Yes, the Mayor finally acted to phase-out the gifted program, but as usual, too late and in the wrong way

On Friday, Mayor de Blasio announced that he was finally going to phase-out the much-criticized Gifted and Talented program, which sorts and selects students on the basis of a single standardized test at the age of four.  On this blog and elsewhere I have long criticized this program, which has a segregating effect on our schools, given that the vast majority of kids who test “gifted” are white and Asian while most kids in the NYC public schools are Black and Latinx. 

Indeed, shortly after then-Chancellor Joel Klein announced back in 2009 that he would institute admissions to these classes via a single high-stakes test, we critiqued this and ran blog posts by others, among them Debbie Meier decrying this policy, even as other outlets, including the NY Times , ignored or downplayed the discriminatory impact of this program. 

A few words about classes for gifted students:  there is no research that backs the benefits of separating kids so early according to the results of any one standardized test – and much research against it.

The question is why the Mayor waited so so long indeed to the very end of his eight years  in office to do this, given that he promised to reform the gifted program when he first ran for office in 2013.  Later, in 2019, his own School Diversity Advisory Group advised him to eliminate the program  and establish system-wide enrichment instead that would benefit all students.  Last year, his own hand-picked members on the Panel of Education Policy voted against approving the contract with Pearson for the test used to assess four year olds, but he insisted on continuing for another year, even the in midst of the pandemic, and his stubborn insistence reportedly contributed to the decision of Chancellor Carranza to resign.  Because de Blasio waited so long, it will be very easy for our next Mayor who takes office in January to reverse this decision.

Yet even if it is implemented, I concerns about the new program that the Mayor and Chancellor announced to take its place will be structured.  This plan,  with the flashy title of "Brilliant NYC" involves training  Kindergarten teachers on how to  "learn to observe and identify students' strengths" to provide certain ones with special treatment. In addition, "seven borough-wide teams of experts will work with schools to support implementation." Then starting in second grade, "all students will be universally screened..by subject area to determine here their strengths lie in order to tailor accelerated instruction." 

It actually sounds like more top-heavy bureaucracy and more standardized testing, exactly what they don’t need, with little help  or support for teachers to actually individualize their instruction, given class sizes of 25, 30 or more.

Despite all the rhetoric, and the seven borough-wide teams, it will be more difficult for teachers to effectively reach students at all different levels, given the large class sizes in our schools. Instead, the Mayor should have paired the elimination of the gifted classes with a program to start lowering class size, starting in the earliest grades.  That would be an initiative with proven results for all kids, whether they are struggling or more advanced, to ensure they get the support and feedback they need.  See what Shino Tanikawa, a member of the Mayor's School Diversity Advisory Group, and I wrote a couple of years ago in the Daily News, about this very issue.

NeQuan McLean on how DOE's "gifted" program is the fruit of a poisonous tree

See the eloquent letter below by NeQuan McLean, President of CEC 16 to Hazel Dukes, President of the NAACP NYS Conference and Christine L. Waters, Education Chair about the DOE "gifted" program.

 [One correction to this excellent letter: NYC DOE is not "the most well-funded public school system in the country."  There are other districts in the state and the nation that spend more.]

What the leaked DOE memo on the "gifted" test reveals

Update 1.27.2021: Daily News reported last night that the Mayor has hurriedly appointed two new PEP members whose seats had long been vacant and is personally calling others of his appointees to push the extension of the Pearson contract through.

 

In several of the articles on the controversy over the renewal of the Pearson contract for the gifted test, which will be voted on tomorrow Wed. night by the Panel for Educational Policy,  including in the Daily News and Chalkbeat, a confidential draft DOE memo from July 2020 is mentioned that was leaked to PEP members.  

The memo is embedded above and is also posted here.  Several things stand out about this memo.  First of all, it clearly points out that doing any testing at during the pandemic is likely to intensify the inequities of this program, that are already too evident:

 "Testing during this time could exacerbate inequities for an admissions program that is widely known to have disparate outcomes by race. Data shows that the pandemic has impacted poor and ethnically diverse New York neighborhoods at higher rates than wealthier, predominately White ones. The difference in performance by racial and/or socioeconomic group could be increased by the impact of the pandemic, as students face loss of loved ones, loss of family income, food instability, etc."

Also: "Funding used for this program could be redistributed to programs providing more essential services to students."  

This is surely true. Yesterday at the PEP Contract committee meeting, the DOE admitted that based on previous years, administering the test cost about $5 million, including the Pearson contract.  They also implied that it might be even more expensive this year, because of the need for PPE and other COVID safety precautions.

Yet instead of mentioning the possibility that the entire program should be eliminated, as the Mayor's School Diversity Advisory Group recommended, this memo expanding it via a "universal screening program" for all students, starting in  2nd grade.  This screening process could include "a standardized, group-administered, machine-scored test" as well as several other assessments, and would surely be even more expensive to purchase and administer, and take hours of classroom  time.

Rather than reject the whole notion of screening young students for "giftedness", these DOE officials propose:

Though young gifted learners are heterogeneous and may not be easily defined or assessed, a pattern of gifted behaviors and/or advanced performance can be seen as early as preschool. Using scales, checklists, and student portfolios gives teachers opportunities to elicit behaviors characteristic of giftedness. Identification tools should vary by population (e.g., ELLs/MLLs, SWDs), and any teacher-facing component should include anti-bias trainingand training on identification and norm-referenced identification tools.

