Happy New Year and welcome to your VERY opinionated guide to the NYC Gifted and Talented program for the 2024-2025 school year.
TL:DR for those who have been following me –> nothing has changed with the program since last year, so all of my spicy hot takes on the #RealTalk considerations for G&T admissions remain the same. Why should you keep reading if you already absorbed all the strategies from last year’s post???
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A G&T seat does not absolve you of having to supplement your child’s education.
And if you have a general ed seat, this is going to be true 90% of the time if you assume that only 10% of teachers can truly be exceptional.
Also nope – the private school families aren’t taking their foot of this pedal. If anything, these families are the ones who can and do invest most heavily in supplementing school.
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📯 I have new guidance on the education mindshift parents of Preschool + Kindergarten students need to make. This shift is based on a personal experience our family has had at a Brooklyn charter school that is widely regarded as a crown jewel in the NYC public education system. Scroll to the section on why all parents of Kindergarteners need to teach their kids to read section to read about it.
Let’s get kickin’ and talk about all things NYC G&T shall we? Here we go!
Strategies for Applying to the NYC Kindergarten Gifted and Talented Program
#1: Rank schools in true preference order.
I have fond memories of working with Joyce Szuflita and Dana Szarf from NYC School Help in putting together our personal list of 12 schools to rank and even in public forums where they aren’t compensated for their advice, this is what they tell you to do.
So if your local zoned school that doesn’t have a gifted and talented program is your first choice? DO NOT rank the G&T program first.
The algorithm will out-smart all of us. Do not try to game it.
#2 Pay attention to the random number your child is assigned.
When we applied to Kindergarten for the 2023-2024 school year, our random number was atrocious. 78.5% of families had higher numbers than ours. We applied to two NYC gifted and talented programs, and listed NEST+M as our first choice school. Spoiler alert: we were #652 on the NEST+M waitlist, dropping to #641 by September 2023 after school started. We had no chance in hell with our random number.
Ultimately, it didn’t harm our overall outcome – we received an offer to our #5 pick at a highly respected Brooklyn public school where we knew that at least one of the Kindergarten teachers was not teaching using science of reading aligned methods.
But then came the charter school placement which we took.
The moral of the story? You want your random number to start with just a number for the best chances. That link has a handy table for calculating what percentage of students are ahead of your number so you can level set your chances of receiving an offer. You can safely place your Hail Mary picks in the #1 and #2 slots, so go for it, but remember that we were #652 on the waitlist for NEST+M.
#3 You can always apply again
Ignoring the fact that the only true accelerated nyc gifted and talented programs are at the five city-wide schools, you can always apply again for G&T in 1st-4th grades.
In these later application cycles, eligibility is based on grades, and your child can only earn 3s and 4s to be considered.
Seats are still scarce, most districts have no more than three G&T programs, and the Adams expansion of the G&T program only promised that each district would have at least one school offering a gifted and talented program. NYC didn’t even make assurances that there would be more than one gifted education class per grade. As I noted in the 2023-2024 summary – your chances of getting a seat are laughable.
But real talk – if you’re not attending an accelerated gifted education program (and there are only five such programs) – the value your child will get from a G&T program needs to be tempered with realism. Do not blanket assume your child will get “a better” education.
The gap in perceived quality of education is likely much lower than parents are assuming if they are considering a district and not a citywide NYC gifted and talented program. If you have a burdensome commute to a district gifted program, think hard about the morning stress you are signing up for.
#4 There are G&T specific factors to consider
This link provides four things to assess in gifted education programs. In our family’s case, our experience in a highly coveted Brooklyn charter school shows us that the local NYC gifted and education program would not serve our son at all (see section below on why parents of Kindergarteners need to teach their kids how to read to understand what shortcomings parents can expect even at a top rated school).
The starting point to consider whether your child would benefit from a gifted program is knowing where they are in terms of Kindergarten competencies. If your child is a whole grade level or more beyond the grade they are currently enrolled in, the un-accelerated G&T program will not be helpful whatsoever.
Become familiar with the common core state standards for ELA and the common core standards for math. I’ve also created this completely free guide that summarizes the 68 Kindergarten common core standards your child needs to master. Download that free CoreClarity guide to know with certainty whether a G&T program would even help your child.
The only options that can help your child are: 1) skipping a grade, 2) enrolling in a private school that can support your high ability child, 3) supplementing school after the school day ends. A DIY gifted and talented education is feasible – supplementing school doesn’t have to automatically mean hiring a battery of tutors.
#5 Consider the full picture
A local school consultant like Joyce and Dana in Brooklyn who can help you put together your list of 12 is a luxury I recommend. You may not have time to attend all the school tours or solicit multiple opinions, and this is where their input and experience really shines.
BUT – a 2- hour consult with any consultant will still require you to sort out your priorities which may still fluctuate even after your Zoom or phone call ends. Enter – the Confident Decision Maker’s Toolkit.
I created this course and the school selection tool spreadsheet after several sessions with Joyce and Dana. Something that was missing from our conversations was exactly what criteria to evaluate when it comes to schools. To consider a scarce NYC gifted and talented program seat against the broader school landscape requires you to really understand what is meaningful to the only three people that have true skin in the game for this decision: you, your spouse, and your child.
We were very happy with our consultations. To use a term I saw another parent throw around – if you’re just looking for a “school picker” – then a consultant is all you need. But there are limitations to this approach – especially if you’re a first-time parent – that CDMT compensates for.
