11/14/2022 0 Comments Far side school for the giftedThen there are dozens of “screened” high schools and programs that operate their own admissions criteria. These include such world-renowned secondary institutions as Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. The city boasts the eight “specialized high schools” to which admission is based on scores on a much-discussed assessment called the Specialized High School Admissions Test. The number of academically screened schools will be limited and based on the needs of the community.” Note, however, that all this is supposed to happen by October 26, with a student-application deadline of December 1 for the 2023 admission cycle-a mighty tight timeline.Īs for high schools, where city-wide choice has long been the practice and all upcoming high schoolers must rank order a dozen of their preferred schools or programs among hundreds of options, it will remain complicated. Where screening is allowed, students would be ranked based on a composite of their course grades from fourth grade. What hizzoner and the chancellor did with regard to middle schools is to allow those local districts again to factor academic performance (grades, test scores, etc.) in admitting students to “screened” schools, most of which are in high demand-although within the ranks of those who qualify for a particular school, a lottery arrangement will continue.Īccording to the city’s Department of Education, each local superintendent is now supposed to “partner with school communities’ leadership, staff, and parents to thoughtfully determine if and where middle school screened programs should exist based on instructional and community needs. In the complex governance structure of New York’s public education system, the central administration is responsible for high schools, while middle schools more or less belong to thirty-two community-level sub-systems that have a degree of autonomy in operating them. They turned last week to middle and high schools with reforms that again are incomplete but again point in the right direction. But the abyss was avoided, and the improvements launched by Adams and Banks point in the right direction. Yes, the present arrangement is far from perfect: Children are screened too early for admission, the process for screening them is prone to bias and error, and the programs themselves are far too scarce. That was the case when they rescued elementary gifted education from the abyss. That means any policy changes he and schools chancellor David Banks make are likely to be incomplete at the outset. When Adam took office on New Years Day 2022, he thus inherited a situation that was confusing, contentious, and headed in the wrong direction-in a city and school system so vast and complex that any change of significance entails a lot of time, mid-course corrections, and special exceptions to get right.īut Adams appears, thankfully, to see things more clearly than his predecessor, and is working toward the right goals-“ equity and excellence for all.” He also knows that the only way to achieve them in New York is slowly and steadily. Hence also their plans to demolish New York’s network of eight “exam” high schools and fiddle with the performance-based elements of admission to all the city’s “screened” middle and high schools. Hence their efforts to tear down the structures of gifted-and-talented education in the elementary grades and replace them with superficial add-ons. Nowhere have such misguided views been more intense than New York City, where they were embraced by de Blasio and those he chose to run the school system. They view test scores as taboo, and call for dismantling academic programs for high achievers instead of expanding these precious services for Black, Hispanic, and other historically disadvantaged students. Merit-based admission to anything (except perhaps the Olympics) is out of favor in today’s progressive circles and among equity hawks. The city is thus putting greater emphasis on merit in the endlessly contentious rationing of a much-valued but far too scarce good-challenging, high-quality schooling for those who want and are prepared to take advantage of it- and it is taking steps to ease the scarcity. Now they’re moving to improve services in middle schools and expand the supply of schools and seats for motivated and academically successful high school students, while also giving pupil performance more weight in admission to selective middle and high schools. This after much retrograde activity during the regime of former Mayor Bill de Blasio.Įarlier this year, Mayor Eric Adams and his team expanded the number of sites for gifted education at the elementary level, and changed screening policies to include more students from lower-income families. Amid nonstop controversy, New York City, which runs the nation’s largest school system, is again moving in the right direction when it comes to advancing the education of able students and opening opportunities to more high achievers.
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