Really?  I would have hoped that for an agency that says they are devoted to the goal of improving equity, more options might be offered, including that the DOE should focus on providing all students programs and services to expand upon their inherent talents,  interests and gifts, rather than selected a subset of students for special treatment, based upon a complicated, expensive and likely unreliable system of checklists, scales, portfolios, and assessments.

The leaked memo also explains why the DOE is asking the PEP to renew the Pearson contract into next fall , as they intend "use the Pearson as the universal screener for some time" because it will take several years to select and purchase new assessments. [Click to enlarge]

The memo predicts how the proposed change in assessments and screening process might produce a "negative reaction" among supporters of the current program, but not about how the many advocates, parents and experts who oppose the entire notion of testing and screening young children might respond,  including  members of the PEP as well as the Mayor's own Diversity Advisory group.

Perhaps the lack of foresight and consideration of equity evident here results from the fact that though the memo is purportedly from Linda Chen, the Chief Academic Officer, it seems to have been written exclusively by staff who work in the DOE Office of Assessment, (though neither of the two staffers with the most comments, Winnie Huang and Michael Ryan, appear to have any particular training or technical expertise in this area.)  Perhaps it is natural that people in this office would simply want to administer tests and more tests, rather than think holistically about the needs of the whole child or the best use of scarce education funds.  As the expression goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. 

Of course, this wasn't necessarily the final draft of this memo, and perhaps others at DOE provided more careful consideration of these issues subsequently. DOE officials told Chalkbeat that it was “one of many iterations of potential proposals and options considered.” though they refused to make the final version available.

A side note: it is peculiar that in the unmarked approval checklist of DOE officials  appended to the end of the memo there appears the name of Hydra Mendoza, the former head of Community Empowerment, Partnerships, and Communications, who  left the DOE in Sept. 2019 - nearly a full year before the memo was drafted.

Again, I urge the PEP members to reject the extension of the Pearson contract at tomorrow night's meeting, because, as the memo points out, "if the extension is not approved, the DOE currently does not have an alternative assessment available to assess gifted intellectual ability for admissions for SY 21-22". You can make your voice heard by tomorrow night by registering here, starting at 5:30 PM.

Nightline on test prep & the gifted exams: more "choices" for parents or magnifying social inequities?

The results of the Gifted and Talented exams are in, and according to the NY Times, more than half of the children tested in wealthier districts like District 2 and District 3 were found to be "gifted", while only six children made the grade in District 7 in the South Bronx.  Why the disparity?

Are these tests merely a way of sorting children by race and class, as Debbie Meier pointed out in 2007, when Klein first proposed to base all admissions to gifted programs on the basis of high stakes exams, or do the results really reflect children's inherent abilities?  And does the proliferation of G and T programs across the city help or hinder the goal of equity and systemic reform?

We have written often about the severe problems with the way this program has been implemented in NYC, including how we believe it works to magnify inequities, as well as about the continued pro-administration bias of reporting on this issue here.

Check out these segments from a recent Nightline investigation, aired April 14, including interviews with anxious NYC parents enrolling their four-year-olds in arduous test prep programs, because they believe that if they can get their kids into these programs they will be set for life, as well as an interview with Chancellor Walcott, who expresses no concern that some  parents may be paying four or five thousand dollars to prep their children for the test, because he says this gives them more "choices." Walcott also evinces a surprising lack of skepticism, given the extreme racial disparity in the results, that these exams  test actual giftedness rather than economic and social privilege.

No Busing for Overflow Kindergarteners in Queens

See email exchange between Marge Kolb, head of the Presidents council in D24 in Queens, and Kathleen Grimm of DOE below.

To this day, DOE has refused to put the placement of G and T classes through any public process for community input, leading to flawed decision-making and the awful outcome described below, with parents having to spend hours transporting their Kindergarten children to schools miles away from their zoned schools – with no busing provided.

As Marge says, "DOE cannot pretend to be 'well-managed' and continue to perpetrate these kind of harms upon parents and children."

___

From: MKolbcorr@aol.com [mailto:MKolbcorr@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 10:48 AM
To: Klein Joel I.
Cc: Fighetti Gabriela; Sternberg Marc; dmytrocec24@yahoo.com ; Roseann Darche; nickcec24@aol.com ; Chan Madelene
Subject: No Busing for Overflow Kindergarteners?

Dear Chancellor Klein:

I recently called the District 24 office to inquire about the schools in our district with capped kindergartens (which I believe, currently number 6 or 7 schools). I was shocked to learn that busing has still NOT been arranged for 10-12 Kindergarten students from PS 12 in northern Woodside who were offered seats LAST MAY at PS 128 in Middle Village. I was told that one parent may be walking the 4.5 mile round trip to get her child to school each day (twice! in the morning and afternoon) and another parent may be close to losing her job because of the time involved in delivering and picking up her child from school . Parents were initially (and kindly) given metrocards by the PS 128 principal so they could make their way by public bus with their children, but he has since had to stop providing these due to the expense, so now parents are expected to pay their own way (and take two buses) to get their children to school each day. Please note that PS 12 has a free lunch rate of 74% and Limited English Proficiency of 34% - this is primarily an immigrant population being served.

At the September 28 D24 CEC meeting, Gabby Fighetti from the Portfolio division stated that she had just learned of this situation and would immediately take action. Now, weeks later I am told by the D24 office that these students will not be able to be offered busing. This is unacceptable!

