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    Desegregation Plan: Eliminate All Gifted Programs in New York
    A group appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed seismic changes to the nation’s largest school system.
    By Eliza Shapiro
    New York Times
    Aug. 26, 2019

    For years, New York City has essentially maintained two parallel public school systems.

    A group of selective schools and programs geared to students labeled gifted and talented is filled mostly with white and Asian children. The rest of the system is open to all students and is predominantly black and Hispanic.

    Now, a high-level panel appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio is recommending that the city do away with most of these selective programs in an effort to desegregate the system, which has 1.1 million students and is by far the largest in the country.

    Mr. de Blasio, who has staked his mayoralty on reducing inequality, has the power to adopt some or all of the proposals without input from the State Legislature or City Council. If he does, the decision would fundamentally reshape a largely segregated school system and could reverberate in school districts across the country.

    The mayor will now be thrust into the center of a sensitive debate about race and class at home, even as he is straining to stand out in a crowded field of Democratic contenders for president.

    He risks alienating tens of thousands of mostly white and Asian families whose children are enrolled in the gifted programs and selective schools. If a substantial number of those families leave the system, it would be even more difficult to achieve integration.

    The proposals, contained in a report to be released on Tuesday, may also face opposition from some middle-class black and Hispanic families that have called for more gifted programs in mostly minority neighborhoods as a way to offer students of color more access to high-quality schools.

    ************************************************************

    This is an awful idea. A program for gifted students must screen for giftedness, and racial disparities in the students selected do nor proved that the selection process was unfair. Much research has shown that IQ tests are not racially biased in the sense of making biased predictions of outcomes related to IQ.

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    It's a shame how often these matters become issues of politics. Egalitarianism and pusillanimous officials who succeed by allowing public opinion to be projected onto them are why we can't have nice things.


    "The thing that doesn't fit is the most interesting."
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    The Plan to Scrap New York’s Gifted Programs: 5 Takeaways https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/nyregion/gifted-programs-nyc.html

    Desegregation Plan: Eliminate All Gifted Programs in New York
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/nyregion/gifted-programs-nyc-desegregation.html

    I've seen this coming for some time. Now they've thrown down the gauntlet, and we can't tiptoe around the politics of gifted any longer. I'm having trouble knowing where to start with my disgust at this. IQ tests are solid science. But science has many inconvenient facts for the authoritarian left. Do we have a meritocracy, or do we give everyone a medal for participation.

    Gifted programs and screened schools have “become proxies for separating students who can and should have opportunities to learn together"

    You can get accepted into NYC's gifted schools by doing well on their test. You can do well on the test through native ability (IQ) and/or studying hard. I'm sorry people don't like the result, but I don't see how the test is unfair. I'm sorry the result is separating students, but its unfair to argue backwards from the demographic result, to throw the gifted kids back into a classroom that's taught to the 40th percentile and slows them down.

    The panel’s report, obtained by The New York Times, amounts to a repudiation of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s education agenda, which reoriented the system toward school choice for families, including more gifted and screened schools, to combat decades of low performance. Some of those policies deepened inequality even as student achievement rose.

    So the schools and students achievement will certainly regress if NYC implements the report. I'll stop here and ask you to ponder why you never hear Asians complaining about white privilege. Except for Ivy League admission.

    It would be a good time to start a private gifted school in NYC. Those who can afford it will flee in droves. Those who can arrange their lives around it would do well to move to Singapore, Israel, or Reno, or some of the few US states who know better than to damage gifted children with a misguided, anti-scientific change from a gifted program to a gifted pogrom.


    Last edited by thx1138; 08/27/19 07:25 PM.
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    Originally Posted by thx1138
    The Plan to Scrap New York’s Gifted Programs: 5 Takeaways https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/nyregion/gifted-programs-nyc.html

    Desegregation Plan: Eliminate All Gifted Programs in New York
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/nyregion/gifted-programs-nyc-desegregation.html

    I've seen this coming for some time. Now they've thrown down the gauntlet, and we can't tiptoe around the politics of gifted any longer. I'm having trouble knowing where to start with my disgust at this. IQ tests are solid science. But science has many inconvenient facts for the authoritarian left. Do we have a meritocracy, or do we give everyone a medal for participation.

