Friday, September 27, 2019

CEC 16 Letter to Council Member Robert Cornegy Regarding SDAG Recommendations

(Here is a Chalkbeat article on CEC 16’s request to the mayor regarding gifted and talented programs.
A pdf version of CEC 16’s resolution regarding the School Diversity Advisory Group Recommendations can be found here.)

Greetings Councilman Cornegy, 
Thank you for your continued advocacy for improving public schools for our children in Community School District 16.
As you know, District 16 parents of Bedford Stuyvesant (a historically Black and now gentrifying section of Brooklyn) have been advocating for a well-rounded quality education for years.  From the onset of our work together in 2015, you have not only supported us in the creation of the Gifted & Talented (G&T) program being implemented in the 3rd grade, you have also been instrumental in lending your voice to the need for D16 to have a G&T program that uses holistic measures for admission.  We know that these programs would not have been possible without your leadership and support.
Today we write to ask you to support the recommendations of the School Diversity Advisory Group (SDAG) to transform the G&T programs because we believe the recommendations of the SDAG support the relentless advocacy we, the District 16 parents, and you, as one of our leaders in our community, have always demonstrated on behalf of our children.
Subsequently, after our annual review of the D16 educational programming, in April 2019 the parents of the CEC16 advocated for the expansion of school-wide enrichment models (such as dual language learning, and advanced math classes) and the replacement of the current G&T program, which has not served our children well.  SDAG recommendations are essentially the same as what we proposed to the DOE in our annual review.
To that end, please allow us the opportunity to illustrate how SDAG recommendations are also in alignment with your efforts to improve our schools. 
Your New York Post op-ed dated August 27 starts with the following passage:
“Excellence in education means providing each student the opportunity to achieve. For our shared community’s young people, that means access to enrichment programs and access to the suite of opportunities that should be open to all students”  
This is exactly what SDAG recommends and is the essence of the schoolwide enrichment model, which aims to challenge all students and offers individualized instruction so that those who excel in a particular content area are provided with accelerated learning.
SDAG agrees that G&T is “a catalyst for helping children from black and brown communities get into specialized high schools.”  However, SDAG questions why the current system only offers this opportunity to 10% of the student population (or a much smaller proportion in our community), determined at age 4 (or age 7 for D16) when we know all children have gifts and talents in different areas, including creativity and arts, social-emotional, athletics, etc., and even within academics, some may be gifted in language arts, others math or science, but no one is gifted in all areas which is why we need to create models that address students’ individual needs. Instead, SDAG recommends we should offer the same level of challenging and rigorous curriculum to all of our D16 students through a community-driven planning process to design a schoolwide enrichment model.
 In your letter to the Mayor, you substantiated the success of G&T by mentioning “students spending an hour on a train twice a day” to attend a school with a G&T program.  We agree the program is “worth it” for many families but we do not want our children traveling two hours every day to receive a high quality education.  If we implement a schoolwide enrichment model, our children will be able to walk to their neighborhood school to receive the high quality education they rightly deserve.  
In the same letter you characterize the students who travel far for G&T as demonstrating “hustle, curiosity, and adaptability.”  As parents of children, most of whom are not in G&T, we can assure you that all children demonstrate hustle, curiosity and adaptability. We need a system that fosters their curiosity not by labeling them “gifted and talented” and segregating them from the rest of the children, but by recognizing individual students’ gifts and talents and nurturing them in a diverse learning environment.
Since we worked with you to establish G&T in D16, we have learned that there are expectations for the G&T that were not met and require us to rethink what is best for all the children of D16.  We believed we were creating an educational equity pipeline for our youngest learners. Instead, we learned that testing 4-year-old children was developmentally inappropriate. We also learned that the quality of G&T programs varied.  Therefore, despite the kindergarten programs in other areas, we opted for a third-grade program. As a result, only 235 students were eligible for the G&T program, of which only 25 students enrolled in the G&T program. We graduated our first G&T class last June, but with only 12 G&T students in a district that has 2,966 elementary school students (excluding PreK).
In addition, the G&T program created more division in our community than unity. This caused us to look at other districts and do further research. What we found was in fact, G&T experts have concluded that a single measure test is not the best way to identify gifts. They also support creating ways to foster advanced learning which will promote investment in the gifts of all our students. We want more for our children, not less.
We are therefore attaching our April 2019 letter to the Chancellor requesting the Department of Education support for a school-wide enrichment model.
We also wanted to pull out the SDAG recommendations verbatim so that you see how they are in alignment with what you and we both seek. 
SDAG Recommendations
  • Because we believe all students deserve to be challenged, we recommend that the DOE resource community school districts to pilot creative, equitable enrichment alternatives to G&T. 
    • Provide resources for community school districts to develop enrichment alternatives with community and stakeholder engagement.
    • Provide adequate resources for community school districts to implement enrichment alternatives. 
    • Ensure recruitment to enrichment alternatives is inclusive of multilingual learners, students with disabilities, students who qualify for free and reduced lunch pricing, and students living in temporary housing. 
    • Measure alternative enrichment program demographics against district demographics. 
    • Track and share publicly the impacts on integrative enrollment of enrichment alternatives. 
    • Discontinue the use of the Gifted & Talented admissions test. Institute a moratorium on new Gifted & Talented programs.
    • Allow existing Gifted & Talented programs to continue. Programs will be phased out as students age and will not receive new incoming classes.
    • Eliminate rigid academic tracking in elementary school that results in economic or racial segregation. 
We would like to request a meeting with you and your City Council colleagues so that we can discuss this matter in person and look forward to your favorable consideration to support the SDAG recommendations.
In spirit, collaboration and Community,
The Members of the Community Education Council District 16

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