New York City desperately wants to be the foremost champion of equality — so much so that it’s willing to handicap its gifted students.
Concerned with a lack of integration in the city’s public schools, Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed a task force to develop proposals that could change this. The council reported back to de Blasio last week with its primary proposal: the elimination of selective admissions and programs for gifted and talented students.
“The existing use of screens and Gifted and Talented programs is unfair, unjust and not necessarily research-based … These programs segregate students by race, class, abilities and language and perpetuate stereotypes about student potential and achievement,” de Blasio’s “School Diversity Advisory Group” claimed.
According to New York’s education demagogues, programs for gifted students tend to favor children from wealthier, white families and must therefore be eliminated if diversity is to remain the school system’s top priority. The solution, then, is to phase out gifted and talented programs, which accept children as young as 4 years old, and replace them with “pro-integrative programs” that “affirmatively attract students of all backgrounds and make sure that all students are challenged.”
At face value, the council’s goal seems reasonable, as Frederick Hess, the director of education policy for the American Enterprise Institute, notes. Surely every school hopes to see each of its students succeed equally, and any program that helps them do so should be praised.
“This is not about lowering the bar, it’s about giving all of our students what they need to meet the bar,” Richard Carranza, the city schools chancellor, said, according to the New York Times.
But it’s not that simple. No student is the same. Children want different things and each learns differently, Hess says. No matter who teaches them, some will exceed expectations while others fall behind.
Gifted programs aren’t perfect, as Laura Moser noted for Slate several years ago. They can be corrupted by influential parents hoping to give their children a leg up, and the standards for selection are often unclear. But gifted programs do help students with a natural desire to learn by challenging them more than normal classrooms would. They exist for the same reason Advanced Placement courses exist in public high schools: Some students want and need to be pushed, and as a result, they are rewarded with college credit.
Think about it like a tiered sport: At most schools, there are two (sometimes more) teams for individual sports, such as soccer. The varsity team is the best. It’s the one every student athlete strives for, but only the best make. This isn’t considered unusual or discriminatory. So why should an academic varsity team be any different? Apparently, because diversity said so.
This is what happens when diversity dictates the entire conversation. Everything must bow to diversity, even education, ostensibly the top priority of schools. It is the defining standard — really, the only standard — and the Left uses it relentlessly, in this case suppressing some students’ opportunities for the sake of inclusivity.
De Blasio hasn’t endorsed his council’s proposal yet, and he shouldn’t. Educational excellence should be encouraged in every household it’s found in, regardless of skin color or pay grade. New York City’s students deserve that much.