    Gifted programs and screened schools have “become proxies for separating students who can and should have opportunities to learn together"

    You can get accepted into NYC's gifted schools by doing well on their test. You can do well on the test through native ability (IQ) and/or studying hard. I'm sorry people don't like the result, but I don't see how the test is unfair. I'm sorry the result is separating students, but its unfair to argue backwards from the demographic result, to throw the gifted kids back into a classroom that's taught to the 40th percentile and slows them down.

    The panel’s report, obtained by The New York Times, amounts to a repudiation of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s education agenda, which reoriented the system toward school choice for families, including more gifted and screened schools, to combat decades of low performance. Some of those policies deepened inequality even as student achievement rose.

    So the schools and students achievement will certainly regress if NYC implements the report. I'll stop here and ask you to ponder why you never hear Asians complaining about white privilege. Except for Ivy League admission.

    It would be a good time to start a private gifted school in NYC. Those who can afford it will flee in droves. Those who can arrange their lives around it would do well to move to Singapore, Israel, or Reno, or some of the few US states who know better than to damage gifted children with a misguided, anti-scientific "gifted pogrom".

    Thank you, thx1138, for speaking up for gifted populations... the gifted are a true minority, and underdogs in our society.
    smile

    Also see related thread, here, in the forum General Discussion.

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    Yes, its unfortunate how often cowardly politicians use shaming as their preferred communication style in order to control populations, and maintain power over the masses.

    Also see related thread, here, in the forum THINKING BIG about Gifted Education.

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    Originally Posted by indigo
    [
    Thank you, thx1138, for speaking up for gifted populations... the gifted are a true minority, and underdogs in our society.
    smile

    I wonder what I'm really going to be able to accomplish, other than possibly starting a small brush fire of discussion here. A problem is that, for all our giftedness, we've never been able to formulate a simple argument for gifted education. The issues become complex... and now having to mix in political positions makes them an order of magnitude more complex. And "democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner." For gifted, its 99 wolves and 1 lamb. For DYS, 999 wolves and 1 lamb. I did find one potential angle though. Avoiding the complexities and simply saying "gifted kids are special needs kids". Which is not only true, and a pragmatic policy that I think 4 of the 50 US states have adopted, but here I go venturing back into the quicksand of politics, a brilliant angle when you have to have some kind of victim status to have a political voice nowadays. In the mean time, either homeschool, or move to another state or country. See https://www.hoagiesgifted.org/mandates.htm

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    Originally Posted by thx1138
    ...we've never been able to formulate a simple argument for gifted education.
    Au contraire, Pierre...!
    smile

    For continuing growth and development, kids need:
    1) appropriate academic challenge
    2) true peers
    For typical kids, these needs may be met in a general ed classroom, however for children with higher IQ/giftedness, these needs may not be met without intentional effort in providing advanced curriculum, and grouping for instruction with academic/intellectual peers.

    Some negatives which may occur when a child is not learning something new every day include these observations or signs that a child is not appropriately challenged.

    Originally Posted by thx1138
    "gifted kids are special needs kids"
    Yes!
    smile

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    Perhaps what I mean is, we're losing, and well I still feel our explanations are too subtle or complex, to convince much of the other 99%, who default to simple self-interest, or to "gifted myths" https://www.nagc.org/myths-about-gifted-students I wonder if NAGC admits that we're losing, takes some responsibility for that. Or has any statistics or polls to confirm this. For example, in the web page above, well we see "myth" and "truth" but a poll would likely reveal that by and large "truth" is not known, understood, or accepted. And I suggest this boils down to, its hard to feel sorry for gifted, and its hard to see them as victims, and in much of the west's politically correct climate, you have to be a victim to have a voice, and really gifted is associated with white/male/privilege. A lot of moving parts here and I wonder if NAGC is up to the task. They need to hire Frank Luntz to find an effective meme. Best I've found so far is "gifted kids are special needs kids".