I find it absolutely appalling that instead of offering PS 12 students seats at PS 229, which is the next school zone to the south, the DOE instead placed a brand-new 1^st grade G&T class at PS 229 which could have instead been placed at the new PS 330 (at IS 73) which opened this year with a Kindergarten G&T. The class at PS 229 draws most of its students from outside the school zone, and thus, had it not been opened, PS 229 might very well have been able to take the overflow from PS 12 (as it took overflow from PS 143 last year).

This is just another example of why the centralization of decisions such as this is detrimental to districts. The right hand at Central does not know what the left hand is doing. You have CEC and Presidents’ Council leadership who have years of experience in the district and a perfectly competent District Superintendent on the ground, yet were any of us consulted in advance about these issues? No!

I would like an immediate report as to what is being done to get transportation for the affected students. In the meantime I will alert the local elected officials to this situation.

Marge Kolb

President, D24 Presidents’ Council

___

From: Grimm Kathleen [mailto:KGrimm@schools.nyc.gov]
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 4:11 PM
To: MKolbcorr@aol.com
Cc: Fighetti Gabriela; Sternberg Marc; Chan Madelene; Shear Jeffrey; Goldstein Eric
Subject: FW: No Busing for Overflow Kindergarteners?

Marge,

I am sorry for any frustration here, but PS 12 is a school that does not have busing. Children who are eligible can continue to receive MetroCards, but we cannot provide them to parents. I wish that I could be more help here.

Kathleen

___

From: MKolbcorr@aol.com [mailto:MKolbcorr@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 5:01 PM
To: KGrimm@schools.nyc.gov
Cc: GFighetti@schools.nyc.gov; MSternberg@schools.nyc.gov; MChan2@schools.nyc.gov; JShear@schools.nyc.gov; EGoldstein@schools.nyc.gov; dmytrocec24@yahoo.com; rdarche@queensbp.org
Subject: Re: FW: No Busing for Overflow Kindergarteners?

Dear Ms. Grimm:

Your information is incorrect. PS 12 HAS busing, it is PS 128 that does not, and inasmuch as DOE has offered seats to overflow students from PS 12 to attend PS 128 (AS LONG AGO AS LAST MAY!!!) it is incumbent upon the DOE to provide transportation to those students.

How come your reply to me does not address the fact that PS 12 parents were led to believe that they would receive busing or that seats at PS 229 (much closer to PS 12 than PS 128 is) were not offered but were instead slotted for a NEW G&T 1st grade class which could just as easily have been located at the new PS 330 which was already getting a NEW G&T kindergarten class?

DOE cannot pretend to be "well-managed" and continue to perpetrate these kinds of harms upon parents and children.

I already have The Daily News interested in this story and the local City Councilmember, Jimmy Van Bramer has been apprised, so I expect a better answer from you.

Marge Kolb

President, D24 Presidents' Council

The myth of the gifted child

Good article in this week’s New York Magazine by Jennifer Senior, about the myth of the gifted child – with only about 25% of children who were tested at age four as “gifted” repeating at 17.

It also reveals the unfairness of the administration's current admissions policies, based on strict cut-offs on high stakes tests, because the results are so highly biased in terms of race and class.

As one expert says, “Sometimes,” he says, “you look at a big city’s decisions to do this and wonder if it’s about nurturing giftedness or if it’s about keeping middle-class families in the city limits.”

The Times' enduring obsession with Gifted and talented programs, and what is left out

This morning, the NY Times has yet another article about the city's Gifted and Talented programs, and the high-stakes exams that control admissions to these programs. See today's front page story, Tips for the Admissions Test ... to Kindergarten . It all seems so familiar....and indeed it is.

By my quick count, this is at least the ninth article about G and T that the Times has run in the last seven months.

To add insult to injury, this is the second Times article about the admissions process that omits any mention of its inherently discriminatory nature - which has significantly worsened under this administration. This is due to the Chancellor's insistence that all G and T admissions should be based solely on the results of high stakes exams, which Klein claims ato be more "equitable" but which are highly inequitable in terms of results.

His policies have also directly led to the proliferation of expensive prep programs that few typical NYC families can afford. If you are going to run articles about G and T admissions, failing to cite their contribution to worsening racial and economic segregation in our schools is regrettable. In fact, many people said that these policies would have a racially discriminatory impact, including Patrick Sullivan and Debbie Meier , who both predicted this on our blog when Klein first announced the new admissions policy in the fall of 2007.

For other recent Times articles about G and T, see this one, from October 19, about a new expensive private school in Manhattan: School for the Gifted, and Only the Gifted.

Here is another, a Susan Dominus column from August 17, Connecting Anxious Parents and Educators, at $450 an Hour , about a consultant who helps get kids into private schools: "It would be her mission to democratize information for New York’s most competitive elite."

"Democratize" at $450 an hour? This is like Michael Bloomberg claiming the recent election was fair, when he outspent his opponent sixteen to one.

This was followed by yet another Dominus column on August 25: Early Testing In City Schools Called Faulty. Although she discusses the unreliability of G and T exams, in that children tested at a young age often score quite differently in later years, she fails to mention how the results are also discriminatory, given the influence of socio-economic factors. And she uncritically repeats the administration's claims that their policies are somehow equitable:

" Chancellor Joel I. Klein has tried to rejigger the testing system to be more fair, with uniform cut-offs citywide and better outreach to less-advantaged areas. But what ''Nurture Shock'' suggests, and Ms. Commitante [head of DOE's gifted and talented progrm] somewhat acknowledges, is that just means the randomness of gifted and talented placement is now more equitable."

