But Wren hit the core of it - there are not enough slots - they do lottery for the citywides since there are more kids who score 99 than there are seats. The crime is that the city is selecting amongst the qualified rather than placing all the qualified.
There are a lot of kids in NYC who would benefit from an accelerated program - there are only 5 in the city for a total around 350 seats. For any program there has to be a cut off. And there is a huge difference in the kids readiness to be accelerated among those who got 99 versus those got 95. All kids over 90 are entitled to gifted enrichment but not acceleration.
The other end of it is that the "99" kids may actually be 95 kids who were prepped. Heck, they may be less able than the 90 kids who were not prepped and who come from disadvantaged backgrounds for all we know. Test prep, as a whole, just totally changes the ballgame. We see some of that where I live just thankfully not the extent that is going on in NYC. Even the little bit we have here has messed with the GT id process and the GT programming as well, IMHO.
