Nowhere is the tale of two cities more evident than in the gifted-and-talented programs of New York City’s public schools.
Those are the elite classes and schools reserved for the very young students who score highest on an aptitude test — and they skew dramatically toward the most privileged families.
In results just out for 2015, more than 36,000 students in grades K-3 took the exam — and a quarter, 9,009, scored high enough to apply for admission.
In Manhattan’s District 2, which includes the Upper East Side, 3,300 took the test, and well over a third passed. In Queens’ District 26, which includes the prosperous northeast Queens communities of Bayside and Douglaston, 2,200 took it, and about a fifth passed.
Meantime, a total of 357 students in the city’s eight poorest districts hit the score, and the pass rate in those districts was less than half the city average. In four low-income districts, too few students passed to establish a class.
The disparities persist despite a laudable push by the de Blasio administration to encourage low-income parents to have little ones tested.
In eight of the city’s 10 lowest-income community school districts, more 4-year-olds took the entrance exam this year than last. But the numbers are still far too low to budge the overall dynamic.
Solutions will require a wholesale overhaul of the city’s long, lunatic G&T admissions process.
Boys and girls as young as 4 take an exam. Their scores earn them consideration in strict rank order, with citywide programs only for children who score 97.
At the most desirable schools, kids with less than a 99 need not bother to apply; a lottery distinguishes between the kids with identical scores.
Even those who believe in testing, as we do, must acknowledge that placing this much stock in the precise score registered on a single exam for kids who are more interested in play than mental puzzles is insane.
Making matters worse, a whole industry coaches little ones to get any fraction of an edge. The children of parents who see G&T as the first step toward Harvard, and who have the money to pay for tutors, often do best on the test.
To even the playing field, the city should include universal testing in the new pre-K programs.
The Department of Education should also stop turning qualified students away on the grounds that a neighborhood school lacked a sufficient number of passing students to form a class. By providing bus transportation, the department could draw students who are zoned for different schools into a unified class.
Finally, virtually every expert agrees that the exams are better suited to detect learning disabilities than to divine infinitesimal degrees of brightness. In reality, a 99 is the same as a 98 is the same as a 97. All kids who score, say, at least 90 should be equally eligible for admission by lottery.
It’s time to get smarter for smart kids.
