New York needs to find better leaders. Despite getting rid of an indirect serial killer of the elderly, they still have a mayor like DeBlasio. DeBlasio has just decided to hurt the future of almost 3000 kids by getting rid of their gifted program.
“Mayor Bill de Blasio will essentially end the public school “gifted and talented” program in its current form — eliminating a high-stakes test for four-year-olds and no longer separating out students deemed gifted into separate classes.
The test has typically admitted only about 2,500 kindergartners a year into the “gifted and talented” program — a tiny fraction of the city’s schoolchildren. But those who have already been admitted to the separate classes will remain in them until they’ve graduated from them.
“As a lifelong educator, what we all know is that no single test should be determining any child’s future,” Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter said on Friday during an appearance with de Blasio on WNYC. “There are so many more students who are gifted, who are talented, who are brilliant, who have special gifts, and I think this is the moment about creating opportunities for all students to demonstrate their powerful learning abilities and for teachers to really tap into those gifts.”
The announcement will be deeply unpopular with parents who view the program as a reason to remain in public schools but applauded by others who believe the program worsens classroom segregation. It comes with just three months left in the mayor’s final term in office.
Instead of using separate classes, the city says it will instead offer “accelerated instruction” to all students. That will begin in the fall of 2022, with a new model for all elementary schools that the city says will serve 26 times more students than the current program — reaching 65,000 instead of 2,500.”
We should always be nurturing our best and brightest. They are the future of our country and we need all of the geniuses we can get. As it is we go out of the country to find smart people because of leadership like this where we are hindering the smartest students. Really they should have just added the accelerated program and let things be. And it is just foolish to say that separating out the brightest students is some form of segregation. Most of the gifted students were Asian, so really DeBlasio just crapped on an even smaller minority in our country.