What are the problems faced by parents of future students in New York?
If you have a 4-year-old child in New York, you are most likely preparing for admission tests.
And it is not as simple as many imagine the tasks for children of this age, writes The New York Post.
It is assumed that tests with multiple choice, puzzles, questions on the definition of relationships should determine the degree of giftedness of future students. However, in reality, some questions do not matter and do not reflect the real knowledge of the child, you can simply teach him how to answer correctly, nor will he understand the essence of the task.
Additionally, getting a 4-year-old to sit quietly and answer questions from strangers for 45 minutes is a very difficult task, especially when each question is asked only once.
After the results are announced, children who have given more than 90% correct answers are eligible to study in schools for gifted and talented children in their area. Children who have given more than 97% correct answers will have a chance to become students of one of the five city schools for gifted children. Places in them are distributed with the help of a lottery, and only about a third of the children eligible to study in these schools eventually receive places in these educational institutions.
G & T program (Gifted and talented) in New York is theoretically created to give gifted children the opportunity to receive education at their level, but she doesn’t fully fulfill this task.
Most urban school programs for gifted children follow the same curriculum as regular schools, but they look at the issues in more depth.
District schools for gifted children do not have a single program, but most of them provide training based on project management, a more creative approach to education, and frequent trips.
For example, instead of learning about transportation by reading about it, classes are held on buses and subways, and pilots and ship captains come to children's classes to talk about their jobs and responsibilities. The popular G&T program offers School 166 on the Upper West Side an in-depth study of the arts, from Mexican folk dance to African thumb piano. School No. 33 in Chelsea has a popular robotics program.
At the same time, the author of the blog “Secrets of New York Schools” blog, Alina Adams, noted that programs in the United States are called programs for gifted children are usual by European and Asian standards, and for some countries even lagging behind a couple of years from standard programs in local schools.
Therefore, many parents require the introduction of the same program for all students in the United States; moreover, many people pay attention to the fact that there are too few black and Latin American students in schools for gifted children. The introduction of a unified program for all schools would solve this problem.
At the same time, such changes would not require large expenditures, since the number of teachers would not have changed; the need for new schools or classrooms would also not have arisen.
The main factor that makes G&T programs successful is parental involvement. If a 4-year-old child is registered and prepared for the giftedness test, then this is most likely the merit of the parents actively involved in his education.
However, selecting students in 4 and granting them only the right to receive education in more thoughtful and creative programs is unfair and ridiculous at a time when these programs can be extended to all schools.
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