Genius Move? NYC’s Black Mayor Bucks Progressives on the Racial Chessboard of ‘Gifted’ Education – 69News WFMZ-TV
Mayor Eric Adamsplanto save accelerated education in New York City from progressive critics begins with students like Cassy Thimes daughter: a black second-grader who would thrive in a gifted classroom that today includes few kids of color.
Shes a top student and a gifted program will give her a more rigorous education and push her to excel, said Thime, who has a doctorate in education and lives in Queens. Now she has classmates who cant even read.
Adams, who took office in January, is diving headfirst into a controversy over academically selective schools thats dividing communities from San Francisco to Fairfax County, Va.
New Yorks second black mayor rejects the criticism that accelerated learning is racist and must be dismantled because of the low number of students of color who qualify. He believes they should strive for an elite education, too. To help them, Adams and his new schools chancellor, David Banks, are staking a middle ground that embraces both competitive academics and diversity. If this longshot strategy works, New York could influence districts across the country.
As Banks sees it, the problem with selective schools boils down to scarcity there are too few seats for advanced students in elementary, middle, and high schools for all who merit one. So the solution is pretty obvious: Create more elite schools and programs.
New York is starting with the addition of 1,100 seats to the gifted and talented (G&T) program for elementary students this fall. Identifying more advanced black and Latino students from the get-go means they will be bettered prepared to qualify for New Yorks elite middle and high schools like Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech schools that are under constant attack from progressives for admitting just a handful ofblacks and Latinos.
To ensure that blacks and Latinos fill more of the seats in the expanding G&T program, Adams also has to change the admissions process. Citywide testing, in which all students across New York compete against each other for admission, has been an obstacle. Minority students (not including Asians) took only 16% of the gifted seats prior to the pandemic while making up about 63% of all elementary students, with whites and Asians occupying about 75% of the gifted slots, according to city data.
For this reason, Banks is dropping the citywide written test, which was taken mostly by white and Asian students whose parents signed them up. Now all preschool students will be evaluated by teachers for admission, and the top performing second-graders in each elementary school will also be invited to apply. This approach, employing what academics call local norms, means that students will compete against others in similar socioeconomic groups, reducing any academic advantage that growing up in wealthier school districts may provide.
The likely upshot is that a higher percentage of blacks and Latinos and a lower percentage of whites and Asians will be admitted into the gifted program, a racial rebalancing that has set off a backlash in other school districts. Asian parents in Fairfax County, Virginia, sued over a racial rebalancing at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and lost at the Supreme Court in April.
But G&T advocates in New York are open to the rebalancing, as long as the pie is expanding for everyone and the admissions process is standardized and transparent. Chien Kwok of the Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, an advocacy group of mainly Asian Americans, hailed Adams plan for embracing the concept that gifted kids in all communities are entitled to a rigorous education.
In the past we were leaving gifted children behind, Kwok said. Now the program is expanding, its no longer a zero-sum game, so Im supportive.
Banks is also promising to bring a similar expansion to the citys selective middle and high schools in the future. If that happens, it would benefit tens of thousands of students in the nations largest school system and send a message nationwide that high academic standards and racial equity dont have to be at loggerheads.
A lot of people are going to watch carefully to see how well this works, said Jonathan Plucker, a professor at the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University. And I'm very confident that it will eventually evolve into something that's going to be a huge plus for the country and a big win for excellence in education.
That may be a bullish view considering the obstacles ahead. Banks has been scathing in his criticism of the Department of Education he now leads, calling it a broken, top-heavy bureaucracy that has struggled to make progress over the years in its most basic tasks, such as teaching students to read at grade level.
To improve the gifted program, teachers most of whom are not certified to teach gifted students need to be trained. Nor does the city have anything like a well-designed and up-to-date curriculum to challenge gifted students. Currently, gifted instruction varies greatly from school to school, and often doesnt go much beyond the general education curriculum mandated by the state.
The chancellor will also have to contend with a dozen advocacy groups and parents in several of New Yorks 32 districts that are ideologically opposed to competitive academic programs that separate students by abilities. These groups, such as New York Appleseed, have lobbied for years to abolish accelerated schools and place students of wide-ranging abilities as much as six grade levels apart in the same general education classroom to reduce racial segregation. The advanced students will help those who are academically behind, the theory goes, and everyone wins.