To the contrary, see this far more informative oped in the Daily News, by James Borland, a professor of education, who points out how inherently inequitable the admissions process has become:

A one-size-fits-all approach to identifying students for the city's gifted and talented programs - which is just what the Department of Education has implemented - is neither equitable nor educationally sound. In fact, testing very young children, before the educational system exerts its admittedly limited equalizing effect, only magnifies the effects of differences in socioeconomic status. It favors children who have had the advantages of expensive preschools; of parents with time, ability and inclination to read to them; and of exposure to cultural events.

On September 7, Dominus yet wrote yet another column, about a new G and T public school in Brooklyn, Going the Distance to Get a Child to a Magnet School , in which she omits any analysis of the economic or racial composition of the school, and instead, approvingly focuses on one "highly motivated" mom, who sends her son, Benjamin, to the school, although it is miles away:

...a bus hired by a dozen families, at about $400 a month each, will pick up Benjamin and another 5-year-old before stopping at homes in Crown Heights, Carroll Gardens, Park Slope and Prospect Heights. Finally, at least an hour and a half after Benjamin has left home, he and the others will arrive at Brooklyn School of Inquiry, a brand-new citywide school for gifted and talented children at the corner of Stillwell Avenue and Avenue P, in Gravesend. Such are the lengths to which some parents — highly motivated parents — will go to take advantage of the city’s coveted magnet programs for gifted children.

Is it really only a matter of motivation? Last spring, the Times ran numerous pieces dealing with G and T programs on the Upper West Side, the epicenter of the phenomenon, including this one on the City Room blog, Are Parents Thinking Differently About Education? (June 29):

The phone keeps ringing at the Upper West Side office of Robin Aronow, an educational consultant and schools guru: anxious families suddenly rethinking whether they can afford private school, distressed parents wondering what to do if their children don’t make it into vaunted gifted and talented programs.

See also these articles from the paper: Students Must Retake Lost Gifted Tests (May 15); Gifted Tests Missing on Upper West Side (May 13), and More Children Take the Tests for Gifted Programs, and More Qualify (May 5).

In this last article, the reporter discloses that the number of students who qualified for G and T seats rose by 45 percent over the year before, but not until the sixth paragraph does the reader discover that the racial disparity in admissions remained largely unchanged.

On the upper West side, the number of children taking the tests rose by 15 percent, while the number of students making the cut off score increased by 48 percent. Though the reporter does not speculate on the cause of this phenomenon, the DOE spokesperson attributed this increase to "families’ increasing familiarity with the new admissions process." Instead, these higher scores are most likely the results of the increased amount of test prep taking place.

By continually reporting on the expensive consultants that are profiting off parents' anxieties to get their children into G and T programs, the Times is encouraging their proliferation. Indeed, the paper deserves to get a cut from these consultants, by regurgitating these articles, over and over again.

If charter schools are the obsession of the editors of the NY Post, gifted and talented programs remain the singular obsession of the Times.

Both serve a tiny proportion of NYC public school students and are far less important than other issues that affect the huge majority of our kids: the systemic and worsening crisis in overcrowding and its impact on class sizes, the lack of transparency and flawed priorities of DOE spending, including the mushrooming school bonus program and the continued growth in Tweed's accountability office, the loss of arts and enrichment programs, the obsession with closing schools rather than improving them, the increased amount of test prep that dominates classroom time and the like -- all of which have contributed to the decline of educational quality in our schools, and all of which our paper of record fails to cover adequately, or not at all.

Racial gap in gifted and talented grows larger

In today's Daily News, an article explores the way in which Tweed completely botched gifted and talented admissions this year, by centralizing the process and basing admissions entirely on the results of high stakes tests – with the effect that less than half as many students qualified this year, and far fewer children of color ended up being admitted.

While Bloomberg promised to create more programs in “historically underserved districts’, in these districts, many fewer of these classes were the result, with some primarily minority districts having no gifted classes at all, and racial and economic disparities widening.

A NY Times article from yesterday has even more details, pointing out that in six districts there is not a single gifted class this year: Districts 7,8,9 in the Bronx, and 16, 19 and 23 in Brooklyn. Moreover, in many schools, gifted and talented classes are only half-filled, with the effect that some G and T Kindergarten classes have 16 children or less, while the other regular kindergarten classes are crammed with as many as 28 students - a situation that Lisa B. Donlan, president of the Community Education Council in District 1 is quoted as saying “unfair to the entire school community.”

It’s a pretty good article except for the following misstatement:

“Problems with the new admissions policy surfaced in June, when an analysis by The New York Times showed that children from the city’s poorest districts were offered a smaller percentage of gifted slots than in the previous year, while children in the city’s wealthiest districts captured a greater share.”

Actually last November, Deborah Meier commented on our blog how any admissions policy based on test scores alone with lead to inequitable outcomes. After all, the National Academy of Sciences has pointed out that high stakes testing for such purposes can be viewed as inherently racially discriminatory. Following Tweed’s announcement of the results, in early April, Patrick Sullivan pointed out how the policy had clearly led to fewer kids accepted into gifted classes in the poorer districts:

“The low number of children qualifying in lower income districts suggests the DOE has not met its goal of expanding the reach of G&T programs…. This is the fourth or fifth year the Bloomberg administration has changed the admission process. Its efforts would clearly be better spent working on building programs and outreach in historically underserved communities.”

