Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Ranks of Gifted Soar in NY

An interesting article...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/14/n...ergarten-slots.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

When DS scored high on the 2nd of the gifted admission tests I admit I bought a book on what to expect in the testing process and test preparation. I read it gained some useful insight but I decided to skip any of the prep suggestions. My concern was that it would give him an inflated score and put him in a program he wasn't really suited for. In the end he scored just fine with no prep at all and I'm comfortable that the results were accurate.

This isn't the first article I've seen on the competition in New York for spots in the better public schools. That's a lot of pressure on parents and children. Makes me glad I live in a much less competitive school district.

Quoting the article:

"Gifted programs generally offer an accelerated curriculum, as well as the opportunity to be around other high-performing children. The city did not provide a racial breakdown of students who qualified, but as in years past, the more affluent districts — 2 and 3 in Manhattan, in neighborhoods west and south of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and in northeastern Queens — had the most students qualify. In District 2, 949 children qualified for a gifted program, far more than in any other district. In District 3, 505 children qualified. By contrast, in District 7, in the South Bronx, only six children qualified for gifted placements and none for the five most exclusive schools."

The Bell Curve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve strikes again.

I live far far away from NYC, so I'm not familiar with the school system (I have some vague familiarity with the schools because I have a few relatives with children who live in Manhattan plus I am familiar with neighborhoods etc because I've spent a lot of time visiting :))... anyway, I'm curious about a few things. First, I'm guessing that only the kids who's parents opt to have their kids tested for gifted programs are being tested - is that what's happening? Are there any outreach programs in the poorer neighborhoods aimed at identifying underrepresented groups?

My other question is re the 90th percentile cutoff - if that's the arbitrary number chosen (90th percentile) for entry, the school district should be able to guesstimate how many children 90% of the current student enrollment represents. Let's just say that there are 1000 children in school district X, so 10 percent of 1000 is 100. Then let's say your gifted program only has enough seats for 50. Wouldn't the program be better and the children be better served if the cutoff for admission was moved to 95th percentile? I know that's simplistic in thinking, but just curious!

polarbear

And I'm sure the explanation for the difference in numbers in the South Bronx has nothing to do with class or economics or opportunity.

Polarbear

The simple answer is they could but don't becasue two competing school types and ideas merged here - regular gifted programs, the kind that serves the optimally gifted who need enrichment and maybe a bit of acceleration versus programs designed to serve those beyond optimal perhaps even pg.

The history lesson! The current NYC system does was created in response to needs other than what would seem obvious to most. Basically, in the "old" days kids were separated into gifted classes and non gifted classes at different levels depending on the school or district. Usually one per grade. The placement was primarily teacher recommendation and some state testing. So of course it was subject to subjectivity and beahvior, I'm sure there were scenarios where bright problem children were not getting what they needed. But this was before mayoral control and centralization, so classically some programs served gifted needs better. This was coupled with the fact that there was little done for the younger set, the it's not necessary until 3rd grade view, so the gifted ones will take care of themselves until they could test for Hunter in 6th, and the the big 3 Styvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech for HS. In the 80s they started to add other specialized high schools but no change was made for the little ones. Basically unless you lived in Manhattan you had no options for little kids ready for more. And in Manhattan Hunter only had 50 slots. So in the 1990s a group of parents who's kids made the test cutoff for Hunter but didn't get in started a new gifted program in a public school on the Hunter model, complete with SB testing and interviews. But where Hunter is run by CUNY and can do what it wants, this program was in a public school using public money and so naturally there was a lawsuit or threat of one regarding admissions, and two more schools were started with similar approaches and testing, trying to identify the advanced kids. But at some point in the 2000s, with first Guliani and then Bloomberge centralizing control and decisions across districts the DOE decided that it needed to standardize the entrance process because low income needed equal access to these elem specialized programs and/or non favorite kids needed options in the non specialized local gifted programs. So enter the one size fits all system where 90 percent gets you your local gifted program and 97 percent gets you access to the specialized elem programs.

