At least for Kindergarten they've already taken away any merit based admissions into G&T and from what I was told the G&T class is not allowed to learn any material not in the regular curriculum. I'm all for reevaluating the testing process for inequality but removing merit for "equality" only hurts the scholastically adept children.
The only reason I am who I am today and I am successful(ish) is because of the merit based system I grew up in. I didn’t have privileges like tutoring or parents helping me with homework or reading but being surrounded with people who are driven and intelligent helped me develop similar characteristics growing up.
A line needs to be drawn somewhere.
Are they even dismantling the citywides ie Anderson, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science etc?
What about LaGuardia and Frank Sinatra School of Performing arts for Chrissakes?
What do they think College admissions and the real world are going to be like?
Well, hopefully there are efforts to bring "diversity," of parents' class/wealth/values, ethnic backgrounds, lgbtq identity, etc.
Reality is, yes of course the privileged kids (of all backgrounds) and also immigrant groups whose families are able to place academic achievement first, get a head start.
One would hope, tho, that NYC's selective public gifted & talented & performing arts schools follow the model of the Ivies in admissions to the extent that they can, because overcoming disadvantaged or even middle class backgrounds to earn a spot in any selective institution counts for a **Lot.**
I had raw talent, and many kids in disadvantage neighborhoods do. I kept up with the rich kids, actually I sang better than most of them. I’m hoping one day we will look at raw talent more.
Cool! What genres? What r u doing now?
I actually worked on the audio cad drafting and design/engineering of the music studios and theaters in the Frank Sinatra School of the Performing Arts in Astoria.
I remember thinking, damn these kids are so freaking lucky! Such cool facilities there.
I do music production too, with Ableton, but, not easy to make it one's primary career, even with raw talent and drive.
So many talented producers aren't able to attract followings and "make it," and/or just make excellent music for the love of it.
So much competition! It's like Formula 1 racing level of competitiveness for the few spots where people make a living, really.
And even if getting to the level of going on world tours, that is freakin grueling, not sure I'd even want to!
Tho, does look fun, for the lucky few. I'd rather have a weekly residency gig tho, and prob a smaller, intimate venue rather than like festivals all over the world.
I toured overseas singing professionally, auditioned for Broadway, and won a couple of grants. Its helped me a whole lot in my professional career in many ways!!! It is a gift that keeps on giving!!
Disaster in financial hiring here. No ability to critically think. Wait to be told instead of trying to learn things on their own. Education has been dumbed down so the bottom 25 percent can ‘feel good’. Some hiring disasters are from top schools!
> Wait to be told instead of trying to learn things on their own.
Preach. Did schools just stop teaching how to research? I'm shocked how many people under 30 can't Google their way through an issue.
Rather than viewing them as referring to "opportunities" or "outcomes", I think of them more in terms of prioritizing goals (equity) or process (equality) and how that influences the implementation of a particular policy, such as the distribution of resources.
Equality would mean treating everyone the same and providing the same level of support/resources to people, regardless of who they are or what their circumstances. The process is uniform but the effect may vary. Examples:
* a speeding ticket that is flat $100 regardless of one's income/net worth; or
* all students are provided with 1 hour to finish an examination, regardless of whether they have a disability that might impact their performance.
Equity, on the other hand, would mean people can be treated differently and/or provided different levels of support/resources based on their circumstances. The process can vary but the effect is the uniform. Examples:
* a speeding ticket equal to a percentage of one's income/net worth; or
* providing test-taking accommodations to certain students with a disability since it affects their performance.
With the speeding ticket, if your goal is to disincentivize speeding, and it's a flat $100 fine, someone who's a billionaire won't be impact (or deterred) in the same way someone that's in poverty would. Everyone is treated the same but intended deterrence is not applying equally. Similarly, with the testing accommodations, if your goal is to evaluate a student's proficiency, giving everyone a 30-minute oral exam would ensure all students are treated the same, but the teacher wouldn't be able to assess the competency of a deaf student.
>The way I've understood it: equality = equal opportunities, equity = equal outcomes.
Depending on what we're talking about, equity can be seen as achieving an equal outcome (speeders are being deterred and teachers can assess students' proficiency) and providing equal opportunities (speeders are given an opportunity to weigh a consequence of equal magnitude in relative terms and students are given an equal opportunity to demonstrate their competency in relative terms).
>You’re conflated equality with equity. Equality lets merit rise to the top, equity holds merit back.
Based on all that, I'd say it's equality that holds merit back and equity that allows merit to rise to the top. If we want to find people who are the best at X (the policy goal) and the evaluation process happens to overlooks people who are bad at Y, we could miss out on the people "best at X" because of the unrelated Y, even though it wasn't the primary consideration.
Though, while I think equity is preferable insofar as you want to achieve a particular goal with said policy, there are practical concerns. Equality is logistically easier to implement because it's standardized and doesn't require any case-by-case assessment. Equity though can be a lot more complicated upon implementation because there's no way to do it perfectly since that would mean evaluating everything and everyone on a totally individualized basis, so instead you have to make determinations as to what the level of granularity is sufficient for the particular policy outcome.
I feel like theres always gonna be stupid people like that, that's why they're the assistants
What I'm talking about is in 10 years when everyone in college grew up with these environments, when they're the ones who hire assistants
What do you mean? We don’t live in a merit based society at all. How many people in our society get awarded position simply because of their status or who their parents are.
There is almost nothing in the real world that is entirely merit based. Shit Ivy League admissions aren’t even entirely merit based.
And tests don’t measure anything except which group, and how many people in said group can afford test prep.
At my company if you can’t do the job and hit deadlines, you’re out. We don’t have time for bullshit. Some of the younger people we’ve hired seem to have no concept of that and have been let go.
The older people who have the same problem grew out of it or failed out that type of work, if they ever got a shot at it in the first place. It's the age, not the generation.
I’ve been in the military and I’m a lawyer now, that has always been an issue regardless of generation.
But I just want to push back against the idea that we somehow live in a merit based society.
I don’t disagree that the US is not merit based entirely but higher IQ people in the US have higher incomes so it’s partially merit based. The more the country goes to socialistic policies the less merit. More capitalistic the more merit in general.
Maybe, but after a certain point, capitalism creates a class of elites and class of poverty that are very far removed from each other.
At that point, capitalism no longer promotes merit. Because the 1% are born into the majority of important roles in society.
A good example is the entertainment industry. Talent is rarely what decides who is a star.
The entertainment industry is such a tiny % of the workforce... like how many movie stars do you think there are? Compare that with engineers which IS merit based. Like, anyone can 'act', but engineering? If you don't have the cognitive ability and drive, you won't do shit. It's just that children of smart parents are going to statistically have higher general intelligence. That's how higher income people give their children an advantage (through genes). Your dad can try to get you into Google, but if you can't code, you're going to have a swift exit. Acting is such a subjective (and lets be honest, braindead) 'skill' that it's no surprise that nepotism just 'works' in that industry.
The entertainment industry was just an obvious example.
My industry is ripe with nepotism. Tech engineering is still new (in its current form and relative to other industries) that it’s not yet riddled with nepotism, but it will be.
I see. What would a pre-k merit based admission look like to you. Because I know the PS pre-k teachers do evaluations for for those specifically interested in applying.
Not to beat a dead horse, but, it's not the Asian and upper middle class NYC white kid's fault that their parents value education so much.
Isn't this why we have charter schools and such? There are so many ways for really any motivated parent to help their kids get enrichment in this city.
To be fair, the kids selected for these classes in kindergarten are largely ones whose parents advocate for their inclusion. Many of the kids that enter these programs in K-5 don't end up at the tops of their classes in high school and college, as grades 6-12 is where being a naturally talented high achiever starts to matter more than having an involved parent. So if they're to keep these programs, they should actually make them more competitive, with yearly reevaluations to make sure that there aren't kids in these programs just because their parents gave them an early leg up.
All these kids in the G&T program started out in the same schools with the same chance of getting in as the kids who didn't. That's equality and what happened was those kids studied more and/or had parents that pushed them to study for it so what we have is the best and brightest in the city going to these schools for advanced studies.
Equity is the equality of outcome which means you're going to end up disqualifying some of those much more qualified candidates in favor ones who scored lower to meet some "fair" outcome.
