This is going to be a bit of a ramble, but hopefully one that will help other parents become more familiar with the city’s offerings for Gifted & Talented students. I share my perspectives as a journalist having covered the subject for eight years and as a parent with two children in public school. One of my children has attended two top G&T schools (Lower Lab and NEST) and is now at a third (Hunter); my other child currently attends a solid neighborhood school.
I’ve read in a number of places, including Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman’s book NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, that even the authors of intelligence tests don’t believe the tests are reliable predictors of academic success for very young children. My own anecdotal experience is that this is true to a point. There are certainly students in gifted programs who don’t end up being academic stars. At the same time, evaluated as a group, the students at gifted programs typically perform better on standardized tests than the kids at strong neighborhood schools. So it seems that the IQ admissions tests do have the net effect of amassing groups of really bright kids, but in a case by case basis, the tests’ ability to identify a strong learner is not a foregone conclusion. In the case of my second child, the one in our neighborhood school, the results were especially confusing because one test showed him to be gifted and another didn’t. I was told this is not uncommon.
I’ve been told by journalists and parents familiar with the history of the city’s G&T programs that a number of school districts originally seeded the programs in struggling schools to help attract city families who might have otherwise sought better education options in the suburbs. I myself have seen this happen at P.S. 198 on Third Avenue and East 96th Street. When the school introduced a G&T program a few years ago, it immediately started attracting greater numbers of affluent and involved families who helped to bulk up its PTA and enrichment programs.
There are two main criticisms of the way the city handles gifted education. Both are focused on whether the programs actually serve the truly exceptional and why they attract relatively few African American and Hispanic students.
Though the makers of IQ tests contend that their tests measure innate abilities that cannot be prepped for, that just hasn’t been the experience of many families I know. Lots of city children are now being tutored for the tests the city uses to evaluate G&T applicants, and, as one might expect, these students have a distinct advantage over students whose families cannot afford extra tutoring. Not only are they familiar with the kinds of questions on the test, they’re also equipped with the test-taking strategies needed to solve them.
The result is we end up seeming like a city that’s spawning thousands of geniuses every year, when what we really have is a lot of smart kids who are well-prepared. NYC has five elite citywide G&T schools that begin in kindergarten. There’s always a surplus of kids who score in the qualifying percentiles for a seat at these schools. The district-wide G&T schools have a lower bar for entry and also have many more qualifying students than seats for them.
Another controversial twist is that students who qualify for G&T programs are not ranked by their numerical score; rather there is a lottery for the available seats based on percentiles. In other words, if two children who both score in the 99th percentile are vying for seats at Andersen, one of the citywide G&T schools, they’ll have an equal shot at the lottery even if one child has a higher numerical score than the other.
One common suggestion is for the city to do away with all but a few G&T programs, creating more of an elite academic grouping. But despite all the problems I outlined above, I don’t think we should shrink the numbers. To me, the G&T schools and programs add to the number of good options out there—and probably do play a role in keeping committed families in the city. Moreover, they have a positive influence on their communities with little negative impact, because their numbers aren’t large enough to deplete the supply of families committed to their good neighborhood schools.
On the flipside, should we add more G&Ts? I’d say yes, but very sparingly and strategically—and in cases where they could help anchor a middling school and help stabilize the family base in a neighborhood. But in neighborhoods and school districts where there already are a sizeable number of good schools, what is really needed instead is more construction, more seats for everyone at good schools, not just for G&T students.
At the most elite level (the citywide G&T schools), I’d support the case for a few more schools—as long as the DOE ditched the lottery system and gave priority to the kids who scored highest on the tests. There should also be more opportunities for kids to test into a G&T school beyond the kindergarten entry point, especially at the middle school level. This seems only fair given the questionable value of testing kids at age 4.
For years now, the city has been searching for ways to end up with a higher percentage of minority students in its G&T programs. That was the impetus behind a new and supposedly tutor-proof test introduced this year. I agree with the goal, but I worry that it’s a waste of time and money to try to re-invent the G&T admissions process every few years—when what basically follows is that savvy families, with the means to hire tutors, make the necessary adjustments to prepare their kids, while families who aren’t as fortunate simply can’t afford to support their kids in the same way.
In the end, rather than trying to make the G&T bureaucracy fairer, it may be more helpful to low income families to re-double the efforts to create more high quality, well-run public and charter schools in their neighborhoods. I’d leave well enough alone on the G&T front for a few years.
Back to more immediate matters: Are there tangible advantages to being in a G&T program? Of course. Can a strong neighborhood school provide a comparable education for a gifted child? Yes—but you’d need teachers who are willing to be true partners in the effort. If you want more info on the city’s G&T programs, visit the DOE website at schools.nyc.gov and note the application procedures and deadlines. The one high-profile school for the gifted that has its own admissions rules is Hunter, which is administered by Hunter College. Visit hces.hunter.cuny.edu for those rules and deadlines.
Eric Messinger is the editor of New York Family.
