“Scaling up a program which separates students, often along lines of class and race, is a retrograde approach that does nothing to improve quality education for the overwhelming majority of our students,” said the New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, in a statement.ĭefenders of gifted and talented programs also had some concerns. There were about 1,900 kindergarten children and about 90 third graders accepted into this year’s gifted program, according to Nathaniel Steyer, a spokesman for the Department of Education, in a school system that serves more than a million students.Īnd some officials questioned the value of the gifted program itself. “Expanded access to the city’s gifted and talented programs is long overdue,” Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, said in a statement.īut there are concerns that the plan doesn’t go far enough to address the program’s flaws, such as the small number of seats for the city’s more than 70,000 kindergartners and the few entry points into the program. Though 70 percent of the students in the city’s school system are Black and Latino, around 75 percent of the students enrolled in gifted classes are white or Asian American. Banks, are hoping to address what city officials have acknowledged for years: The gifted and talented program has contributed to racially segregated classrooms. “It’s time for all our students to have access to the classroom programs that develop their full personhood and their full potential,” the mayor said at a news conference Thursday.īy expanding the program and permanently eliminating the admissions tests, the mayor and his Mr. Applications for the program will open May 31 for the 2022-23 school year. The citywide admissions test, which has not been offered since fall 2020, will be replaced by a screening process in which pre-K teachers will nominate students to apply to be entered into a lottery. Adams’s plan, the city will add 100 seats to the current 2,400 for kindergarten students in the program and an additional 1,000 seats for third-graders. Mayor Eric Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks unveiled a plan yesterday to expand the city’s gifted and talented classes for elementary students and to permanently eliminate the contentious admissions test given to 4-year-olds in an effort to address concerns that the program has shortchanged low-income and Black and Latino students.
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