Finally, Eduwonkette offered a detailed analysis in mid-April, With New Gifted and Talented Rules, Who Wins and Loses?, showing the huge gap between the wealthy districts and those with more free-lunch students.

Problems with the new admissions policy surfaced in June due to NY Times reporting? Hardly.

How many policies of this administration have led to more racial disparities widening, rather than narrowing?

Here are just a few examples: We have far fewer students of color in our gifted classes now, there have been fewer admitted to our selective, specialized high schools, and our teaching force has become significantly whiter over the course of the last six years.

Gifted and talented policies: the NY Times finally catches up

The NY Times had a front page story yesterday describing how the Chancellor's changes to the Gifted and Talented admissions process have led to far less diverse group of students being served by the program, both economically and racially, a fact that was pointed out weeks ago on our blog as well as in a far more detailed manner, Eduwonkette’s.

Months before that, when the city first proposed to centralize the G and T admissions process and base its decision solely on uniform cut off scores on standardized exams, we pointed out that this would likely significantly diminish diversity and benefit wealthier students at the expense of poor and minority kids.

Here are excerpts from entries that Patrick Sullivan, Debbie Meier and I wrote about the likely effects of Klein's policies back in Oct. and Nov: here, here and here.

Apparently others warned the DOE as well, including Joseph Renzulli, who serves as a consultant to a city task force on the gifted.

Using standardized exams for high stakes decisions has a racially disparate impact, according to the National Academy of Sciences task force on the subject – and thus is racially discriminatory.

But Joel Klein’s notion of “equity,” as it is becoming more and more clear, is not to increase diversity and opportunity for all kids – but to base all decisions on abstract, numerical formulae that he and his minions devise without input from anyone else – like the DOE's controversial "fair student formula" that would cut half of all failing schools by an average of $400,000, and the absurd formula for school grades -- no matter what the results or the real impact on kids.

DOE's Chinese Take Out Menu delivery system at $5 per letter

From a District 3 parent:

"We received our placement letter to be in a District 3 G&T program. Found it scotch taped next to the lobby door (outside of the lobby) next to assorted UPS notices. (Yes, scotch taped.) Hand delivered! (No postmark.)

Sure glad we happened to notice it on our way out of the building. No buzzer to let us know we had important mail waiting for us downstairs.

Friends who live one street over found their letter on a ledge near their mailboxes while several other letters were left in the vestibule of their building. They called it the Chinese Take Out Menu theory of delivery."

Thanks to Bijou Miller who forwarded us this email. For more on the DOE's original (and expensive!) delivery of these these letters, see our earlier entry.

hand delivery of G and T letters: more waste by DOE

After all the fiascos and late arrivals of preK and middle school admissions, there are lots of comments on Insideschools blog that the Gifted and Talented letters have finally arrived – hand-delivered on Saturday and Sunday to parents throughout all parts of the city -- by drivers in vans!

As one commented, “No postage; totally WEIRD!!! I appreciate the care in sending it, but the cost has to be INSANE!!”

I hope some reporters are looking into this…what a way to run a school system.

Update: see this follow-up article by Eliz. Green in the NY Sun.

On how DOE's preK fiasco disadvantages poor kids the most

Note: If you are a parent who applied for a preK seat for your child, please take this online survey.

More evidence of the massive screw-up in preK admissions, compounding the serial fiascos of middle school admissions, Gifted and Talented, principal bonuses, and nearly every other program that DOE has insisted on taking control over in recent months.

Despite the fact that there are 23,000 available preK slots for the next school year, 3,000 out of 20,000 applicants received not a single seat: From the DOE website:

Applications for the second round of the pre-Kindergarten admissions process will be available at borough enrollment offices and online beginning June 23. Anyone who did not receive a match in the first round will automatically receive an application in the mail. In the first round, 17,000 of 20,000 applicants received an offer to a pre-K program, and 15,000 received an offer to their first-choice school.

Up till now, the media has featured mostly middle school parents who are justifiably angry at being denied seats despite sibling preferences that DOE assured them would guarantee their child a seat -- or others who had been locked out of their zoned elementary school when out-of-zone applicants received offers.

Another problem, not as widely reported, is how the new centralized process worked against parents whose kids need preK the most. According to a teacher in a Title one school in Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, usually by this time her school has filled up three classes of preK with neighborhood children; but this year they received enough applicants to fill up only one class. Why?

Before this year, neighborhood parents logically went to their local school to apply; this year they were not allowed to do so but were diverted to borough enrollment centers blocks away or were forced to fill out application forms online. The standardization and centralization of the process is inherently inequitable to those parents who do not have internet access or the time to travel long distances to sign up.

This is yet another instance in which the Chancellor’s peculiar notion of equity works against real equity, as Eduwonkette and others have pointed out.

As teacher Lisa North reported on our NYC education list serv:

My school, PS 3 in Brooklyn, has had 3 pre-k classes for the last 2 years. Parents would come to the school to register. Now they have to go downtown Brooklyn first. Our parents DO NOT do that! At this time we only have enough students for ONE class. Why can't parents register directly in the school?

We are also in danger of losing our "gifted and talented" program – one of the few in Bedford-Stuyvesant, because of the new DOE testing.

On top of that, the charter schools are beginning to take a number of our level 3/4 students (as well as some of the others), but especially students whose families are more involved with their education. The DOE is wreaking havoc with our school!

