Gifted and Talented 2022

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By Joyce Szuflita
Well, just when I thought that we were all done, the City threw a spanner into the works. G&T is BACK.

There will be an application for Gifted and Talented kindergarten through 3rd grade at local G&T programs.. You can find out more about the application here.
The G&T application will be open from May 31 - June 17, 2022. Offers will be made in July. Students will be recommended for the G&T lottery either through their public preks or through interviews with the DoE if they don’t attend a public prek. There is no information about what will happen to the Citywide K-8th grade programs or NEST+M which is K-12th grade. More on that as it develops.

The City isn’t listing the schools that currently have G&T programs and they are not yet on MYSCHOOLS either.
These are the schools that historically have had G&T in various local districts -
District 13: PS 282. PS 9 and 56 have voted as school communities to discontinue G&T.
District 14: PS 132
District 15: PS 32, PS 38 and PS 230
District 16: has not had a K-5th grade G&T in the recent past.
District 17: PS 316

While these (generally) single classrooms on a grade programs have had many happy families attending, I find that there is significant misunderstanding about what a G&T program actually provides. There has not been consistent requirements across the city. While they are vaguely described as accelerated instruction, what that actually means is not clear. Often it has also been described as not accelerated but enriched. Whatever.

This is what we do know:

  • They do not have smaller class sizes.

  • The classes can be the same size as a regular gen ed class with a single teacher.

  • They don’t get any additional funding, and a single class of parents can’t fund raise for the benefit of a single class within the school. Whatever enrichments come to the school at large come to G&T.

  • The G&T students don’t get special priority for a ‘favored’ middle school. They are back in the same pool of candidates as everyone else at 5th grade.

  • While the approach may be different depending on the teacher in their class, they have the same curriculm as gen ed students.

General ed classrooms taught by talented professionals are differentiated. That means that students are reading on their own level, writing on their own level, sometimes exploring math on their own level. Many of the strongest schools in the city do not have G&T programs within them because they believe all children have gifts and challenges and they develop stronger learners when students work together with a teacher who can differentiate appropriately within the classroom. Also, it is well documented that elementary school tracking inherently supports socioeconomic divides which also tend to include racial divides within a community.
At the very least, the strategic benefit of a local G&T class may be that if you don’t like your zoned Gen Ed program, a G&T can give you an alternative option.

In addition, there will we new “Top Performer” programs (one in each district) that will be invitation only to apply, for 3rd grade and above. These are new programs and we have no idea in what schools they will be located.