NYC Kills Testing for Gifted and Talented Programs

You can’t have both equity and excellence. To impose the former is to abolish the latter. That’s why New York City schools are doing away with testing for their Gifted and Talented programs:

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said Wednesday the city will start phasing out the entry exam.

Critics have said the composition of the programs do not reflect the city’s diversity.

The testing reflects aptitude, as it is intended to do. The very concept of aptitude is wrongthink. According to liberal dogma, if whites and Asians score higher on tests than blacks and Hispanics, the only permissible explanation is racism. If it proves impossible to contrive tests where whites and Asians do not score higher, this indicates that the very concept of testing is racist.

Actually racist NYC Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza proclaims that educrats will “reimagine” how to determine which students would benefit from accelerated instruction — you know, the way riot–endorsing leftist radicals want to “reimagine” law enforcement in the name of Black Lives Matter.

Hot Air is appalled:

So if you’re going to do away with the admissions testing system, how do you replace that with something that produces your desired demographic result? If it just works out to be some sort of lottery, then why have an advanced studies program at all? You’re not going to randomly pick up the most advanced students. Further, how is that fair to the children? If a kid who isn’t able to score well on the placement tests suddenly gets shoved into a significantly more advanced program, they’re almost certainly going to flounder. Then you have to either boot them back to the regular school curriculum or dumb down the advanced class to the point where they can pass. If you follow the latter route, you’ve eliminated the benefit of having a gifted and talented program in the first place.

Accelerated learning will never “reflect the city’s diversity.” That’s why such programs will be reduced to farce and then canceled.

Hat tip: Maggie’s Farm.

The post NYC Kills Testing for Gifted and Talented Programs appeared first on Moonbattery.