Despite the fact that it is usually the middle class parents who protest loudest, in this case, as in the DOE's utter refusal to reduce class size, their expansion of small schools initiative, and nearly everything else that they do, the poor and neediest kids lose out the most.

Gifted and Talented Admissions Revised

At an emergency 8:00 AM meeting Thursday morning, the Panel for Educational Policy voted to expand G&T admissions to all kids meeting the 90th percentile on the two standardized tests required for entrance. The Panel had previously approved the 95th percentile as the standard in the fall.

Contrary to some reports that notifications will be mailed on April 18th, the DOE explained that parents will be told how their children score starting at the end of the month. Originally, notifications were to be mailed at the end of March. The G&T admissions process has become notorious for confusion and delay under the current administration.

For Manhattan districts, here are the number of children who passed the 90th percentile cutoff and will be guaranteed a seat: D1: 51, D2: 371, D3: 370, D4: 8, D5: 37, D6: 50. In D6 the current number of children enrolled in the entry Kindergarten class is 80 compared with 50 who qualify for next year suggesting the number of seats may shrink there. Otherwise, all Manhattan districts had more children who qualify than seats filled this year.

The low number of children qualifying in lower income districts suggests the DOE has not met its goal of expanding the reach of G&T programs. While the expansion of the cutoff is welcome, all of the criticisms leveled when Manhattan Borough President Stringer and I voted to oppose the new policy remain. This is the fourth or fifth year the Bloomberg administration has changed the admission process. Its efforts would clearly be better spent working on building programs and outreach in historically underserved communities.

See news reports from NY1 here , the NY Times here, NY Post here and Daily News here.

Update: Admissions stats by district here in Excel.

Gifted and Talented Admissions -- Confusion and Delay?

UPDATE (April 9th): As reported, the PEP will hold an emergency vote on April 10th to lower the cutoff to 90% for district G&T programs. Notification letters to be mailed "sometime this month".

In today's Daily News, Erin Einhorn reports DOE is rethinking where to set the cutoff for G&T admissions. The policy to set the bar at 95% cutoff on the two standardized tests , the OLSAT and BSRA was set in November.

At the time, many parents tried to convince the DOE that they were making a mistake. The District 3 CEC passed a resolution in opposition to the revised policy. In our letter to Manhattan parents explaining our vote against the G&T policy when presented to the Panel for Educational Policy, Manhattan Borough President Stringer and I raised the concern: "this higher cutoff score for admissions raises the very real possibility that a number of current programs will not be filled to capacity and will therefore be closed, leaving parents with fewer programming options".

Let's hope the DOE refrains from shuttering successful programs. Meanwhile, notifications have not been sent out, putting the whole process behind schedule, which was already pushed too far out into the spring.

Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer On Problems with Gifted and Talented Policy

The following letter was issued to Manhattan public school parents following the approval of the G&T policy at the November meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy. Information on the policy can be found at the Department of Ed G&T here.

THE CITY OF NEW YORK
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN

SCOTT M. STRINGER
BOROUGH PRESIDENT

December 10, 2007

Dear Manhattan Public School Parents:

On November 26, 2007, the Panel for Educational Policy voted on proposed changes to the New York City Department of Education's (DOE) Gifted and Talented (G&T) Program. As some of you may already know, my appointee to the Panel for Educational Policy, Patrick Sullivan, voted against the proposed changes. While I am strongly supportive of increasing equity and access in G&T, I believe this proposal is marred by the same lack of concern for parental input and problems of poor implementation that often plague DOE efforts. The proposal was passed by the Panel and is therefore now policy. I nonetheless want to share with you the reasons that Patrick and I felt it necessary to vote against these changes.

• The DOE appears to be poorly prepared for the changes in G&T enrollment, despite widely reported failures in the admissions process last year and an expected doubling of applications this year to over 25,000. For example, the department has not analyzed last year's applicant Otis Lennon School Abilities Test (OLSAT) scores to plan where new seats will be required. Given that certified G&T teachers will be hard to find on short notice and facilities are not yet identified, I am concerned there will not be the required programs in place.

• The proposal by DOE changes the cutoff score for admissions to G&T programs from the top 10 percent of applicants (90th percentile) to the top 5 percent (95th percentile). This higher cutoff score for admissions raises the very real possibility that a number of current programs will not be filled to capacity and will therefore be closed, leaving parents with fewer programming options.

• Under the new timeline for the admissions process, parents will not be notified of admissions decisions until May 31st. This late notification severely restricts parents' ability to choose between DOE G&T programs and independent, Catholic, and charter schools--many of which require parents to accept offers of admission prior to May 31st. The new G&T policy, therefore, actually undermines parental choice, purportedly a key component of DOE reforms.

• The Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA) and the OLSAT will be the two assessments that will be used to evaluate students for admission to G&T programs. The OLSAT, which DOE has stated will comprise 75 percent of each student's score, is a test for which students can be prepped, and materials are marketed to parents for this very purpose. There is a real risk, then, that children whose families can afford to purchase prep materials will have an unfair advantage over students whose families cannot afford to do so.

• The plan offers assessments to all Kindergarten children which will help increase access by allowing an entry point to G&T programs for those families that may be unaware of the opportunity. But I am concerned about the requirement that all children must be tested. Parents who prefer that their child not be subjected to standardized testing at this young age must be allowed to opt out of G&T testing.