Progressives came close to achieving their goal, called Brilliant NYC, at the end of Bill de Blasios run as mayor last year. They are appalled that Adams rejected it in favor of a G&T redesign that they consider inherently elitist and without value to any students.
The gifted and talented program is very contentious and this new administration is going backwards by expanding it, said Allison Roda, a professor of education at Molloy College who helped develop Brilliant NYC. Gifted and talented has always been used as a tool to segregate students and avoid integration.
The mayors buildout of gifted education, announced in April, was one of his first major policy decisions, reflecting an urgency to reverse the flight of wealthier families from the school system.
Even before the pandemic, according to Banks, families were leaving the troubled system in which 65% of black and Latino students never achieve reading proficiency. The enrollment drop has been most acute among younger, white, and affluent students, with the system losing almost 5% of students in pre-kindergarten through third grade in 2020-2021. That means less state funding for city schools.
One hundred and twenty thousand families decided to vote with their feet and to say we are going to find other alternatives for our children, Banks said in a speech on March 2. Thats an indictment of the work that we have done.
But the city is nowhere near the point of satisfying demand for accelerated education, even though G&T programs are typically no more expensive than general education classes. Today, the program reaches only a small fraction of students, with about 15,000 out of 65,000 rising kindergarten families vying for 2,400 seats, mostly in more affluent sections of the city. Manhattans upper west and east sides are rich in programs, while some low-income districts in the Bronx and Brooklyn have very few or none.
The long distance that young kids in low-income or remote areas have to travel to get to a G&T program is one reason so few blacks and Latinos participate. Cassy Thime, who lives with her daughter in Rockaway Beach, Queens, is more than eight miles from the nearest program.
By bringing the program to all school districts, and adding 100 new G&T kindergarten seats, Adams is taking a small first step in what needs to be a much bigger expansion if he hopes to meet the demand. The city is also creating 1,000 new seats for students in the third grade spread throughout all the districts an age when a childs giftedness becomes more apparent. Banks said the additional seats were the baseline, not the ceiling, of a program he expects to grow.
In order to be admitted to the gifted program in the past, four-year-old preschoolers had to earn a top score on a written test an approach that both sides in the G&T debate deemed inappropriate. Preschoolers have no experience with written tests, and they are far too young to understand that its a gateway to a better education through college.
The other problem is that black and Latino families have been less likely than whites and Asians to register for testing, partly because gifted programs dont exist in many poorer neighborhoods and parents may not have heard about them.
Banks says the screening of all kids in preschool provides the fix. Rather than giving students a test, preschool teachers will look for signs of giftedness in how children draw, read, speak, or add and subtract, and then recommend the top performers for the program.
But teacher screening comes with its own issues. For starters, preschool teachers currently lack the training to identify gifted traits a specialty in itself as they evaluate kids for the fall program. This opens the door to a selection process filled with bias, from a teachers subjective views of what constitutes giftedness to pressures from administrators to meet diversity goals.
Without deep intensive training, teachers often recommend the compliant children, not the one that's thinking out of the box, or the incessant questioner, or the one that's completely disorganized, said Elissa Brown, a former director of the Hunter College Gifted Center and co-president of GiftedNYS. So, you're going to get biased teacher ratings around who is gifted.
The separate pathway into the program for third-graders is almost certain to bring in many more black and Latino kids. The top 10% of students in every elementary school in the city, based on their second-grade marks in four core subjects, will be invited to apply. The pipeline will draw equally from wealthier schools with many white students in places like in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and threadbare schools with mostly kids of color in areas like Harlem.
This local norms approach has significantly boosted diversity in gifted programs in places like Montgomery County, Maryland, and Houston. In Colorados Aurora Public Schools, a pilot project drawing students from 10 elementary schools into a gifted program shrank the underrepresentation of Latinos to 7% from 17%, and blacks to 2% from 6%. The success of the pilot prompted the district to expand it to another 10 schools, according to Scott Peters, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who co-authored a paper on the use of the local norms admissions process.
The controversy over G&T is partly a result of Americas scattershot commitment to educating gifted children. New York is one of eight states that have no requirements around gifted instruction, which means many upstate cities like Binghamton and Buffalo ignore it, Brown said.