The Learning Mindset Shift Families of Preschoolers and Kindergarteners Need to Make Now
There’s no sugar coating it – parents will have to be more engaged in their children’s educations even if they are enrolled in the NYC gifted and talented program or any G&T program. There’s a ⛈️ perfect storm brewing:
- ⚡Culture wars (book bans, shifts away from teaching practices millennials lived experienced, adjusting to post-COVID academic expectations)
- ⚡Teacher shortages from the pandemic
- ⚡Fewer students earning education degrees = fewer future public school teachers (private school teachers don’t require certification)
- ⚡Shift to a science of reading (SOR) approach is underway and will be messy
- ⚡Parents who want to help their kids love math first have to learn new math
If we want our kids to succeed, we can’t outsource their educations completely.
This is why private tutors, Kumon, Mathnasium, Russian Math, and a slew of other providers still exist.
Our education system was always an illusion. The strength of America’s outsize achievements can be traced back to parents who made the additional investments in their children’s educations. It was never because schools themselves were enough.
Take my arms race experience growing up in the 90s in a predominantly wealthy Asian suburb in SoCal. Our district’s schools were Blue Ribbon winners. And yet – virtually every single person enrolled in my AP and honors classes had multiple subject tutors and test prep tutors.
And I “only” attended a public school.
This arms race operates at a much higher level with private school families. At a minimum at that level, you are also talking about admissions consultants for the kids.
NYC gifted and talented program or not, the competition is never about who is at your school, but the faceless students you don’t know who have the means and resources to leap beyond.
Paid in dollars or paid in time, parents of today’s students have to invest in their child’s education.
Whether this means reviewing the work that is sent home with your child, finding the right programs to supplement education at home and sending additional worksheets to school, or hiring the tutors that will extend or accelerate your child’s learning, today’s parents do not have the luxury of disappearing into the ether.
Well, you can.
But are you willing to take that risk on the opportunities that your child will have access to at 18?
Families with resources don’t take that gamble, so families of fewer means should gear up.
Parents of Kindergarteners Need to Teach Reading
If you’re wondering what parents of Kindergarteners and Preschoolers can do to maximize their children’s chances of long-term success, the answer is very simple: teach them to read properly using an independent curriculum.
By all accounts, our family has won the lottery. And yet, even though we have:
✅ Ideal school placement – international baccalaureate aligned program, K-12 covered, 2-minute commute
✅ Experienced and beloved teachers
✅ SOR-aligned reading program
We’ve still run into a situation I could not in a million years imagined. I am so grateful that our child entered Kindergarten reading to learn and not learning to read because wow – if we’re having problems, then the average family is likely to be even more confounded. Worse – they likely blame themselves if their child doesn’t learn to read in Kindergarten. But in reality, the system is currently set up to thwart student success.
🚩 Even when using a reputable phonics program (our school uses Amplify’s CKLA), the majority of children are taught that letters only make one sound.
Moreover, they are being incorrectly taught that there are more trick words than actually exist. Our son came home telling me that they learned that “is” is a trick word because the “s” makes a “z” sound.
But using the right reading curriculum, I’ve taught our son that s makes both the “s” and the “z” sound. Think about the words “music”, “rose”, and most times that you make a word plural (e.g. “cats”). Are all these words now tricky words too???
Another story: our son told me they were taught that “look” is a tricky word because the “o” makes an “oo” sound.
I truly fear for these children and how many “exceptions” they have to keep in mind because no one is teaching them basic phonograms. “oo” actually makes three sounds – door, cook, and raccoon. But if the children aren’t learning proper letter-sound identification, I have no faith they will learn proper phonogram ID.
Even at elite preschools in the Northeast, I’ve worked with clients who have shared with me gaps in their children’s reading instruction. This problem of single sound identification for a letter, and the weak/erratic instruction in phonograms means that children have to unnecessarily stumble along in the dark thinking that half the words they encounter are “trick words”.
Shame on the education industrial complex for allowing this scenario to occur. There isn’t even one single point of failure I can lay the blame at, though the closest is the curriculum publishers. What are they doing teaching kids only half the story?
🚩 Schools often piecemeal their reading plans, pulling together at least two and up to 4-5 components from different publishers. Even though the phonics program at our school is CKLA, the reading assessments are from the University of Chicago’s STEP program. In this program, if a student who knows more than one sound for a letter gives an alternate sound, they are penalized in the skills assessment.
🚩 If a student is penalized on the skills assessment like our son was, the student is then locked into a reading level that is far lower than where they are actually reading.
🚩 Some schools like ours do not have physical readers. All reading is done on iPads which automatically lock a student at their reading level.
The resolution to our situation deserves a separate post.
The key takeaway is: even if you have a dream school placement with a dream team of teachers and/or are enrolled in a gifted and talented program, you need to understand exactly how your child is going to learn how to read.
Find out the following:
- What programs the classroom will be using for ELA (important – all of them! reading assessment, phonics, readers, etc.)
- How skills assessments and reading levels will be administered
- Whether children are reading on iPads/computers or have access to physical books
- Make a plan for how you will support your child’s reading journey. At a minimum, teach them the multiple sounds that each letter makes. The five vowels for example each make at least two sounds and some make four sounds.
I’ll die on this hill: the NYC gifted and talented program in its current iteration for the 2024-2025 school year is not a product that can be easily differentiated from the general education track. Like airline loyalty schemes, the enrollment criteria and execution of the program has been so severely diluted that its value is questionable.
Parents who don’t get a G&T seat should not be devastated. Parents who do get a seat should not automatically assume their child will get an education on par with elite private schools.
And all parents should be prepared to roll up their sleeves and be engaged. Meeting and exceeding common core standards + leaning into your child’s interests is where the magic in education happens. This is what will give your children a gifted education.
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