    Here in California for example "Special education services were provided to 774,665 individuals, newborn through twenty-two years of age, in 2017–18. California provides specially designed instruction, at no cost to parents, to meet the unique needs of children with disabilities."https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/se/sr/cefspeced.asp

    Now there are about 6,186,278 school children in California https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sd/cb/ceffingertipfacts.asp

    774665/6,186,278 = .125 So can't we just add the 1% gifted to the special needs program, take it from 12.5% to 13.5% of the students. Plus there's already infrastructure in place.

    I don't expect this to cut much ice with the politicians, but the debacle in NYC is an example of the Naturalistic Fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy IQ science has the strongest correlations in social science or psychology. Its ridiculous to not conduct and discuss science just because it might lead to conclusions that don't fit in to some pre-ordained political correctness. Might as well mention GMVH here... https://heterodoxacademy.org/the-greater-male-variability-hypothesis/ ...

    “Team Carranza doesn’t simply want to level the playing field; they want to dig it up and salt it.” https://nypost.com/2019/08/27/the-c...rograms-like-the-one-that-worked-for-me/

    Last edited by thx1138; 08/28/19 10:22 AM.
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    There is a good chance the plan will not be implemented if opposition is mobilized.

    How to Destory a School System
    The plan to desegregate New York City’s schools is a recipe for disaster.
    Bob McManus
    City Journal
    August 28, 2019

    New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s task force on school desegregation aims to solve a problem that doesn’t exist by eliminating much of what does work in the city’s troubled public-school system, while failing to address its many shortcomings. The scheme would provoke bitter social discord and further reduce the relatively small number of white students in the system. On the upside, it would undoubtedly accelerate the critical engagement of Gotham’s growing but politically reticent Asian-immigrant community.

    The School Diversity Advisory Group (SDAG), appointed by de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, has called for repopulating each of the city’s 1,800 public schools to mirror the ethnic makeup of the city at large within 10 years. The SDAG report recommends the elimination of ability and performance screening for pupils, and condemns “attendance & punctuality” metrics as “exclusionary” against “Black and Latinx applicants.”

    The plan reflects the stated goal of both de Blasio and Carranza: a totally “desegregated” school system. But it is breathtakingly unmindful of the social, cultural, and political complexities of New York. Of course, given de Blasio’s penchant for promising grand slams as he plays small-ball, the scheme could just as easily be sitting in a dust-covered City Hall filing cabinet when the mayor leaves office at the end of 2021. It has already drawn opposition from city council speaker Corey Johnson, a potential 2021 mayoral candidate and, most significantly, from United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew. Mulgrew’s stance could be enough to kill the proposal—and it deserves to die.

    Conceptually, the report reflects official mayoral school policy since Carranza’s arrival. It condemns what it terms racial imbalances in city schools even as it ignores the system’s myriad classroom failures. Those inadequacies were underscored again last week, when state tests revealed that more than half of the system’s third-graders lack proficiency in either math or reading. Operationally, the report is truly radical. It proposes to “desegregate” the system by dismantling the imperfect yet intricately evolved network of enrichment programs and performance screenings that offer pathways for parents and pupils through otherwise forbidding educational landscapes. And though it does not address the contentious matter of the city’s competitive-entry high schools—that’s a matter for Albany to decide—the effect of its recommendations would be to restrict severely the supply of highly qualified freshmen those schools need to continue in their current role.

    ...





    "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell
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    Killing Gifted & Talented programs is de Blasio’s next step in war on excellence in education

    There are two ways to close the school achievement gap: lift up struggling students or push down those who are succeeding. Having failed at the former, Mayor Bill de Blasio seems intent on pursuing the latter.

    In the face of an education system that implicitly defines excellence as a racist social construct, middle-class parents will decamp in droves for the suburbs or stretch their pocketbooks to pay for private school.

    ‘Diversity’ plan would destroy the city’s school system to ‘save’ it
    De Blasio now faces a high-stakes test of his higher-order reasoning skills. His ideology may not afford him the tools to think “critically” about the choices before him, but his political instinct must tell him that it would be folly to fully implement this proposal.

    If he polled parents, he’d surely find that only a vanishing minority of parents — white, Asian, black or Hispanic — would support this policy. The only true constituency is his small cadre of cultural Marxist advisers.


    https://nypost.com/2019/08/28/killi...-step-in-war-on-excellence-in-education/

    Last edited by thx1138; 08/29/19 07:26 AM.
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