Brighter future
New Yorkers needn’t be forced to choose between equity and excellence in their public schools. That was the message sent by Schools Chancellor David Banks and Mayor Adams in pledging not to nix gifted-and-talented classes but to expand them to every one of the city’s 32 community districts. We concur.
For years, the city’s G&T programs have sorted young learners into siloed classrooms and separate citywide schools based on the scores they got on two opt-in standardized tests typically taken at age 4. The setup yielded severe ethnic and neighborhood skews: Whites and Asians were overrepresented, Blacks and Hispanics underrepresented. Perennially on the Upper West Side and in Park Slope, more kids took the test and passed than were seats available. In the South Bronx and central Brooklyn, not enough kids took the test or qualified to trigger the creation of even a single class.
For seven years, Bill de Blasio did precious little to change this tale of two cities staring him in the face — before an October 2021 overhaul told the next mayor to scrap separate-class G&T and replace it with advanced in-class learning, subject by subject, to youngsters. It wasn’t the worst idea, but it would’ve been devilishly difficult to execute.
Thousands of parents of precocious boys and girls appreciate what the current accelerated learning program offers. Serving these kids — and keeping their families, who often have private and suburban schools as options, in the system — needn’t be considered a zero-sum tug-of-war with their peers.
Banks and Adams pledge their revived G&T program will serve every corner of the city. They’ll permanently eliminate the test, opting to use a pre-K teacher checklist. (New data proves that’ll drive substantial diversity improvements, though there should be transparency on what these evaluations entail.) It’s especially important that they plan to add more than 1,000 seats — and maybe more in the future — for a third-grade on-ramp. That’s a better point to measure readiness, as students can be assessed using math, science, English and social studies grades.
Equally essential, they promise that maintaining G&T will not mean a dumbing down of general ed. Every class in the city, say the men in charge, is poised to get more rigorous. Hold them to it, New York.