’ll leave [the public school system],” says Hsin. “Perhaps they will and perhaps they won't but it's not a reason to maintain an unfair system.” If Mayor de Blasio accepts the plan, districts will have the opportunity to design a program that works best for their schools. In order to offer up research-based alternatives for the districts to consider, the SDAG looked at other school systems around the nation that have successfully integrated using enrichment models that provide equitable opportunities to all students.
One option that is discussed at length is the Schoolwide Enrichment Model which was designed by gifted experts. It advocates for the use of multiple measures to identify a child’s strengths and learning needs so that teachers can personalize their curriculum to accommodate each student in the classroom. While the model sometimes calls for in-class grouping, it encourages schools to keep students of mixed abilities together. Bedford-Stuyvesant's school district is interested in abandoning their gifted and talented program — a program that they fought hard for in an effort to provide more access to their predominantly black student body — and piloting this model as a replacement.
With the dramatic levels of segregation and the dearth of viable enrichment opportunities in New York City’s schools, expanding the current system of gifted & talented programming would only be a Band-Aid for these massive systemic issues. The SDAG hopes that the city will take their advice and look into investing in programs that offer better support to all students, rather than just a select few. “I'm not pretending that I think everything about public education is perfect,” said Gaboury. “But I know that my obligation is to put my child into that school, and then to fight for that school to better.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story suggested that the NYC Gifted & Talented test required a "solid understanding" of the English language. In fact, the tests are available in a variety of languages, but some experts suggest that the tests themselves are geared towards English speakers, and are therefore discriminatory. We regret the error.
