Filed under: NYC Gifted and Talented Program
It ain’t over until the fat lady sings!
It’s been a few months since the secret commission wrote the report to completely abolish the NYC G&T program as we know it today if not all together. Desperate and frantic parents are scrambling to find out as much information as possible about the future of the program. The DOE is exploring the option of providing “enrichment” for students in lieu of gifted and talented education. Ask 100 parents their definition of “enrichment” and guess what? You’ll get 100 very different answers. The Gifted and Talented Program consists of only 1% of the entire student population for NYC public schools and it’s by far one of the most popular program. Why abolish it instead of trying to fix issues like providing the G&T programs in underrepresented area and for any student who qualifies give them a seat instead of thrown into a random lottery.
It seems now that everyone is calling the NYC G&T program racist or those who want to keep it are calling the ones who want to abolish it racist. When everyone is racist, then no one is racist. Just because some want it and some don’t makes neither group racist. It’s about providing the best education for all children in the city and making sure the best and brightest have access to accelerated learning, no matter what their zip code or neighborhood.
The beat goes on, or so it seems, until we hear the final decision from the powers at be about the G&T program. Now that De Blasio is off the Presidential campaign trail I’m sure he’ll now put focus back on the schools.
Filed under: hunter elementary gifted talented, Stanford-Binet | Tags: hunter round 2
Well, the results are in for Hunter Round 2 and hundreds of parents are ecstatic that their talented tot made it to Round 2 of Hunter College Elementary School! This doesn’t mean it’s over, quite the contrary. This is the first barrier to entry as these parents rev up for Round 2 where the best of the best 4 year-olds in Manhattan head for the group sessions. This can be even more stressful and agonizing for parents since there are many more unknown variables since there will be 25-30 other kids in the same classroom.
Approximately 3,000 Manhattan children take the Stanford-Binet for Round 1 of Hunter each year. After that, the top 250-300 then move on to Round 2 which is where we are at today. After that, there are a total of 50 students admitted into their kindergarten program (25 girls and 25 boys). During elementary school, kindergarten is the only entry point. The good news is there is a wait-list for those who don’t make a final count but don’t get too excited since there are only 24 kids on the wait list (12 girls and 12 boys). Kids from all five boroughs can apply to Hunter College High School which begins in 7th grade.
What is Hunter REALLY looking for in a student? And yes, don’t believe the so-called claims that Hunter cannot be preppred for. Quite the contrary. Most families do some sort of prep although there are the outliers of parents who leave their child’s educational future to chance and do absolutely nothing. If you’re reading this blog post I’m sure you fall into the former rather than the latter. With Hunter, you’re basically getting a private school education for free and who doesn’t want to save over $50,000 a year in private school tuition.
Some of the things they are looking for in Round 2 is anything that’s symbolic language with math, pictures, directions, pieces of puzzles, etc. The more advanced the pre-K student is at fully understanding presentation of the object, as oppose to the object itself, the better the child will do in Round 2.
NYC Gifted and Talented Program and Testing 