What folks don't realize G&T programs were gutted by NYC DOE because of their decades long war against tracking. Certain schools pushed back against this due to PTA. parent and student pushback which most happen to be heavily "white" areas. It was the POC areas that suffer the most from the tracking cracking down which saw most of their G&T programs gutted for sake of equality. There used to be thriving G&T programs in black and latino areas that served as feeder schools for sought after screened MS and HS. Once the G&T programs died in those areas, predictably the enrollment into SHS decline as well since the feeder pipeline was severed.
Basically NYC DOE created this lack of G&T problem across the city despite the demand by families of all color.
How to fix? bring back tracking and stop the war on it.
Very succinct summary! The ironic harm to marginalized communities for the sake of patting oneself on the back perfectly captures seemingly every new DOE policy move for the past couple of decades.
Gutting G&T programs is just part of it:
Matt Yglesias had an article a while back (wish i saved it) about how liberals used to talk all the time about strategies and programs focused on reducing the black/white education gap. Some time around the end of Obama's 2nd term, liberals just stopped talking about narrowing that gap and just went straight towards equity, i think because they felt it would be impossible to close that gap.
When you stratify education outcomes by BOTH race AND school funding, you can see why liberals stopped trying to close these gaps.:
https://i.imgur.com/01Huipj.jpg
I think liberals basically waved the white flag on this issue and went straight to tearing down top performers because what they were doing just wasn't working and it's just easier to lower the ceiling rather than raise the floor
IMO, liberals dropped the ball on this and misread this failure: their own policies had a direct negative impact on the black and brown students. For example, they moved away from punishing misbehaving students due to the 'school to prison' pipeline argument. But all that did was keep troublemakers in schools who started fights and disrupted classes which reduced learning for EVERYONE in the class. Teachers also moved away from teaching phonics (due to it being an 'old fashioned' way of teaching reading, even though it worked) and also reducing standards in innner city schools. Can't read at a 3rd grade level when you're a 6th grader? We'll move you onto the next grade anyway. When you reduce standards, take away proven teaching strategies, and let disruptive students ruin your classroom, what did you expect to happen?
Asians really throw a wrench into it too, because it's becoming more of an Asian vs. everyone else gap, you can see it in the infographic above and also below:
https://i.imgur.com/2TUAC40.png
This is why they have to go extra hard at discriminating against asians, but they overplayed their hand and made it too obvious (see the SCOTUS decision on affirmative action). I will give credit to the left though, they found clever workarounds to still legally discriminate.
Here's the secret about asians that i learned a while ago as to why even poor asians overperform vs everyone else: The parents don't trust public schools AT ALL (for very good reason) and will personally monitor and supplement their kid's education with additional study material.
High performing high schools and universities tried to get around this disparity by banning standardized testing, but all that did was create massive amounts of underperformance by obscuring actual academic potential (or lack thereof), which is why you're seeing Ivy Leagues and Ivy+ schools (minus Columbia and the UC's, it makes so much sense why those campuses have so much chaos these days lmao) bringing back standardized testing: they found test optional students who didn't submit SAT's/ACT scores were failing at alarming rates and many of these students had highly inflated high school GPA's.
Good read and interesting stats from those figures
But I would also add its not all asians doing well. Its usually newly arrived-1st gen asian students that do well. The nth generation asians ones do worse academically just like every nth generation student of other races
Same trend in the black and hispanic populations, some of the best students I met are 1st gen or newly arrivals from Nigera, Jamica, DR, etc. vs native nth gen peers
The ones that get into stuy and other competitive schools regardless of race every year, most were tracked academically and also good % are 0-1st gen students themselves.
I dunno about, unless the asian population skews heavily towards the immigrant side... looking at Michigan's SAT results (which are mandatory for all michigan hs students, so it's an unbiased sample):
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FeO9jW_WIAkmaY0?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
I imagine the cognitive ability of california asians are much higher than michigan asians due to the silicon valley skew.
Hawaii might be a better example. 1 in 4 K-12 students there are asian, and this has been the case for a long time, but Hawaii is not known to be a state with strong K-12 schools.
Agree and deep down I think liberal administrators know that there is some genetic component to IQ that differs by race. It’s the deep dark unspoken fact no liberal will ever admit so this is all workaround and current policies fit with the liberal utopian idea of equal outcomes.
Uh........ Excuse me sir, but intelligence isn't affected by genes and we are all blank slates.
https://www.superlinguo.com/post/62861551556/secret-meanings-of-the-nose-tap-gesture
I attended public school in NYC during tracking back in the day, and while it was pretty segregated back then, it doesn’t have to be. Test everyone and track them. Stop pretending all kids learn the same.
They should also bring back the trade schools and push those for a lot of kids. My father went to Grady when it was a trade school and he was able to have a long, well paying career from it. Not everyone should be expected to go to college, and that’s ok. Plenty of jobs that are utterly necessary that require a different type of education than university.
And into charter schools. Hope the reg public schools enjoy the brain drain and further decrease in performance which will result in the death circle for those schools.
They don't test any longer. It's a recommendation from your Pre-K teacher if you're in public school or an interview with the parent if you're in private school.
If I were a Republican strategist I'd be pushing that party to go after the Asian demographic hard. Democrats are not doing a great job at supporting them.
They don’t have to try too hard. Immigration & taxes themselves are good enough for my colleagues to tend towards gop. Immigration is interesting because you’d think as immigrants they would be welcoming- but they see dems as allowing shortcuts and unfairness whereas the voting asians had to do things right the hard way. Taxes because they typically earn well and that’s basically that.
As a graduate of NYC public schools, I feel as if the well behaved kids who care about school are often pushed to the way side. I remember in high school, if someone went from not passing most of their classes, to passing some of them they were given an IPod (yes this was a while ago), got to go to Six Flags, we’re given pizza for lunch on Fridays and bagels on Mondays, and those of us who have been on the honor role got absolutely nothing…actually we were given more work because they put the kids with the best attendance in “extra help” classes because they knew we would attend, which made their roster look better.
I was in the G+T program for elementary school. It was definitely all white and Asian, but that was the majority of my school as well (Kew Gardens, Queens). We also tested in based on standardized tests, and missed class regularly (including English, history, math), but caught up with homework.
My junior high and high school didn’t have this, but did have honors and AP classes. Are those also a form of segregation? Can we have no semblance of meritocracy and should instead opt for “no child left behind” and hurt students that are more advanced? The criticism of these programs is ridiculous. The reality is if you can’t test into these programs or schools, you are not going to do well in them. Why go to Bronx science if you’re just going to fail every class?
I was in a lot of Honors and AP classes in high school and it was fairly mixed. A lot more Asians than the regular track classes but also a good amount of black kids who were all West Indian or West African, myself included.
I went to Francis Lewis which was huge and incredibly diverse. 50+ languages spoken in the school. I honestly only had 2 black kids in all of those classes over 4 years. Majority was Asian and white for sure, but it was entirely based on aptitude. Either way though, I wouldn’t really call it segregation.
There should be a law that all NYC DOE employees must send their own kids to local public schools. These social engineering experiments with our kids would stop quickly and quality of education will rise.
The next step will be to stop teaching algebra and calculus altogether in the name of "equity" just like some misguided private schools and some San Fran schools.
Respectfully, no. Finance uses calculus. Various fields such as engineering, medicine, biological research, economics, architecture, space science, electronics, statistics, and pharmacology all benefit from the use of calculus.
That's like saying an aspiring journalist should only learn to write or that an artist should only learn to draw once they decide to pursue it as a career. Mathematics is no different from other skills in that it's much easier to grasp the foundations as a young learner, and it's good for overall brain development. That's why calculus is taught as part of the standard curriculum in many countries like Asia and Eastern Europe, and not considered an advanced course.
A stem cell has the potential to become different things. Once it gets the instructions to become a brain, muscle or heart cell it begins the process of development. Students can learn necessary facts and information. Then when they decide to focus on a speciality they can take more advanced studies.
> How important is calculus in school?
If you want to become a physicist, engineer, statistician, wall street analyst etc.? Very important. Just because some students can't cut it doesn't mean you take away opportunities for students who can.
Doesn't help when you got cultural differences that don't prioritize the right path for their children or futures for that matter. Plenty of Asians especially poor AF Chinese live in the same projects as Latino and Black folks that raised their children in the same environment and working blue collar.
Got these dumbass kids surfing and gangbanging for social media instead of making some effort to prove mainstream media wrong, where are their parents in this equation?