New Jersey is one of about 25 states that require schools to offer gifted programs for students. Only 16 states, including North Carolina, also provide additional funding for such programs.
As a result, G&T education is a mishmash for the estimated 10% or more of public school students whom researchers have identified as gifted. G&T guidelines, data collection, accountability, oversight of programs, as well as teacher training are spotty across the country and hinder efforts to make improvements, according to the 2019reportby the National Association for Gifted Children.
The quality of gifted instruction also varies greatly. For elementary grades, the most common style differentiated instruction is also the most superficial: Advanced kids are given extra or harder worksheets in a general education classroom, or are asked to be de-facto teacher assistants to help other kids, Brown said. In increasing intensity, other approaches pull kids out of class for a few hours a week or cluster them in groups of four to six with a separate curriculum within general education classrooms. The most robust approach puts gifted students in their own dedicated classroom or entire school the practice used in New York City.
As a result, G&T education is a mishmash for the estimated 10% or more of public school students whom researchers have identified as gifted. G&T guidelines, data collection, accountability, oversight of programs, as well as teacher training are spotty across the country and hinder efforts to make improvements, according to the 2019 report by the National Association for Gifted Children.
The quality of gifted instruction also varies greatly. For elementary grades, the most common style differentiated instruction is also the most superficial: Advanced kids are given extra or harder worksheets in a general education classroom, or are asked to be de-facto teacher assistants to help other kids, Brown said. In increasing intensity, other approaches pull kids out of class for a few hours a week or cluster them in groups of four to six with a separate curriculum within general education classrooms. The most robust approach puts gifted students in their own dedicated classroom or entire school the practice used in New York City.
The concern among researchers is that popular approaches like differentiated instruction dont give gifted children anywhere near the challenge they need to thrive. The gap between the abilities of average and gifted students is too wide for a teacher to adequately instruct all of them at the same time.
Consider IQ: The average score in the U.S. is about 100; most gifted students score at least two to three standard deviations above that, or 120 to 130.
These students are at least one or two grade levels ahead in at least one subject, she said. There are fourth graders who can handle algebra. So why are they still doing simple computation?
The expansion of gifted education in New York is part of the chancellors larger turnaround attempt of the citys $38 billion-a-year Department of Education. Banks, a former school safety officer, teacher, and principal who has butted heads with the bureaucracy in the past, almost immediately eliminated the department position of executive superintendent, saving millions in salaries. He also plans to redeploy DOE bureaucrats into the classrooms where they can help understaffed schools.
To convey the challenges ahead, Banks told the story of a speech he gave at the historic Tweed Courthouse, the grand Romanesque building that serves as the departments headquarters. As Banks was starting his talk, the teleprompter broke, forcing him to ad lib.
Its a classic example, $38 billion, and we cant even get the teleprompter to work, he said in March at The Forum at St. Barts. There are so many pieces of the system that are dysfunctional. Its a massive turnaround.
Go here to read the rest:
Genius Move? NYC's Black Mayor Bucks Progressives on the Racial Chessboard of 'Gifted' Education - 69News WFMZ-TV
- From New York to Tucson Working Families committed to electing real progressives with bold vision - Tucson Sentinel - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- New York Times Mamdani smear shows how out of touch the paper is with progressives, especially on Palestine - Mondoweiss - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Progressives Must Unite Against Nigel Farage and National Populism or Reform Will Win - Byline Times - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Progressives Disdain of Genius Is a Problem for the West - Bloomberg.com - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Mamdani electrified progressives in New York. In San Francisco, the left is full of envy. - Politico - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Minnesota progressives sound alarm over Trump tax bill - Minnesota Reformer - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Can Progressives Get