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DeBlasio Poised to Jettison Gifted and Talented Status Quo. How Far Will He Go?
Readers of this blog know that I am strongly opposed to identification and separation of “gifted and talented” students from their age peers for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is that school districts inevitably conflate the results of easy to administer standardized tests with “giftedness”. I have witnessed NYS’s preposterous, complicated, and byzantine system for identifying “gifted” students as a grandparent as well as a (presumably) expert perspective as one who served as a public school superintendent for 29 years. Today’s NYTimes article highlights several elements of the NYC’s flawed system, emphasizing the particularly egregious practice of testing 4-year olds for “gifted programs” which, according to a quote in the article, “…allow children to get on a conveyor belt that moves a small slice of New York’s students through a parallel educational track, apart from their peers, starting in kindergarten.” This practice effectively requires parents to begin coaching their 2-year olds on the alphabet and number skills when they should be exploring the world around them independently. Of all of the options available to outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio the most appealing is likely the abandonment of pre-school tests, postponing the identification of “giftedness” until a child is entering, say, 4th grade.
Whatever NYC decides, it will result in pushback from vocal, moneyed, and influential parents all of whom suppose that their infants and toddlers would qualify for this program. My experience is that changing a system of tracking is far more difficult than launching a program for enrichment where tracking is non-existent… and when the racial composition of the “gifted” classes comes into play the tracking and identification of “gifted students” is a political nightmare for school boards and school districts.
The next few weeks should be interesting. I hope they are not explosive.
Steven Singer Undercuts Arguments For Standardized Testing… but Misses One Sad Key Point: High Scoring Parents of High Scoring Children Cling to the Results as Validation of “Merit”
Blogger Steven Singer does a fully comprehensive take-down of the rationale for standardized testing offered by two Walton Foundation funded economists Paul Bruno and Dan Goldhamer. These economists decried the decision to grant ANY waivers for the administration of tests over the past two years despite the disparate experiences of students as a result of the disparate schooling available to them. Mr. Singer undercuts each and every argument advanced by the Walton economists— who of course LOVE standardized tests because they provide seemingly precise data that can be used to “prove” various assertions they make about the effectiveness of choice and charters over “government schools”.
In his take down he notes that standardized testing was designed by eugenicists in this paragraph:
Standardized tests literally were invented to justify bias. They were designed to prove that higher income, higher class, white people were entitled to more than poorer, lower class, brown people. Any defense of the assessments today must explain how the contemporary variety escapes the essential racist assumptions the entire project is based on.
He then shifts gears, effectively blaming the standardized testing industry for lobbying to sustain standardized testing. ETS, Pearson, and other major players in the testing industry ARE lobbying to keep their businesses afloat, but their lobbying is sustained and supported by the “meritocratic” parents who scored well on tests themselves and whose children also scored well. As we are witnessing in places like NYC where test scores determine admittance to “elite” public high schools, parents of children who have attained the status of admission to the Kingdom of the Elite want to ensure that their child’s entry was based wholly on “merit” and that “merit” can only be measured by a standardized test. As policy makers across the country can attest, the retention of tests to sort and select children has grassroots support of the parents, ESPECIALLY those parents whose children are sorted into so-called gifted and talented programs and “honors” sections. As long as students are taught in large groups and those groups are batched into homogeneous cohorts based in part or in whole on test scores, the parents of “winning” children will want to retain the status quo. My belief is that until parents are confident that a new paradigm of schooling will meet the unique individual needs of THEIR child they will support the status quo. And, alas, the status quo at this point is still grounded in standardized tests based on age cohorts.
Standardized Tests, Used Properly, COULD Help Identify Potential Einsteins. Too Bad That is Not Happening
Thomas Edsall’s column in Wednesday’s NYTimes, We Are Leaving “Lost Einsteins” Behind, suggests that public schools are failing to identify potential Einsteins because they are failing to administer a universal standardized test measuring each student’s “spatial ability”. Citing a paper by David Lubinski of Vanderbilt and Harrison J. Kell, a senior researcher at the Educational Testing Service, titled “Spatial Ability: A Neglected Talent in Educational and Occupational Settings,” Edsall suggests that administering one more standardized test to children in third grade might help uncover some children who are falling through the proverbial cracks. The bulk of the article is devoted to making the case for homogeneously grouping students based on IQ test results, spatial aptitude testing, and scores on standardized achievement tests. This approach, which Mr. Lubinski and Kell advocate, would presumably uncover thousands of students who are currently falling by the wayside.
At the very end of the article, though, Mr. Edsall devotes some space to Harvard professor David Deming who reveals the elephant in the research room:
Deming argues that the focus of public concern should be on inequities in postsecondary education:
Most importantly, resource inequality is an order of magnitude larger in higher education compared to K-12. Rich school districts spend maybe 20 percent more than poor school districts. Elite private colleges are spending upwards of $100k per student per year, compared to about $10k in community colleges. In higher education, we devote the most resources to the students who need the least help.
After acknowledging the “the relentless escalation in the demand for skills of all kinds“, Deming suggests that the failure for preparing the workforce lies mostly with the for profit sector and those public colleges who have abandoned admission standards altogether:
…almost all of the expansion in college degrees over the last 20 years has happened in for-profit and less-selective schools. So I think it is all part of the same problem. There are lots of colleges out there, but the best ones are not expanding. In fact, they are getting harder to access. Just look at any data on median GPA and SAT/ACT scores among entering classes at flagship universities. They have all become way more selective. There are more and more talented young people out there, but only so many slots at selective schools.
At the very end of his article, Mr. Edsall acknowledges that standardized tests have become increasingly controversial:
Testing has become a flashpoint in the larger debate over policies based on merit: Do they prevent discrimination or are they barriers to admission and advancement? One of the original purposes of testing was to identify those who were illegitimately pushed to the side. Whatever their overall impact, these tests can and do often serve as a gateway rather than a barrier to admission — that was part of what they were intended to do in the first place.
That MAY have been what they were intended to do in the first place. Indeed, I can recall two of my classmates in 8th grade being singled out for scoring high on standardized tests which forced teachers to reconsider their placement in the mid-level sections and “advancing” them to the higher tier grouping for 9th grade. Finding diamonds in the rough, the original intent, has itself been pushed to the side in favorr of using test scores to identify schools and teachers who need to be punished for their “failures”. THAT is why testing is a flashpoint and, unfortunately, eliminated from any consideration of identifying hidden Einsteins.
Vote even if you think it doesn’t matter…. and be grateful you still can!
Network Schools - Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for 