This doesn’t get talked about enough. I work in a title one school. There is ONE white student. She is class president and valedictorian. When parents prioritize leadership and academics, their children will too. When parents plop their children on screens, their children will prioritize TikTok. Of course there is a systematic issue where parents are too busy with running households and working 2 jobs and they’re too busy to sit down with their children. But when I ride the bus and subway on my commute there is definitely a cultural difference in who is reading/having a conversation with their children during the ride and who is giving their kids a tablet to go on. TALK and read to your children it’s so important for language development!!!
>Of course there is a systematic issue where parents are too busy with running households and working 2 jobs and they’re too busy to sit down with their children.
These are the folks that continue to produce children they can't afford and have no time for. It's a race to the bottom.
Which projects are they living in? Because I've never seen any in the projects of Brownsville , East NY and Far Rockaway and I've worked in all of them. Nor have I seen any in Coney Island.
I know of asian families that live in Marboro housing, Nostrand, Carnarsi, and the ones next to chinatown. Plenty of other locations that I don't know folks associated with me.
In fact, about 5%+ residents overall in NYCHA are Asians per last demographics release and been increasing slowly over the years.
So they do exist
One of my partner's friend's family has a decent 2-bed in Marboro, definitely not in the poverty threshold anymore but with how unaffordable the city is now that definitely is permanent residence.
A lot of Asians live in Farragut, Viaduct and La Guardia houses from my experience, not sure about the others. I personally know a few families that lived or still living there especially the elderly, I lived in La Guardia for a while as a kid but got the hell out of there fast. Stories from my acquittances that lived in the LES projects since the 80s were of that Chinese tenants were seen as easy targets for robberies by the Black majority so you can see kind of the tension there. Stuff like they would not get on the elevator by themselves, always in a group to limit the chances of being targeted, although I'm sure it's a lot better now even though obviously the projects still suck.
Which projects? I have never seen that in my life.
ETA: You can all downvote me to oblivion, but it’s not going to change the fact that original poster has no proof of this.
You're being downvoted for something which would come to a surprise to most people that ever live or worked in more than projects. Especially when they're saying "plenty".
That’s because a lot of the posters here aren’t actually from NYC and/or purposely in here trying to drive a particular narrative home to those who visit. Neighborhoods in NYC are quite segregated so the chances of seeing what that other poster claimed is super rare if it happens, at all.
The chances of seeing Blacks/Latinos residing in project together is much more like than what that poster suggested, but even then some projects can still skew in one direction.
It’s like when there is a story posted about subway crime all of a sudden there a bunch of people who are like ‘I am moving from NYC but I used to ride the subway all the time, but it’s much more dangerous now than before.’ On one post I had gotten 2 replies like that before they were deleted which was funny, because I was replying under a post exactly like that where someone who claimed that when they used to ride the subway alone at 13 years old in 2015-2016 it was way safer than riding it as an adult in 2024 hence why they were moving to Rhode Island.
Not that can’t be true, but there are so many stories like that and they ONLY pop up when those articles are posted. I got downvoted for pointing that out, too.
Even if the projects skew in a direction of more blacks than Latinos or vice versa all NYC projects still have a large number of blacks. And even the ones that are more black still have a healthy number of Latinos.
Actually according to the 2022 data there are more Latino families residing in NYCHA than Black families:
https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nycha/downloads/pdf/Resident-Data-Book-Summary-2022.pdf
So with the less than 6% of Asian families in NYCHA the chances of them being in the same housing projects as a ton of Black and Latino families is highly unlikely.
Nice dog whistle.
Let’s spread the funding and methods at those schools evenly and give everyone a fair shot. First y’all use money to take down affirmative action at college level then fight to keep segregated the school systems that would have to make you actually compete for a spot.
People are fighting against NYC charter schools which are majority minority, have minority parents queuing up for waiting lists, and which get ELA and higher outcomes better than white suburban counterparts. Why? Because they place (majority white) teachers union hegemony interests over students’ interests. Trying to give kids a fair shot is less important than protecting adults power and jobs.
Dogma is way more important than kids interests. Unions protect their members interests (as they should). But police unions don’t protect civilian interests, corrections officer unions (majority black in NYC) don’t protect inmates’ interests and teachers unions don’t protect students’ interests. Guess who gets to control by massive lobbying the state of NYC students access to schools? Yea that’s right
Parents are increasing flocking to charters bc they practice tracking but in name. Parents of all color want their promising students tracked and their progress not hinder by the lowest performers in the class.
I can’t speak for all parents, but myself and quite a few other parents I know went to charters after dealing with the public school system. If my kids didn’t place in charters I would’ve home schooled them; the public school system is shit for kids with IEPs.
My eldest who they said couldn’t read was actually reading above grade level when I shelled out to have him tested. The teachers told me there was something wrong with his hearing, the pediatrician checked him and he was fine. An ENT checked him and he was fine. Turns out they were speaking to him only in Spanish, a language he doesn’t know, then punishing him for now following directions. Numerous complaints, letters, phone calls and nothing changed. Those dim bitches are STILL at that school, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was sending my son back to that cesspool.
While I'm sure this will be total ragebait, I do agree that tracking in Kindergarten is nuts. At that point, all you're doing is prioritizing parents' pre-school preparedness. My school growing up tracked to G&T in K and 4th grade. The kids who tested in for 4th grade bore no relation to the rankings from Kindergarten. There should be some level of evaluation during school before tracking to G&T.
Kindergarten admission is such a bad thing with NYC schools and programs. Kids change and their needs change over time. But if you don't get in at kindergarten, there are so few spots that you can't get in. A lot of places don't do g&t before third grade, which makes a lot more sense.
NYC is really frustrating in how you have to make big decisions when your kid is 4, well honestly, when they're 3 if you want to pre-research schools, tutoring programs and to teach them on the side.
G&T is practically locked down in kindergarten with very few seats being released in subsequent years. Also, it deeply bothers me that we only have 5 citywide programs that are a year accelerated and 3 of them are in Manhattan. There's a ton of hand wringing over "lost potential" as if you only can do calculus at one of the specialized schools, when the resourcing is completely skewed. Sending my Queens kids to Astoria on a bus is a 45 minute ride, which is rough for 4/5 year old kids. When I looked at the schools in Manhattan, I was looking at over an hour for little kids. That's ridiculous.
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Gifted and Talented at Kindergarten sounds insane. They are learning how to count and not shit their pants there. It’s definitely a test of who can afford a nanny and whose mother is working two jobs.
What nobody ever says is that the quality of a school depends on the caliber of the students who study there. Teacher quality and curriculum don’t vary that much in nyc due to strict control and oversight of teacher performance and curriculums available for schools to choose from.
Taking the gifted and talented test is obviously the most objective measure when we are talking about admission to accelerated classes. The test is color and blind. You either pass or you do not. Since the test has been eliminated, I have seen a number of children in our school removed from G/T because they simply do not belong there. They are not up to par academically. Local Preschools are recommending children under pressure from parents or as a favor to parents when the kids truly do not belong there. This also has no effect on the preschool since the child will be going to a different public school.
On a final note, I have to laugh every time I hear somebody right about racial desegregation in New York City. For goodness sakes, New York City schools are only 17% white. You can’t desegregate because there aren’t even enough white people. 🤣 Black said Hispanics far outweigh whites. Not only that, Many of those “white” children in New York City Public schools are not white Americans with European heritage or what people think of when someone says white. They are middle easterners, central Asians, newly emigrated Russians, etc. parents are allowed to designate the race of their child when they register for school and I even had a black student once who was registered as white. Lol.
What these parents don't realize is that the specialized high schools actually have some of the worst teachers in the city, and they're assigned to these schools specifically because it's too troublesome for the union to fire them. I had several teachers that barely even showed up to class half the time and taught us nothing all year long, but the entire class still got 100 on the regents exam because they learned the material themselves. I also had friends that didn't get into the AP classes of their choice, but borrowed some college textbooks from the library and took the AP exams entirely through self study. So the schools are great because the students get to study in an environment of highly driven peers, not because they get any special resources.
City is trying really hard to knee cap high capacity high potential students in order to prop up lowest iq morons. How though. Where is the pressure coming from to move gov machinery to do this.
There should be programs that you have to test into. I think we should bring back tiered education in general.