Behind Parental Rights for All? - First Things - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Opinion | Your shampoo is locked up in stores, thanks to progressives - The Boston Globe - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Progressives trapped in 'misinformation bubble' about transgender youth treatments, Atlantic writer admits - Fox News - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Protecting the Rights of Parents from Progressives - Mosaic Magazine - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Catholic progressives and the development of sexual doctrine - Catholic World Report - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Why Zohran Mamdanis New York win does not really hold lessons for progressives across the world - Scroll.in - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Parents, not progressives, know their kids best. They should control education. | Opinion - Yahoo - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Gavin Newsom wont save California Progressives have damaged the state - UnHerd - June 29th, 2025 [June 29th, 2025]
- After Zohran Mamdanis upset, theres a way forward for pro-Israel progressives - The Forward - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- Zohran Mamdanis victory should be a wake-up call to Canadian progressives - Ricochet Media - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- Progressives tell Andrew Cuomo good riddance after Zohran Mamdanis shock victory in Democratic primary - the-independent.com - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- Pennsylvania progressives turn back to former Fetterman foe as congressman spurns party line - Washington Examiner - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- After Zohran Mamdanis upset, theres a way forward for pro-Israel progressives - Jewish Telegraphic Agency - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- Progressives Just Won Big in New York's Second-Largest City - Newsweek - June 26th, 2025 [June 26th, 2025]
- Big win in New York is a message for progressives. The Big Beautiful Bull further exposed. - Daily Kos - June 26th, 2025 [June 26th, 2025]
- How Cherry Hill progressives upset the Norcross machine - MSN - June 24th, 2025 [June 24th, 2025]
- Progressives and leftists must unite to save humanity from nuclear war - Granma - June 24th, 2025 [June 24th, 2025]
- My conversation with a 'Third Way' Democrat: can progressives & centrists coexist in one party? - Daily Kos - June 24th, 2025 [June 24th, 2025]
- Politics | 2025 Was Supposed to Be a Big Year for RI Progressives at State House. It Is a Bust. - GoLocalProv - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Progressives Abandoned J. K. Rowling, Not the Other Way Around - National Review - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Inside the Cherry Hill political battle that pitted progressives against the Norcross machine - Inquirer.com - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Not Just Progressives: Over Half of Trump Voters Oppose US War on Iran - Common Dreams - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Ras Baraka: Dont Count Out the Progressives - New Jersey Globe - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- A new book explores why progressives made it impossible to build in America - Inquirer.com - June 10th, 2025 [June 10th, 2025]
- Opinion: Someone please send progressives the destination and ETA - Star Tribune - June 10th, 2025 [June 10th, 2025]
- New power in Riga? New Unity and Progressives seek common ground - Baltic News Network - June 10th, 2025 [June 10th, 2025]
- Republican Antitrust Officials Shouldnt Behave Like Progressives - The Daily Economy - June 10th, 2025 [June 10th, 2025]
- Why people follow religions, and why progressives should care. - Daily Kos - June 10th, 2025 [June 10th, 2025]
- Hakeem Jeffries agrees with Elon Musk. Progressives do not, nor should any Democrat or American. - Daily Kos - June 10th, 2025 [June 10th, 2025]
- House Progressives Block the Bombs Act Would End Transfer of Offensive Arms to Israel - Democracy Now! - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- The Billionaires Backing the Neoliberal 'Abundance Coachella' Gathering Draw Ire From Progressives - Common Dreams - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- Revolution against Israel, US, and the West binds progressives to Iran - The Jerusalem Post - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- South Korean voters weary of political crisis are poised to return progressives to power - Le Monde.fr - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- Video: Opinion | Progressives Are Driving Themselves Into Extinction - The New York Times - May 30th, 2025 [May 30th, 2025]
- Progressives anything but when it comes to Israel - Daily Herald - May 30th, 2025 [May 30th, 2025]
- How Progressives Are Unwittingly Aiding the Rise of Autocracy - Foreign Policy - May 11th, 2025 [May 11th, 2025]