Finally, I am well aware that public school parents, as represented by their Community Education Councils (CECs), had little input into these important policy decisions. This lack of community and parent involvement continues to be a key issue under the current system of school governance and needs to be addressed as mayoral control is considered for renewal in 2009. Please be assured that my office will continue to monitor DOE's implementation of the new policy and the effects it has on Gifted and Talented programming. To that end, please keep my office apprised of G&T related issues specific to each of your districts.

Very truly yours,
Scott M. Stringer

Manhattan Borough President

MUNICIPAL BUILDING v 1 CENTRE STREET v NEW YORK, NY 10007
PHONE (212) 669-8300 FAX (212) 669-4305
www.mbpo.org bp@manhattanbp.org

Report on Queens Gifted & Talented Town Hall Meeting

About 60-70 parents attended the Thursday, Nov. 8th meeting at Hillcrest High School. Although some of the questions were similar to those at the Manhattan meeting (see our previous posting and InsideSchools blog for reports on that meeting) there were many other concerns and questions raised, including:

Q. How/why was the 95th percentile chosen as a cut-off?

A. Research shows that it is this group of students who need significant curriculum adjustment. This is the cut-off used by a number of other large, urban school districts, including LA, Philadelphia, Seattle etc.

Q. How do the OLSAT and BSRA test scores relate to Stanford-Binet?

A. Unlike Stanford-Binet, no IQ score is yielded by the tests the city has selected.

Q. Will students NOT currently enrolled in G&T programs who are at or above the entry grade still be allowed to test for open spots in upper grades?

A. Yes, at a later time in the spring. However, District 29 in Queens just started its G&T program this year with a 1st grade class, so no seats above 2nd grade will be available next year. (This was met with much disgruntlement and begs the question of why several grades weren't added all at once this year in this particular district since the DOE had a test available which could be administered to children in different grades?)

Q. A number of parents, including many whose children are currently in G&T programs raised questions and concerns about what the curriculum is once children are in the program. One parent said she's had several children in G&T classes over the years and she believes the classes have "degraded." She believes many G&T teachers are not state certified and don't know what a G&T curriculum is.

A. The DOE has and will continue to offer professional development and support to G&T teachers. In addition, the DOE website offers G&T units of study which are aligned with the state standards. Marcia Lyles added that on Nov. 7 she met with principals whose schools have G&T programs to share with them concerns over the curriculum.

Another parent added that in D24, G&T programs at two schools differ as to whether they use a grade-level math book or one which is a year advanced. If there is such a discrepancy within one district as to curriculum, what goes on citywide? Also, some more established G&T programs may get grants from elected officials or have more organized committees of parents to fundraise for "extras" for the G&T classes (e.g. Chess, Foreign Language, Theater), while new programs don't.

Q. A few parents had questions about busing for children enrolled in G&T programs. One parent from D24 said her elementary school child lives 5.22 miles from her district G&T program and has been refused yellow busing (for living over 5 miles away). The mother now takes her daughter on two buses and a subway to get her to school. Another parent added that Special Ed. Students are bused all over the city and kids in G&T programs should be eligible for busing as well.

A. No real answer – they asked for the one mother's name to look into her individual situation.

Q. Why are the three city-wide G&T programs, which serve the highest scoring students (97th percentile), all located in Manhattan (and with no transportation provided for those living in the other four boroughs)?

A. No real answer – perhaps the DOE will look into this.

Q. Why do almost all the programs in Queens begin in 1st grade while in Manhattan almost all begin in Kindergarten? (Incidentally, D24 had a K start for 20 or 25 years, but was forced to drop K two or three years ago by the Region 4 G&T Director - who hailed from D30, which had a 1st grade start. The D24 CEC passed a resolution a year or two ago that the K start should continue, to no avail.)

A. No real answer. Ms. Lyles indicated that it was a decision made by the districts, then amended to say the regions. When asked how individual districts in Queens could go back to a K start, she had no answer.

Q. Are class sizes in G&T classes capped? One parent stated there were 34 children in her child's G&T class.

A. There are no special caps for gifted classes – they can go up to the contractual limits.

(Note:This is misleading – there are caps in some places, whether they be formal or informal – e.g. in D24 – 25 children are admitted to K-3 classes and then, perhaps, 30 for 4th and 5th grade. Other districts may have lower caps (D30?) and the city-wide programs are also allowed to keep their class sizes small (e.g. Anderson keeps 5th grade at 28).

Q. What is the plan for G&T students at the Middle School level?

A. This proposal only covers elementary school programs. OSEPO will be working on a middle school catalog, but there is no proposal to change G&T on the middle school level.

(Note: Again, this is an area where there are distinct differences around the city. D24 just added two "middle school gifted programs" this year with a proposal to have the students take 4 or 5 Regents exams by 8th grade as well as the Foreign Language test (Checkpoint-A). Instead of having 8-10 periods of English and Math per week, the plan is for these students to only have 5 or 6, thus allowing additional time in their schedules for Music, Foreign Language, Robotics etc. Do other districts have such distinct programs for middle school students? Furthermore, there is variation on whether, once admitted in K or 1st grade, students can make a seamless transition to middle school. In D30, the G&T program which begins in 1st and 2nd grade allows students to remain through 8th grade, without requalifying, even though they are the only 6-8th graders in an otherwise K-5 school – P.S. 122. Other districts require 5th graders to apply and qualify for middle school programs.)

Questions there wasn't time for:

1. It was mentioned by DOE officials that once a child is in a G&T program at a specific site in their district, they cannot transfer schools to a different G&T program. Why this is the case was not elaborated upon, but wouldn't it make sense that if one program is doing a "better" job than another or offering a better G&T curriculum and/or more enrichment opportunities, that parents might want the option to transfer?

