NYC has gifted programs from 1st grade, and it has selective high schools such as Stuyvesant and Bronx High School of Science. In some respects its system seems more rational and meritocratic to me than that in much of the rest of the country, where one's school depends entirely on one's address.
That wasn't my point. The NYC public school system is mad. Some students end up spending three hours a day just commuting. Getting into a school you like requires an insanely high amount of activity (parental and student)
and there are no guarantees.
It isn't as meritocratic as you might think, either. If it was, the five-year-old kids with the highest IQs would get into the gifted kindergartens, with slots assigned in reverse order of IQ. But they don't and it doesn't work that way. A
story about New York high schools in the New York Times this week indicates that the computer selection system is opaque, and that there are apparent inconsistencies in admissions.
Still, he said he was shocked when Radcliffe was shut out while students with below-average grades got into Midwood. �There was nothing I could tell the parents,� Mr. Mareus said. �I was baffled.�
The comments give a lot of insight into the process, too.
I would want no part of that mess, and I can understand why others might not either.
