Happy New Year and welcome to your VERY opinionated guide to the NYC Gifted and Talented program for the 2024-2025 school year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a> remain the same. Why should you keep reading if you already absorbed all the strategies from last year’s post???<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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A G&T seat does not absolve you of having to supplement your child’s education. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Let’s get kickin’ and talk about all things NYC G&T shall we? Here we go!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have fond memories of working with Joyce Szuflita and Dana Szarf from NYC School Help<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The algorithm will out-smart all of us. Do not try to game it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then came the charter school placement which we took. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The moral of the story? You want your random number <\/a>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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 grade<\/a>s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a> – your chances of getting a seat are laughable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This link provides four things to assess in gifted education programs<\/a>. 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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Become familiar with the common core state standards for ELA<\/a> and the common core standards for math<\/a>. I’ve also created this completely free guide that summarizes the 68 Kindergarten common core standards<\/a> your child needs to master. Download that free CoreClarity guide<\/a> to know with certainty whether a G&T program would even help your child. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a> is feasible – supplementing school doesn’t have to automatically mean hiring a battery of tutors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u26c8\ufe0f perfect storm brewing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is why private tutors, Kumon, Mathnasium, Russian Math, and a slew of other providers still exist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our education system was always an illusion. <\/strong>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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I “only” attended a public school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, you can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But are you willing to take that risk on the opportunities that your child will have access to at 18? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Families with resources don’t take that gamble, so families of fewer means should gear up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By all accounts, our family has won the lottery. And yet, even though we have:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2705 Ideal school placement – international baccalaureate aligned program, K-12 covered, 2-minute commute<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2705 Experienced and beloved teachers <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2705 SOR-aligned reading program<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83d\udea9 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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???<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another story: our son told me they were taught that “look” is a tricky word because the “o” makes an “oo” sound. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83d\udea9 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83d\udea9 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83d\udea9 Some schools like ours do not have physical readers. All reading is done on iPads which automatically lock a student at their reading level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The resolution to our situation deserves a separate post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Find out the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/strong>Like airline loyalty schemes, the enrollment criteria and execution of the program has been so severely diluted that its value is questionable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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