LAST CALL FOR GIFTED TEST
Despite cries of bias, exam is on, but set for ax in 2022
Education officials in charge of testing argued against going forward with the Gifted and Talented exam this year, saying doing so during the pandemic would worsen racial inequity in the fast-track elementary school program.
Mayor de Blasio and schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced last week the city will move forward with the exam this spring, before phasing it out permanently.
But a July 2020 memo from the office of Chief Academic Officer Linda Chen raised red flags about that idea.
“Testing during this time could exacerbate inequities for an admissions program that is widely known to have disparate outcomes by race,” reads the eight-page report, written by the DOE’s Office of Assessment.
“Data shows that the pandemic has impacted poor and ethnically diverse New York neighborhoods at higher rates than wealthier, predominately white ones,” the memo said.
“The difference in performance by racial and/or socioeconomic group could be increased by the impact of the pandemic, as students face loss of loved ones, loss of family income, food instability, etc.”
Education Department spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon said Chen did not author the memo.
“This is a draft document from seven months ago, and was one of many iterations of potential proposals and options considered,” she said.
DOE officials didn’t provide the final version of the memo or specify why the draft was identified as coming from Chen.
Some members of the city panel that votes on Education Department contracts said officials should have been transparent about these recommendations earlier.
“This represents the most egregious kind of manipulation,” said one Panel for Educational Policy member who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
O’Hanlon said the department’s decision to maintain the test this year “involved many stakeholders and subject experts, and was
considered carefully over the course of several months as the pandemic evolved.”
Holding the test this year while restructuring the program in the
future was a way to “create real, lasting change that acknowledges the inequities of this current system without inflicting a last-minute change for families,” O’Hanlon added.
The memo recommends suspending the test this school year as part of a multiyear effort to make admissions to the fast-track elementary school program more equitable.
The report is stark in its criticisms of the program’s current structure, arguing that “the Gifted and Talented (G&T) program has been and continues to be a part of New York City’s legacy of opposition to school integration.”
It encourages the city to move toward “universal screening,” where all students are evaluated for gifted services rather than just those whose families sign them up for the test.
Students would be screened in second grade, rather than before entering kindergarten, under the July recommendations.
Officials have pledged to unveil more specific plans for the future of the gifted program this September.
The city’s Panel for Education Policy will vote next week on whether to renew the Education Department’s contract with Pearson, the company that produces the gifted test.
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