- Progressives should care that the global population is set to fall - vox.com - May 11th, 2025 [May 11th, 2025]
- Progressives Mark Mother's Day With Calls to 'Honor Our Moms With Action' - Common Dreams - May 11th, 2025 [May 11th, 2025]
- Trump doesn't fear smart women. It's progressives who are really afraid. | Opinion - USA Today - May 11th, 2025 [May 11th, 2025]
- With Trump in the Mix, Progressives Are Winning the Intra Party Crypto War - notus.org - May 11th, 2025 [May 11th, 2025]
- Democrats and Progressives Won Widespread Victories Across Texas in Backlash against MAGA Extremism - Progress Texas - May 11th, 2025 [May 11th, 2025]
- The Progressives, The Conservatives, The Italians: Why This Conclave Is Different - Worldcrunch - May 11th, 2025 [May 11th, 2025]
- Newsoms back to needling progressives - Politico - May 2nd, 2025 [May 2nd, 2025]
- Opinion - The Supreme Courts immigration about-face has progressives all twisted up - Yahoo - May 2nd, 2025 [May 2nd, 2025]
- Are Progressives Coming Together in the South Bay ? Check Out "We The People South Bay" - LA Progressive - May 2nd, 2025 [May 2nd, 2025]
- The Risks Progressives Wont Discuss - The Times of Israel - May 2nd, 2025 [May 2nd, 2025]
- Watch: House progressives speak on first 100 days of Trumps second term - AOL.com - April 30th, 2025 [April 30th, 2025]
- City Politics: Who Will Win Progressives' Votes?; Upwardly Mobile Jobs; Anne Applebaum on Trump - WNYC - April 25th, 2025 [April 25th, 2025]
- National progressives back Houston attorney who fought GOP in court in Texas special election - The Hill - April 25th, 2025 [April 25th, 2025]
- SIMS: I Agree With The Progressives Hands Off! - NH Journal - April 25th, 2025 [April 25th, 2025]
- Progressives: Can Religious and Non Religious get along? - Daily Kos - April 25th, 2025 [April 25th, 2025]
- NYC progressives want to beat Adams and Cuomo. Can they set aside their differences? - Gothamist - April 1st, 2025 [April 1st, 2025]
- Josue Sierra: When progressives turn their backs on women - Broad + Liberty - April 1st, 2025 [April 1st, 2025]
- Why progressives failed the test of Oct 7 with Joshua Leifer - The Times of Israel - April 1st, 2025 [April 1st, 2025]
- Maybe progressives shouldn't have supported a larger, more extensive federal government for 100 years - The Daily Review - April 1st, 2025 [April 1st, 2025]
- Rich Lowry: Maybe progressives shouldnt have supported a larger, more extensive federal government for 100 years - Lewiston Sun Journal - April 1st, 2025 [April 1st, 2025]
- Rich Lowry: Maybe progressives shouldn't have supported a larger, more extensive federal government for 100 years - The Joplin Globe - April 1st, 2025 [April 1st, 2025]
- Kellyanne Conway rips progressives over Tesla protests: 'Trump derangement syndrome has reached stage five' - Fox Business - April 1st, 2025 [April 1st, 2025]
- A Cohesive Message from Progressives - The New Yorker - April 1st, 2025 [April 1st, 2025]
- The Left Has Turned White Progressives Into Hood Rats - AM 870 The ANSWER - April 1st, 2025 [April 1st, 2025]
- Progressives Are Pissed. This Group Wants Them to Run for Office - Rolling Stone - March 13th, 2025 [March 13th, 2025]
- AOC and other NY progressives call for Mahmoud Khalils release in letter to DHS - City & State New York - March 13th, 2025 [March 13th, 2025]
- Progressives are not demanding any special rights for anyone | Letters - Yahoo - March 13th, 2025 [March 13th, 2025]
- Californias Gavin Newsom opposes trans athletes in womens sports, splitting with progressives - MyMotherLode.com - March 11th, 2025 [March 11th, 2025]
- Progressives Gather In Concord to Protest, Well, Just About Everything - NH Journal - March 11th, 2025 [March 11th, 2025]
- Newsom deviates from progressives on womens sports issue - WORLD News Group - March 11th, 2025 [March 11th, 2025]
- California's Gavin Newsom opposes trans athletes in women's sports, splitting with progressives - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal - March 11th, 2025 [March 11th, 2025]
- GV progressives organize against Trump - Green Valley News - March 11th, 2025 [March 11th, 2025]
- OPINION: Labor, progressives, and the politics of the West Side - 48 Hills - March 5th, 2025 [March 5th, 2025]
- Adriana E. Ramrez: Progressives should admit that Donald Trump might do something right - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - March 3rd, 2025 [March 3rd, 2025]
- Decades of pandering to progressives have left both BP and Unilever at a loss - The Telegraph - March 3rd, 2025 [March 3rd, 2025]
- Progressives tap a rising star to deliver their response to Trump - POLITICO - March 1st, 2025 [March 1st, 2025]
- Two Santa Ana progressives make bids for the 68th Assembly District - Los Angeles Times - March 1st, 2025 [March 1st, 2025]
- The great rethink and the opportunity for progressives - Nation.Cymru - March 1st, 2025 [March 1st, 2025]