So with that history lesson, the problem is that the number of seats available actually fluctuates because of the non educational aspect of this. A lof of people suspect or claim that the DOE creates gifted programs to bring in middle and upper middle class parents to poorer performing schools which then in turn raises the test scores and increases the money raised and parent involvement. And then they phase out the gifted program because the school is now considered sought after. They actually did this last year in the middle of the ranking portion of the application creating a huge putcry from affected parents forcing a redo. Others believe this is simply about options, the GT citywides have lots of options, again because of fundraising and an active parent body. So the cynics then argue that the cutoffs are where they are to raise the hopes and satisfy that upper middle class cohort. You really can't escape the financial side of it. They can't afford to administer WISC or SB 5, so they went with the cheapest, which could still be claimed to be equitable but then the prepping charges started. So the testing system does reach more kids becasue bias to recommend testing diminishes but there are still many more kids who qualify in the wealthier areas,producing a lake woebegone effect where everyone is above average, because the expensive preschools are doing worksheets and letters and the parents are doing workbooks.

This shows the breakdown by district in NYC

Without knowing anything you can see there is huge imbalance, and again without knkwing can suspect they relate to all the things people always talk about.

On hoagies and here there is a lot of discussion of what do gifted kids of what level need - and the system in NYC does not address that at all. There is no skipping here and district programs lump 90 and up together. Obviously a 99 percenter and a 90 percenter have vastly different needs yet they will both be in a gifted classroom, getting "enrichment". In the districts with so many 99s these local classes are filled by 99s who don't get into the citywides then bumping the 98, 97 and below into gen Ed. That's where the ire comes from. Although its why those regular schools in those districts are highly regarded.

So the real dilemma is for the 98 or even 99 in a crappy district, they will not be in a defacto gifted class becasue there aren't enough other kids, so as the outlier or small group of outliers they get dispersed into the population and deal with all the issues familiar to most here.

But what really diminishes this system is the lack of belief in the test or in the need. Those with outlier kids desperately need acceleration, are all NYC 99s outliers in the DYS sense no, but they have very different needs. So should all 99s be guaranteed a spot, I think yes, But that chart gives the difficulty, last year 2700 qualified with 97, this year 4200 did, where do they put them, we don't yet know many of these are 99s but it's more than the 400 citywide spots. So just create more, there is never an explanation why the citywides cannot be expanded beyond space, which is obviously not a satisfying response to a parent who was shut out.

I can clearly go on all day about this!!

DeHe

There are alot of study aids out that for the Bracken test and OLSAT for kindergarten, so maybe that is what is going on too with these super high scores. I've read about tutors for kids at the age of 4 so they can get the needed scores!
At our local public school, you need in third grade to have at least one score of 96th percentile for the OLSAT to be on the list for the GATE or G/T program in our district, which is a full-time program starting in 4th grade. However, I heard that at our local school (which has a GATE program), you couldn't get into our school for next year unless you had at least 97th percentile total on the OLSAT.

More on competition to get into certain NYC public schools:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/e...ows-with-competition-for-admissions.html
Tutoring Surges With Fight for Middle School Spots
New York Times
By ANNA M. PHILLIPS
April 15, 2012

Whenever admissions are competitive, whether it's for gifted elementary schools, selective middle schools, or selective colleges, some parents will try to prepare their children. I don't think this is a big problem, partly because the effects of test prep are usually found to be small in studies.

Evidence? Test prep certainly helps with the SAT.

I disagree. It really depends on the test. A kid who is reasonably bright who is prepped can do well on certain tests. Or, if they have a very broad exposure.

The bracken is pretty trivial as it is about facts. Mr W missed a handful of questions last year when he was 3y8m, all related to geometric shapes. Had we "tutored" him on them, he would have gotten those questions right.

He was given the WPPSI-III last fall as well. He did very well on the PIQ part but fell down on the VIQ. When I asked him how the test was, he said that the tester would not let him go back and look at things so he started thinking about that part and so he stopped cooperating. He also found some of the questions silly so he got bored. Had we "drilled" him no doubt he would have zipped through the verbal part. Does this mean his VIQ is 120? Probably not as his verbal reasoning skill is his strongest suit.

As way of comparing, we know a kid 2 years older than Mr W who was "tutored" in a well regarded private preschool and had WPPSI-III composite of ~ 140 from the same tester. Mr W is currently on this kid's level and is ahead in some respects. Does this kid really have an IQ around 140? I am not so sure.