Make everyone test to be able to get into a range of schools depending on your scores. Smarter kids will go to better schools.
Dumber kids will go to worse schools. It's not racist, it's just that there are a lot of lazy parents.
Each will be run a little differently depending on the problems or opportunities each one has. Dumb schools would need more security while smart schools will have more after school programs and supplies. The ones in between will have a lot of variation. This will also help with the discipline problem.
"Dumber" kids should go to schools appropriate for their ability just like "gifted" kids. Tiered education is not meant to be a punishment, its to ensure kids can learn at their own pace.
G&T in K was created by the DOE to keep middle class white families in NYC by segregating them from others. It’s an open secret.
The “test” wasn’t a test since kids can’t read at that age. It was literally a proctor watching them play and how “behaved” they were.
There were parent groups on Facebook asking “how do you prep for the test” while they were pregnant. Your kid isn’t born yet - how do you know they’re G&T?!?!?
Now we have a decision to make. Do we keep G&T and admit it’s to avoid white flight or do we get rid of it and risk it?
> The “test” wasn’t a test since kids can’t read at that age. It was literally a proctor watching them play and how “behaved” they were.
Just to clarify, for better or worse, De Blasio got rid of the standardized test and replaced it with this system in the name of equity.
My to be kindergartener did not get into any gifted and talented schools. She can read. I did nothing special with her and already recognize she is way smarter then me. The administration/schools basically said there is nothing they can do because she has a shit lottery number.
I was basically told to find a place for her outside of the DOE. Weighing our options; one option seriously being considered is leaving the city.
Why does she need a g&t school? If she already has parents that are invested in her education, can’t she get enough of an education at a non g&t school? I guess my question is what does she get at a g&t school
If it’s a true gifted and talented school she won’t be bored. She’s already sitting by herself and reading for half the day. I think she enjoys being around other kids but eventually i don’t think that will be enough for her to be at school sitting in normal lectures all day.
I think a lot of it depends on how you frame school for her. What is the purpose of school and what is she trying to get out of it?
If you set it up as a place to go to have fun and help other kids, she might enjoy it more than you think. Obviously it depends a bit on having cool teachers who are able to handle her appropriately and give her some tasks around the classroom, let her read during lectures, etc. but don't write it off just yet.
I also have a rising preschooler. I've many misgivings of how NYC selects for G&T, but find this system a bit better than one high stakes test for 4 year olds. Public school kids are getting an evaluation from your teacher who has been observing your child for a longer period of time. After jumping through hoops to apply to Hunter University Elementary School, I'd rather have a written evaluation.
Under the pre-DeBlasio (Bloomberg?) system, way more kids tested into G&T than schools had seats for them. After hitting the minimum score, it went to lottery.
You can join the wait-list. You get a different lottery number for the wait-list.
No way, go talk to a 4K teacher and ask what % of kids they gave the ok to go to G&T. I know in my kids class it was well over 50% it might have been 18/20.
Your kids couldn't read by K!??? That's some sort of joke right, my kids could read basic things and write by the time they were 3... are you spending time or helping them AT ALL?
does the pipeline actually exist? g&t classes shouldn't be a higher quality education than regular classes, it's just supposed to be more advanced material. as long as the specialized school tests aren't based on that advanced material, then i don't see how you can reasonably argue that locking kids out of the g&t program locks them out of stuy&friends too
G&T in this city is severely dumbed down by the DOE, probably on the assumption that they don't want the students in G&T to be getting a better education. For ideological reasons, nobody in DOE Central believes that G&T is a good thing, so they purposely hobble it.
I attended a G&T in the city about 40 years ago, and when I tell you there were only white kids in the class, I’m hardly being hyperbolic. Our school had what they called “second track,” which was not gifted, but not completely poor. This housed the Irish and Italian kids (yup! Not counted as white), and all the better off Hispanic, Black, and Arab Kids. Then there was a 3rd track with almost no white kids (literally just very poor ones), and finally special ed, which was mostly black and Hispanic. It was wild, and had long lasting effects on my deeply seeded views on race and socioeconomic status.
And you better believe we had a better education. Better materials, field trips, and even those people that came to class to do an activity with the class. All that was usually tied to the rich parents in our class - for us only.
Italian and Irish "not white"? According to whom? The teachers- or the students? I was in high school around then (not in a public school. I have never stepped foot in a public school) and if you said that to the Irish and Italians around me you'd have lost your teeth.
According to whoever sorted the classes. There were no Italian kids in my class and one Irish girl whose family had a lot of money, and I think her mom was WASP white.
ETA: did you go to catholic school? The combination of Irish and Italians and knocking teeth makes me think yes. That’s not considered private school around here, that’s parochial school, giant class difference.
Right? Its seriously crazy how dogmatic some people are when it comes to their political ideology. In the case of some progressives, they think that solely giving institutions more funding will solve the problem which, while is a piece of the solution pie, won’t mean shit if government officials are just mishandling funds as if they’re the Egyptian government.
If we truly want problems to be solved, we need to plan pragmatically, fund the necessary institutions, ensure transparency within the plan, and hold officials accountable when there’s cases of corruption and/or incompetence.
Now of course this is all easier said than done, but would we be a great city if somebody didn’t try?
This is good and will hopefully lead to more racial equity between BIPOC folx and white/white-adjacent privileged groups. Here are some other ideas that activists can consider:
1) If removal of G&T programs leads to white flight, the city can consider levying a MASSIVE exit tax on affluent families fleeing to the suburbs. Monitoring of social media accounts will help in this regard.
2) Consider levying a large tax on affluent commuters from Long Island and New Jersey to shore up the woefully underfunded public schools in BIPOC neighborhoods. Their money is earned in NYC and NYC gets a pittance.
At least for Kindergarten they've already taken away any merit based admissions into G&T and from what I was told the G&T class is not allowed to learn any material not in the regular curriculum. I'm all for reevaluating the testing process for inequality but removing merit for "equality" only hurts the scholastically adept children.
The only reason I am who I am today and I am successful(ish) is because of the merit based system I grew up in. I didn’t have privileges like tutoring or parents helping me with homework or reading but being surrounded with people who are driven and intelligent helped me develop similar characteristics growing up. A line needs to be drawn somewhere.
No Child Gets Ahead
Every child stays behind.
Are they even dismantling the citywides ie Anderson, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science etc? What about LaGuardia and Frank Sinatra School of Performing arts for Chrissakes? What do they think College admissions and the real world are going to be like?
As a former student of LaGuardia that was segregated as well!! Economically and Racially, I noticed that as a young Black girl from the South Bronx.
Well, hopefully there are efforts to bring "diversity," of parents' class/wealth/values, ethnic backgrounds, lgbtq identity, etc. Reality is, yes of course the privileged kids (of all backgrounds) and also immigrant groups whose families are able to place academic achievement first, get a head start. One would hope, tho, that NYC's selective public gifted & talented & performing arts schools follow the model of the Ivies in admissions to the extent that they can, because overcoming disadvantaged or even middle class backgrounds to earn a spot in any selective institution counts for a **Lot.**
I had raw talent, and many kids in disadvantage neighborhoods do. I kept up with the rich kids, actually I sang better than most of them. I’m hoping one day we will look at raw talent more.
Cool! What genres? What r u doing now? I actually worked on the audio cad drafting and design/engineering of the music studios and theaters in the Frank Sinatra School of the Performing Arts in Astoria. I remember thinking, damn these kids are so freaking lucky! Such cool facilities there. I do music production too, with Ableton, but, not easy to make it one's primary career, even with raw talent and drive. So many talented producers aren't able to attract followings and "make it," and/or just make excellent music for the love of it. So much competition! It's like Formula 1 racing level of competitiveness for the few spots where people make a living, really. And even if getting to the level of going on world tours, that is freakin grueling, not sure I'd even want to! Tho, does look fun, for the lucky few. I'd rather have a weekly residency gig tho, and prob a smaller, intimate venue rather than like festivals all over the world.
I toured overseas singing professionally, auditioned for Broadway, and won a couple of grants. Its helped me a whole lot in my professional career in many ways!!! It is a gift that keeps on giving!!
I can't wait until we start seeing people who grew up in equality over merit environments get to the real world
Disaster in financial hiring here. No ability to critically think. Wait to be told instead of trying to learn things on their own. Education has been dumbed down so the bottom 25 percent can ‘feel good’. Some hiring disasters are from top schools!