2. Since many districts may have to add G&T programs, where will all the certified teachers come from? (Even if a few G&T programs are eliminated, there is no guarantee that those teachers will move from the schools where the currently teach.)

3. Why not create additional classes at higher grades if enough children test at the 95th percentile? Parents of current 2nd and 3rd graders expressed concern that their children would only be able to compete for an extremely small number of seats which open up in the higher grades. If a child has newly moved into a district, didn't perform up to his/her abilities when tested in a previous year, is an immigrant who has now sufficiently developed English skills, etc. shouldn't the DOE be able to accommodate them at higher grades?

--Reported by Marge Kolb, CPAC Rep. for District 24

Gifted and Talented Policy at October Panel for Educational Policy Meeting

This month's PEP meeting was held on Staten Island. A special thanks to the D31 CEC who provided a warm welcome. Here are the highlights from my perspective as the Manhattan representative on the Panel:

Proposed Gifted and Talented Policy

The new G&T admissions policy was presented but not discussed. Highlights:

• Request for testing forms available starting December 3rd
• There will be two tests used to determine each child's score: the Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA) and the Otis Lennon School Abilities Test (OLSAT). The OLSAT will count for 75% of the score and the BSRA for 25%.
• There will be strict cutoff for the combined score. A child must fall in the 95% percentile nationally to be considered gifted.
• All children at or above the cutoff score will be guaranteed a seat in a G&T program. Children not passing the cutoff will not be eligible for G&T programs.
• The three citywide programs (NEST, TAG and Anderson) will have an additional onsite assessment.

Beyond these changes scheduled to take effect starting in December, the DOE is proposing for next year to test all Kindergarten students with the Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA).

See the G&T proposal document (pdf) for more information including the proposed timeline.

Already I have heard many complaints from parents about the proposal, especially the following:

• The standardized tests being used are correlated with socioeconomic status and may be heavily influenced by child's preparation in the home. It's not clear that the proposal brings us any closer the the stated goal of a more equitable system. See more on this viewpoint here.
• Notifications of acceptance are given too late for parents who are also considering private or parochial school options. This late notification retards parental choice, supposedly one of the key elements of the Chancellor's reform program.
• The implication of the plan is that some districts have too many G&T seats and these may need to be curtailed. While it is important to add capacity where it is needed, there is no good argument to close programs that are working. Based on last year's OLSAT results, DOE should have a sense of impact on each program but don't seem to be discussing it with principals.
  

DOE will take comments for a month, take them into consideration and release the final plan. Members of the public can submit comments through November 25 via e-mail (to giftedandtalented@schools.nyc.gov), phone (call (212) 374-5219) or at a public hearing:

Manhattan: Monday, November 5, Fashion Industries HS (225 W 24th St.)
Staten Island: Tuesday, November 6, PS 58 (77 Marsh Ave.)
Queens: Thursday, November 8, John Adams HS (101-01 Rockaway Blvd.)
Bronx: Thursday, November 15, Evander Childs HS (800 E. Gun Hill Rd.)
Brooklyn: Monday, November 19, Brooklyn Technical HS (29 Fort Greene Pl.)

Speaker sign up is at 6:00 and hearings start at 6:30

School New York City Educational Construction Fund (ECF)

The ECF provides long term leases on city land to developers who then build both a commercial project and a school. It's a way for the city to get school capacity without capital funds.

Jamie Smarr presented the two current projects of the ECF, 1765 First Avenue (future site of East Side Middle School) and 250 East 57th Street (PS 59 and High School for Art & Design).

While the idea behind the ECF is fine, there just have not been enough projects to make a dent in the capacity needs of school system. The ECF has been in existence since 1967 and has built 18,000 seats, or roughly 450 a year. Against 1.1 million kids, that's not much. But even these seats are not necessarily incremental. For example, the 1765 First Avenue project is replacing a school that was closed earlier. I asked Jamie what was stopping us from doing more projects and he pointed to the need for developers to cooperate. I asked if he got support from the Mayor and Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff in reaching out to developers. He said he had the cooperation of the Chancellor.

Chancellor's Regulation A-655 (School Leadership Teams)

Martine Guerrier presented the proposed changes to the SLT regulations. Many parent leaders have expressed the concern that the changes to the regulations would weaken SLTs by giving the principal more influence than the current regulations allow, especially by placing the SLT task of creating the schools Comprehensive Educational Plan (CEP) behind the principal's responsibility to define the budget. For more information on this point, see testimony at the City Council hearings from myself, Jim Devor and Joan McKeever Thomas (here).

Martine and I had some back and forth on these issues. She said the final A-655 regulations are not yet ready.

Public Comment

There were many speakers at the Staten Island session who complained about poor treatment of special ed students - lost IEPs, poorly trained teachers, lack of programs and a tendency on the part of school staff to criminalize the behavior of special ed kids. There were several speakers who had accounts of police being called to deal with misbehaving students including one disturbing story of a very young girl who was threatened with arrest and handcuffing.

Peter Calendrella, 1st VP of the District 31 CEC made an impassioned plea for DOE to find ways to allow students to carry phones to and from school. Mr. Calendrella, who was formerly an Assistant District Attorney working with the Special Victims Unit, pointed to two recent cases where Staten Island students could not call police when they witnessed a crime in the immediate vicinity of their school.