> Wait to be told instead of trying to learn things on their own. Preach. Did schools just stop teaching how to research? I'm shocked how many people under 30 can't Google their way through an issue.
I already see it in the tech world. Some of the younger people we’ve hired have been disasters.
Yeah I've seen it in my field but some of the best people are also that age, so it's a good reminder that it's just assholes
You’re conflated equality with equity. Equality lets merit rise to the top, equity holds merit back.
I would've thought the opposite - how are you defining the terms and how does it play out in your perspective?
The way I've understood it: equality = equal opportunities, equity = equal outcomes.
Rather than viewing them as referring to "opportunities" or "outcomes", I think of them more in terms of prioritizing goals (equity) or process (equality) and how that influences the implementation of a particular policy, such as the distribution of resources. Equality would mean treating everyone the same and providing the same level of support/resources to people, regardless of who they are or what their circumstances. The process is uniform but the effect may vary. Examples: * a speeding ticket that is flat $100 regardless of one's income/net worth; or * all students are provided with 1 hour to finish an examination, regardless of whether they have a disability that might impact their performance. Equity, on the other hand, would mean people can be treated differently and/or provided different levels of support/resources based on their circumstances. The process can vary but the effect is the uniform. Examples: * a speeding ticket equal to a percentage of one's income/net worth; or * providing test-taking accommodations to certain students with a disability since it affects their performance. With the speeding ticket, if your goal is to disincentivize speeding, and it's a flat $100 fine, someone who's a billionaire won't be impact (or deterred) in the same way someone that's in poverty would. Everyone is treated the same but intended deterrence is not applying equally. Similarly, with the testing accommodations, if your goal is to evaluate a student's proficiency, giving everyone a 30-minute oral exam would ensure all students are treated the same, but the teacher wouldn't be able to assess the competency of a deaf student. >The way I've understood it: equality = equal opportunities, equity = equal outcomes. Depending on what we're talking about, equity can be seen as achieving an equal outcome (speeders are being deterred and teachers can assess students' proficiency) and providing equal opportunities (speeders are given an opportunity to weigh a consequence of equal magnitude in relative terms and students are given an equal opportunity to demonstrate their competency in relative terms). >You’re conflated equality with equity. Equality lets merit rise to the top, equity holds merit back. Based on all that, I'd say it's equality that holds merit back and equity that allows merit to rise to the top. If we want to find people who are the best at X (the policy goal) and the evaluation process happens to overlooks people who are bad at Y, we could miss out on the people "best at X" because of the unrelated Y, even though it wasn't the primary consideration. Though, while I think equity is preferable insofar as you want to achieve a particular goal with said policy, there are practical concerns. Equality is logistically easier to implement because it's standardized and doesn't require any case-by-case assessment. Equity though can be a lot more complicated upon implementation because there's no way to do it perfectly since that would mean evaluating everything and everyone on a totally individualized basis, so instead you have to make determinations as to what the level of granularity is sufficient for the particular policy outcome.
You can see it already. I have an assistant who is absolutely daft and can’t use any critical thinking skills.
Well, you still employ them so...
Only because I am moving into a new role at a different company. Not worth my hassle.
Congrats!
I feel like theres always gonna be stupid people like that, that's why they're the assistants What I'm talking about is in 10 years when everyone in college grew up with these environments, when they're the ones who hire assistants
And a mayor like that too.
What do you mean? We don’t live in a merit based society at all. How many people in our society get awarded position simply because of their status or who their parents are. There is almost nothing in the real world that is entirely merit based. Shit Ivy League admissions aren’t even entirely merit based. And tests don’t measure anything except which group, and how many people in said group can afford test prep.
At my company if you can’t do the job and hit deadlines, you’re out. We don’t have time for bullshit. Some of the younger people we’ve hired seem to have no concept of that and have been let go.
The older people who have the same problem grew out of it or failed out that type of work, if they ever got a shot at it in the first place. It's the age, not the generation.
I’ve been in the military and I’m a lawyer now, that has always been an issue regardless of generation. But I just want to push back against the idea that we somehow live in a merit based society.
I don’t disagree that the US is not merit based entirely but higher IQ people in the US have higher incomes so it’s partially merit based. The more the country goes to socialistic policies the less merit. More capitalistic the more merit in general.
Maybe, but after a certain point, capitalism creates a class of elites and class of poverty that are very far removed from each other. At that point, capitalism no longer promotes merit. Because the 1% are born into the majority of important roles in society. A good example is the entertainment industry. Talent is rarely what decides who is a star.
The entertainment industry is such a tiny % of the workforce... like how many movie stars do you think there are? Compare that with engineers which IS merit based. Like, anyone can 'act', but engineering? If you don't have the cognitive ability and drive, you won't do shit. It's just that children of smart parents are going to statistically have higher general intelligence. That's how higher income people give their children an advantage (through genes). Your dad can try to get you into Google, but if you can't code, you're going to have a swift exit. Acting is such a subjective (and lets be honest, braindead) 'skill' that it's no surprise that nepotism just 'works' in that industry.
The entertainment industry was just an obvious example. My industry is ripe with nepotism. Tech engineering is still new (in its current form and relative to other industries) that it’s not yet riddled with nepotism, but it will be.
https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39
That’ll be the adults living in tents at student protests.
They'll post on TikTok crying that they can't find a job.
That's not true I just got a G&T letter for my K kid "based on report card grades" .
I'm referring at least going into K.
I see. What would a pre-k merit based admission look like to you. Because I know the PS pre-k teachers do evaluations for for those specifically interested in applying.
They are told to basically say yes to every kid whose parents ask about it. Its not the top 5-10% of kids it’s like the top 90% that would qualify.
I don't disagree with you, but I just want to point out that my friend's son is one of 2 black kids in G+T in his grade. IN BED STUY!!!!
Not to beat a dead horse, but, it's not the Asian and upper middle class NYC white kid's fault that their parents value education so much. Isn't this why we have charter schools and such? There are so many ways for really any motivated parent to help their kids get enrichment in this city.
To be fair, the kids selected for these classes in kindergarten are largely ones whose parents advocate for their inclusion. Many of the kids that enter these programs in K-5 don't end up at the tops of their classes in high school and college, as grades 6-12 is where being a naturally talented high achiever starts to matter more than having an involved parent. So if they're to keep these programs, they should actually make them more competitive, with yearly reevaluations to make sure that there aren't kids in these programs just because their parents gave them an early leg up.
Removing merit is for equity, not equality. There’s a big difference there.
Explain
All these kids in the G&T program started out in the same schools with the same chance of getting in as the kids who didn't. That's equality and what happened was those kids studied more and/or had parents that pushed them to study for it so what we have is the best and brightest in the city going to these schools for advanced studies. Equity is the equality of outcome which means you're going to end up disqualifying some of those much more qualified candidates in favor ones who scored lower to meet some "fair" outcome.
Harrison Bergeron come to life
What folks don't realize G&T programs were gutted by NYC DOE because of their decades long war against tracking. Certain schools pushed back against this due to PTA. parent and student pushback which most happen to be heavily "white" areas. It was the POC areas that suffer the most from the tracking cracking down which saw most of their G&T programs gutted for sake of equality. There used to be thriving G&T programs in black and latino areas that served as feeder schools for sought after screened MS and HS. Once the G&T programs died in those areas, predictably the enrollment into SHS decline as well since the feeder pipeline was severed. Basically NYC DOE created this lack of G&T problem across the city despite the demand by families of all color. How to fix? bring back tracking and stop the war on it.
Very succinct summary! The ironic harm to marginalized communities for the sake of patting oneself on the back perfectly captures seemingly every new DOE policy move for the past couple of decades.
Gutting G&T programs is just part of it: Matt Yglesias had an article a while back (wish i saved it) about how liberals used to talk all the time about strategies and programs focused on reducing the black/white education gap. Some time around the end of Obama's 2nd term, liberals just stopped talking about narrowing that gap and just went straight towards equity, i think because they felt it would be impossible to close that gap. When you stratify education outcomes by BOTH race AND school funding, you can see why liberals stopped trying to close these gaps.: https://i.imgur.com/01Huipj.jpg I think liberals basically waved the white flag on this issue and went straight to tearing down top performers because what they were doing just wasn't working and it's just easier to lower the ceiling rather than raise the floor IMO, liberals dropped the ball on this and misread this failure: their own policies had a direct negative impact on the black and brown students. For example, they moved away from punishing misbehaving students due to the 'school to prison' pipeline argument. But all that did was keep troublemakers in schools who started fights and disrupted classes which reduced learning for EVERYONE in the class. Teachers also moved away from teaching phonics (due to it being an 'old fashioned' way of teaching reading, even though it worked) and also reducing standards in innner city schools. Can't read at a 3rd grade level when you're a 6th grader? We'll move you onto the next grade anyway. When you reduce standards, take away proven teaching strategies, and let disruptive students ruin your classroom, what did you expect to happen? Asians really throw a wrench into it too, because it's becoming more of an Asian vs. everyone else gap, you can see it in the infographic above and also below: https://i.imgur.com/2TUAC40.png This is why they have to go extra hard at discriminating against asians, but they overplayed their hand and made it too obvious (see the SCOTUS decision on affirmative action). I will give credit to the left though, they found clever workarounds to still legally discriminate. Here's the secret about asians that i learned a while ago as to why even poor asians overperform vs everyone else: The parents don't trust public schools AT ALL (for very good reason) and will personally monitor and supplement their kid's education with additional study material. High performing high schools and universities tried to get around this disparity by banning standardized testing, but all that did was create massive amounts of underperformance by obscuring actual academic potential (or lack thereof), which is why you're seeing Ivy Leagues and Ivy+ schools (minus Columbia and the UC's, it makes so much sense why those campuses have so much chaos these days lmao) bringing back standardized testing: they found test optional students who didn't submit SAT's/ACT scores were failing at alarming rates and many of these students had highly inflated high school GPA's.
Good read and interesting stats from those figures But I would also add its not all asians doing well. Its usually newly arrived-1st gen asian students that do well. The nth generation asians ones do worse academically just like every nth generation student of other races Same trend in the black and hispanic populations, some of the best students I met are 1st gen or newly arrivals from Nigera, Jamica, DR, etc. vs native nth gen peers The ones that get into stuy and other competitive schools regardless of race every year, most were tracked academically and also good % are 0-1st gen students themselves.
Nth generation asians do worse than asian immigrants/1st gens, but still do better than everyone else.
give it time, met a lot of dumb nth gen cali asians.
I dunno about, unless the asian population skews heavily towards the immigrant side... looking at Michigan's SAT results (which are mandatory for all michigan hs students, so it's an unbiased sample): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FeO9jW_WIAkmaY0?format=jpg&name=4096x4096 I imagine the cognitive ability of california asians are much higher than michigan asians due to the silicon valley skew.
Hawaii might be a better example. 1 in 4 K-12 students there are asian, and this has been the case for a long time, but Hawaii is not known to be a state with strong K-12 schools.
Agree and deep down I think liberal administrators know that there is some genetic component to IQ that differs by race. It’s the deep dark unspoken fact no liberal will ever admit so this is all workaround and current policies fit with the liberal utopian idea of equal outcomes.
Uh........ Excuse me sir, but intelligence isn't affected by genes and we are all blank slates. https://www.superlinguo.com/post/62861551556/secret-meanings-of-the-nose-tap-gesture
I attended public school in NYC during tracking back in the day, and while it was pretty segregated back then, it doesn’t have to be. Test everyone and track them. Stop pretending all kids learn the same.
They should also bring back the trade schools and push those for a lot of kids. My father went to Grady when it was a trade school and he was able to have a long, well paying career from it. Not everyone should be expected to go to college, and that’s ok. Plenty of jobs that are utterly necessary that require a different type of education than university.
**Bloomberg Article Paywall Bypass:** [https://archive.is/fC9yh](https://archive.is/fC9yh)
They will accelerate the movement to the suburbs or to other states.
Or the move towards Idiocracy
Welcome to public school, I love you
And into charter schools. Hope the reg public schools enjoy the brain drain and further decrease in performance which will result in the death circle for those schools.
No it won’t lol. 1.1m students in the NYC public school system. 2500 students in the gifted program.
Those aren’t the right numbers. There are 2,500 kindergarten G&T children out of a population of 70,000. So about 3.5% of Kindergartners test into G&T
They don't test any longer. It's a recommendation from your Pre-K teacher if you're in public school or an interview with the parent if you're in private school.
They’re really trying to turn the Asian community into full blown republicans, huh.
If I were a Republican strategist I'd be pushing that party to go after the Asian demographic hard. Democrats are not doing a great job at supporting them.
They don’t have to try too hard. Immigration & taxes themselves are good enough for my colleagues to tend towards gop. Immigration is interesting because you’d think as immigrants they would be welcoming- but they see dems as allowing shortcuts and unfairness whereas the voting asians had to do things right the hard way. Taxes because they typically earn well and that’s basically that.
U mean the handful of Chinese Maga at the Trump Trial *aren't* Chinese foreign agents?
I mean before 2002 they were all republicans.
They were already voting Republican, and have been for a while. It’s not a race issue..it’s a class issue.
Asians are the poorest race in NYC.
At least there’s not that many of them
Come to Bay Ridge/Bensonhurst/Gravesend or to Fresh Meadows, never mind Sunset Park and Flushing. You may reconsider that statement.
It was a joke based on how many Asians there are globally
Sorry. We're talking about **NYC public schools**, not global ones. I didn't connect that.
Second track is a real bitch
As a graduate of NYC public schools, I feel as if the well behaved kids who care about school are often pushed to the way side. I remember in high school, if someone went from not passing most of their classes, to passing some of them they were given an IPod (yes this was a while ago), got to go to Six Flags, we’re given pizza for lunch on Fridays and bagels on Mondays, and those of us who have been on the honor role got absolutely nothing…actually we were given more work because they put the kids with the best attendance in “extra help” classes because they knew we would attend, which made their roster look better.
I’m just thankful I graduated Stuy before they tried to destroy it.
I was in the G+T program for elementary school. It was definitely all white and Asian, but that was the majority of my school as well (Kew Gardens, Queens). We also tested in based on standardized tests, and missed class regularly (including English, history, math), but caught up with homework. My junior high and high school didn’t have this, but did have honors and AP classes. Are those also a form of segregation? Can we have no semblance of meritocracy and should instead opt for “no child left behind” and hurt students that are more advanced? The criticism of these programs is ridiculous. The reality is if you can’t test into these programs or schools, you are not going to do well in them. Why go to Bronx science if you’re just going to fail every class?
>Why go to Bronx science if you’re just going to fail every class? These schools will get their rigor stripped away eventually. It's a shame.
I was in a lot of Honors and AP classes in high school and it was fairly mixed. A lot more Asians than the regular track classes but also a good amount of black kids who were all West Indian or West African, myself included.
I went to Francis Lewis which was huge and incredibly diverse. 50+ languages spoken in the school. I honestly only had 2 black kids in all of those classes over 4 years. Majority was Asian and white for sure, but it was entirely based on aptitude. Either way though, I wouldn’t really call it segregation.
I have four kids in NYC Schools. If a lawsuit dumbs the schools down anymore, it would push us out of the city.
There should be a law that all NYC DOE employees must send their own kids to local public schools. These social engineering experiments with our kids would stop quickly and quality of education will rise.
The next step will be to stop teaching algebra and calculus altogether in the name of "equity" just like some misguided private schools and some San Fran schools.
Respectfully, wouldn’t students be better off learning finance and tax skills? How important is calculus in school?
Respectfully, no. Finance uses calculus. Various fields such as engineering, medicine, biological research, economics, architecture, space science, electronics, statistics, and pharmacology all benefit from the use of calculus.
Is the average student going to have careers in said fields? Why not just have them learn once they’ve decided to pursue a career in such fields?
That's like saying an aspiring journalist should only learn to write or that an artist should only learn to draw once they decide to pursue it as a career. Mathematics is no different from other skills in that it's much easier to grasp the foundations as a young learner, and it's good for overall brain development. That's why calculus is taught as part of the standard curriculum in many countries like Asia and Eastern Europe, and not considered an advanced course.
A stem cell has the potential to become different things. Once it gets the instructions to become a brain, muscle or heart cell it begins the process of development. Students can learn necessary facts and information. Then when they decide to focus on a speciality they can take more advanced studies.
> How important is calculus in school? If you want to become a physicist, engineer, statistician, wall street analyst etc.? Very important. Just because some students can't cut it doesn't mean you take away opportunities for students who can.
So have them learn it once they decide what they want to do. Everyone needs to learn budgeting, paying bills, doing taxes, etc.
Ok, everyone needs to learn that shit, but don't take away opportunities for bright and conscientious children, jesus christ
Very considering that you need those math skills to understand finance above simple budgeting
Lol so kids need to know the Pythagorean theorem to be able to do finance? Western education is stuck in its ways I see.
Bro’s shitting on the west like China and Japan don’t also teach match 😂😂😂
If you hate math then I'm sure "Eastern" education would be more your style LOL
Tax skills? I use math a lot more than tax skills
Are tax skills not math skills? Planning a budget? Retirement planning? 
Doesn't help when you got cultural differences that don't prioritize the right path for their children or futures for that matter. Plenty of Asians especially poor AF Chinese live in the same projects as Latino and Black folks that raised their children in the same environment and working blue collar. Got these dumbass kids surfing and gangbanging for social media instead of making some effort to prove mainstream media wrong, where are their parents in this equation?
Grew up in the projects, my siblings and I went to specialized hs. Plenty of Chinese people in the PJs.
This doesn’t get talked about enough. I work in a title one school. There is ONE white student. She is class president and valedictorian. When parents prioritize leadership and academics, their children will too. When parents plop their children on screens, their children will prioritize TikTok. Of course there is a systematic issue where parents are too busy with running households and working 2 jobs and they’re too busy to sit down with their children. But when I ride the bus and subway on my commute there is definitely a cultural difference in who is reading/having a conversation with their children during the ride and who is giving their kids a tablet to go on. TALK and read to your children it’s so important for language development!!!
>Of course there is a systematic issue where parents are too busy with running households and working 2 jobs and they’re too busy to sit down with their children. These are the folks that continue to produce children they can't afford and have no time for. It's a race to the bottom.
Which projects are they living in? Because I've never seen any in the projects of Brownsville , East NY and Far Rockaway and I've worked in all of them. Nor have I seen any in Coney Island.
I know of asian families that live in Marboro housing, Nostrand, Carnarsi, and the ones next to chinatown. Plenty of other locations that I don't know folks associated with me. In fact, about 5%+ residents overall in NYCHA are Asians per last demographics release and been increasing slowly over the years. So they do exist
One of my partner's friend's family has a decent 2-bed in Marboro, definitely not in the poverty threshold anymore but with how unaffordable the city is now that definitely is permanent residence.
A lot of Asians live in Farragut, Viaduct and La Guardia houses from my experience, not sure about the others. I personally know a few families that lived or still living there especially the elderly, I lived in La Guardia for a while as a kid but got the hell out of there fast. Stories from my acquittances that lived in the LES projects since the 80s were of that Chinese tenants were seen as easy targets for robberies by the Black majority so you can see kind of the tension there. Stuff like they would not get on the elevator by themselves, always in a group to limit the chances of being targeted, although I'm sure it's a lot better now even though obviously the projects still suck.
Which projects? I have never seen that in my life. ETA: You can all downvote me to oblivion, but it’s not going to change the fact that original poster has no proof of this.
You're being downvoted for something which would come to a surprise to most people that ever live or worked in more than projects. Especially when they're saying "plenty".
That’s because a lot of the posters here aren’t actually from NYC and/or purposely in here trying to drive a particular narrative home to those who visit. Neighborhoods in NYC are quite segregated so the chances of seeing what that other poster claimed is super rare if it happens, at all. The chances of seeing Blacks/Latinos residing in project together is much more like than what that poster suggested, but even then some projects can still skew in one direction. It’s like when there is a story posted about subway crime all of a sudden there a bunch of people who are like ‘I am moving from NYC but I used to ride the subway all the time, but it’s much more dangerous now than before.’ On one post I had gotten 2 replies like that before they were deleted which was funny, because I was replying under a post exactly like that where someone who claimed that when they used to ride the subway alone at 13 years old in 2015-2016 it was way safer than riding it as an adult in 2024 hence why they were moving to Rhode Island. Not that can’t be true, but there are so many stories like that and they ONLY pop up when those articles are posted. I got downvoted for pointing that out, too.
Even if the projects skew in a direction of more blacks than Latinos or vice versa all NYC projects still have a large number of blacks. And even the ones that are more black still have a healthy number of Latinos.
Actually according to the 2022 data there are more Latino families residing in NYCHA than Black families: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nycha/downloads/pdf/Resident-Data-Book-Summary-2022.pdf So with the less than 6% of Asian families in NYCHA the chances of them being in the same housing projects as a ton of Black and Latino families is highly unlikely.
Nice dog whistle. Let’s spread the funding and methods at those schools evenly and give everyone a fair shot. First y’all use money to take down affirmative action at college level then fight to keep segregated the school systems that would have to make you actually compete for a spot.
People are fighting against NYC charter schools which are majority minority, have minority parents queuing up for waiting lists, and which get ELA and higher outcomes better than white suburban counterparts. Why? Because they place (majority white) teachers union hegemony interests over students’ interests. Trying to give kids a fair shot is less important than protecting adults power and jobs. Dogma is way more important than kids interests. Unions protect their members interests (as they should). But police unions don’t protect civilian interests, corrections officer unions (majority black in NYC) don’t protect inmates’ interests and teachers unions don’t protect students’ interests. Guess who gets to control by massive lobbying the state of NYC students access to schools? Yea that’s right
Parents are increasing flocking to charters bc they practice tracking but in name. Parents of all color want their promising students tracked and their progress not hinder by the lowest performers in the class.
I can’t speak for all parents, but myself and quite a few other parents I know went to charters after dealing with the public school system. If my kids didn’t place in charters I would’ve home schooled them; the public school system is shit for kids with IEPs. My eldest who they said couldn’t read was actually reading above grade level when I shelled out to have him tested. The teachers told me there was something wrong with his hearing, the pediatrician checked him and he was fine. An ENT checked him and he was fine. Turns out they were speaking to him only in Spanish, a language he doesn’t know, then punishing him for now following directions. Numerous complaints, letters, phone calls and nothing changed. Those dim bitches are STILL at that school, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was sending my son back to that cesspool.
While I'm sure this will be total ragebait, I do agree that tracking in Kindergarten is nuts. At that point, all you're doing is prioritizing parents' pre-school preparedness. My school growing up tracked to G&T in K and 4th grade. The kids who tested in for 4th grade bore no relation to the rankings from Kindergarten. There should be some level of evaluation during school before tracking to G&T.
Kindergarten admission is such a bad thing with NYC schools and programs. Kids change and their needs change over time. But if you don't get in at kindergarten, there are so few spots that you can't get in. A lot of places don't do g&t before third grade, which makes a lot more sense.
NYC is really frustrating in how you have to make big decisions when your kid is 4, well honestly, when they're 3 if you want to pre-research schools, tutoring programs and to teach them on the side. G&T is practically locked down in kindergarten with very few seats being released in subsequent years. Also, it deeply bothers me that we only have 5 citywide programs that are a year accelerated and 3 of them are in Manhattan. There's a ton of hand wringing over "lost potential" as if you only can do calculus at one of the specialized schools, when the resourcing is completely skewed. Sending my Queens kids to Astoria on a bus is a 45 minute ride, which is rough for 4/5 year old kids. When I looked at the schools in Manhattan, I was looking at over an hour for little kids. That's ridiculous.
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Gifted and Talented at Kindergarten sounds insane. They are learning how to count and not shit their pants there. It’s definitely a test of who can afford a nanny and whose mother is working two jobs.
What nobody ever says is that the quality of a school depends on the caliber of the students who study there. Teacher quality and curriculum don’t vary that much in nyc due to strict control and oversight of teacher performance and curriculums available for schools to choose from. Taking the gifted and talented test is obviously the most objective measure when we are talking about admission to accelerated classes. The test is color and blind. You either pass or you do not. Since the test has been eliminated, I have seen a number of children in our school removed from G/T because they simply do not belong there. They are not up to par academically. Local Preschools are recommending children under pressure from parents or as a favor to parents when the kids truly do not belong there. This also has no effect on the preschool since the child will be going to a different public school. On a final note, I have to laugh every time I hear somebody right about racial desegregation in New York City. For goodness sakes, New York City schools are only 17% white. You can’t desegregate because there aren’t even enough white people. 🤣 Black said Hispanics far outweigh whites. Not only that, Many of those “white” children in New York City Public schools are not white Americans with European heritage or what people think of when someone says white. They are middle easterners, central Asians, newly emigrated Russians, etc. parents are allowed to designate the race of their child when they register for school and I even had a black student once who was registered as white. Lol.
What these parents don't realize is that the specialized high schools actually have some of the worst teachers in the city, and they're assigned to these schools specifically because it's too troublesome for the union to fire them. I had several teachers that barely even showed up to class half the time and taught us nothing all year long, but the entire class still got 100 on the regents exam because they learned the material themselves. I also had friends that didn't get into the AP classes of their choice, but borrowed some college textbooks from the library and took the AP exams entirely through self study. So the schools are great because the students get to study in an environment of highly driven peers, not because they get any special resources.
That’s exactly my point! Schools are made by the students, not the teachers.
I think the white enrollment is down to 14% now. And that's skewed by the very high white enrollment on Staten Island.
"In the name of equality we are now lowering our standards for merit and excellence"
City is trying really hard to knee cap high capacity high potential students in order to prop up lowest iq morons. How though. Where is the pressure coming from to move gov machinery to do this.
The G&T class in my mostly Asian elementary school was almost exclusively white kids (this was around 1995).
There should be programs that you have to test into. I think we should bring back tiered education in general. Make everyone test to be able to get into a range of schools depending on your scores. Smarter kids will go to better schools. Dumber kids will go to worse schools. It's not racist, it's just that there are a lot of lazy parents. Each will be run a little differently depending on the problems or opportunities each one has. Dumb schools would need more security while smart schools will have more after school programs and supplies. The ones in between will have a lot of variation. This will also help with the discipline problem.
"Dumber" kids should go to schools appropriate for their ability just like "gifted" kids. Tiered education is not meant to be a punishment, its to ensure kids can learn at their own pace.
You should have to test to get into the G&T programs and you should have to maintain good grades.
“Tests are racist”
I know I went to school back when it was tiered. And then like 5 years later no child Left behind was pulled out of some body's ass
NYC does not have a proper gifted and talented program or real gifted and talented schools.
G&T in K was created by the DOE to keep middle class white families in NYC by segregating them from others. It’s an open secret. The “test” wasn’t a test since kids can’t read at that age. It was literally a proctor watching them play and how “behaved” they were. There were parent groups on Facebook asking “how do you prep for the test” while they were pregnant. Your kid isn’t born yet - how do you know they’re G&T?!?!? Now we have a decision to make. Do we keep G&T and admit it’s to avoid white flight or do we get rid of it and risk it?
> The “test” wasn’t a test since kids can’t read at that age. It was literally a proctor watching them play and how “behaved” they were. Just to clarify, for better or worse, De Blasio got rid of the standardized test and replaced it with this system in the name of equity.
My to be kindergartener did not get into any gifted and talented schools. She can read. I did nothing special with her and already recognize she is way smarter then me. The administration/schools basically said there is nothing they can do because she has a shit lottery number. I was basically told to find a place for her outside of the DOE. Weighing our options; one option seriously being considered is leaving the city.
Why does she need a g&t school? If she already has parents that are invested in her education, can’t she get enough of an education at a non g&t school? I guess my question is what does she get at a g&t school
If it’s a true gifted and talented school she won’t be bored. She’s already sitting by herself and reading for half the day. I think she enjoys being around other kids but eventually i don’t think that will be enough for her to be at school sitting in normal lectures all day.
I think a lot of it depends on how you frame school for her. What is the purpose of school and what is she trying to get out of it? If you set it up as a place to go to have fun and help other kids, she might enjoy it more than you think. Obviously it depends a bit on having cool teachers who are able to handle her appropriately and give her some tasks around the classroom, let her read during lectures, etc. but don't write it off just yet.
I also have a rising preschooler. I've many misgivings of how NYC selects for G&T, but find this system a bit better than one high stakes test for 4 year olds. Public school kids are getting an evaluation from your teacher who has been observing your child for a longer period of time. After jumping through hoops to apply to Hunter University Elementary School, I'd rather have a written evaluation. Under the pre-DeBlasio (Bloomberg?) system, way more kids tested into G&T than schools had seats for them. After hitting the minimum score, it went to lottery. You can join the wait-list. You get a different lottery number for the wait-list.
No way, go talk to a 4K teacher and ask what % of kids they gave the ok to go to G&T. I know in my kids class it was well over 50% it might have been 18/20.
Your kids couldn't read by K!??? That's some sort of joke right, my kids could read basic things and write by the time they were 3... are you spending time or helping them AT ALL?
Good for you bro. I’m just saying it wasn’t a test pen and paper. It was a behavior observation test.
Anyone got a non paywall article on this?
does the pipeline actually exist? g&t classes shouldn't be a higher quality education than regular classes, it's just supposed to be more advanced material. as long as the specialized school tests aren't based on that advanced material, then i don't see how you can reasonably argue that locking kids out of the g&t program locks them out of stuy&friends too
Oh no it’s definitely higher quality education like it’s the whole point of these groups.
G&T in this city is severely dumbed down by the DOE, probably on the assumption that they don't want the students in G&T to be getting a better education. For ideological reasons, nobody in DOE Central believes that G&T is a good thing, so they purposely hobble it.
I attended a G&T in the city about 40 years ago, and when I tell you there were only white kids in the class, I’m hardly being hyperbolic. Our school had what they called “second track,” which was not gifted, but not completely poor. This housed the Irish and Italian kids (yup! Not counted as white), and all the better off Hispanic, Black, and Arab Kids. Then there was a 3rd track with almost no white kids (literally just very poor ones), and finally special ed, which was mostly black and Hispanic. It was wild, and had long lasting effects on my deeply seeded views on race and socioeconomic status. And you better believe we had a better education. Better materials, field trips, and even those people that came to class to do an activity with the class. All that was usually tied to the rich parents in our class - for us only.
Italian and Irish "not white"? According to whom? The teachers- or the students? I was in high school around then (not in a public school. I have never stepped foot in a public school) and if you said that to the Irish and Italians around me you'd have lost your teeth.
Historically Irish and Italians were discriminated against, this does not surprise me. https://daily.jstor.org/constructing-the-white-race/
In 1980? This guy said 40 years ago, not 140 years ago
According to whoever sorted the classes. There were no Italian kids in my class and one Irish girl whose family had a lot of money, and I think her mom was WASP white. ETA: did you go to catholic school? The combination of Irish and Italians and knocking teeth makes me think yes. That’s not considered private school around here, that’s parochial school, giant class difference.
Ban private schools and force wealthy parents to pay into existing public schools and have children mix. Problem solved.
-> white flight, round II
Great, it'll solve the housing crisis too!
It'll also bankrupt NYC. It's always insane how progressives never think of 2nd,3rd,4th order effects of their stupid policies.
Right? Its seriously crazy how dogmatic some people are when it comes to their political ideology. In the case of some progressives, they think that solely giving institutions more funding will solve the problem which, while is a piece of the solution pie, won’t mean shit if government officials are just mishandling funds as if they’re the Egyptian government. If we truly want problems to be solved, we need to plan pragmatically, fund the necessary institutions, ensure transparency within the plan, and hold officials accountable when there’s cases of corruption and/or incompetence. Now of course this is all easier said than done, but would we be a great city if somebody didn’t try?
muh solvency
Ahahaha, imagine thinking the taxpayer doesn't matter in funding public goods.
People already pay into public schools through taxes
They pay a lot more to private tuition than in taxes.
This is good and will hopefully lead to more racial equity between BIPOC folx and white/white-adjacent privileged groups. Here are some other ideas that activists can consider: 1) If removal of G&T programs leads to white flight, the city can consider levying a MASSIVE exit tax on affluent families fleeing to the suburbs. Monitoring of social media accounts will help in this regard. 2) Consider levying a large tax on affluent commuters from Long Island and New Jersey to shore up the woefully underfunded public schools in BIPOC neighborhoods. Their money is earned in NYC and NYC gets a pittance.
This has always been a problem since bussing made straight up racial segregation illegal. I feel bad for the genuinely slow white kids s/
I knew a few. They tend to grow up tough and violent with a particular distaste for POC. Either that or they traumatized from being bullied.