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Brian Lehrer: Its Brian Lehrer on WNYC. If you haven't heard this, yes, it's true. You know those gifted and talented programs, that Mayor de Blasio announced last fall would be dismantled. Yesterday, the Adams administration announced that they're back, or really, they will never go away. In just a minute, we'll talk to Christina Veiga from the education news website Chalkbeat, who will explain exactly what's new and help take calls from parents and teachers. We'll open up the phones in a minute, folks. Here's a few audio clips as background. First, Mayor de Blasio on this show in October, announcing his plan to basically end tracking of students into different classrooms in elementary school.

Mayor de Blasio: The kids who have those special abilities for accelerated learning will be getting a lot of attention and a lot of opportunities to do it, but they'll be learning with all the other kids. The tracking that used to be I think a huge, huge mistake in American education and that we've been phasing out in a variety of ways that ends. This is all kids together in a classroom, learning together,

Brian Lehrer: All kids in a classroom learning together. That was Mayor de Blasio's overhaul abolition really as recently as last fall. Of course, he was about to leave office. Nobody knew if Mayor Eric Adams would implement de Blasio's vision or scuttle it. He's scuttling It. Here's a clip of the NYC School's Chancellor David Banks on this show in December after Adams named him to the post. This is about a minute and a half exchange I had with Chancellor Banks about whether tracking does more good or more harm. This begins with my question.

Can I ask what you think conceptually of tracking? Does it really help slower learners or those starting further behind to learn in the same room as the faster or more advanced kids, whatever label you want to use? Does it hurt the faster or advanced kids to be in a mixed group as many of their parents apparently think it would?

Chancellor David Banks: The answer is yes and no. Here's the yes to it. When done well, there's a lot of research that shows how students who may not be as accelerated in their learning can pick up more and advance their learning a bit more quickly when they are around their peers who get these concepts and can actually help them. There's research that also shows that if you're an accelerated learner, you deepen your learning when you're able to explain your learning to somebody else. It helps you understand it even more. It becomes a win-win for everybody.

The challenge is that we don't often do it well, and when we don't do it well, everybody suffers. The accelerated learner is now having their learning experience stifled and the slower learner is the one that the teachers is doing their work geared more toward the middle and toward the slower learner. That's the reason why people are so anxious about these gifted and talented programs and accelerated learning programs.

I've heard you mention that gifted and talented is really a misnomer and I agree. It's really accelerated a learning program and really accelerated readers more than it is anything else. I think that that's part of the issue that we have. That's why this job is so complex, Brian, there's so many pieces to this.

Brian Lehrer: School Chancellor David Banks here in December. Just let me replay the short heart of that again after he said a combined classroom can work for accelerated learners, but if it's done well.

Chancellor David Banks: The challenge is that we don't often do it well, and when we don't do it well, everybody suffers. The accelerated learner is now having their learning experience stifled and the slower learner is the one that the teacher is doing their work geared more toward the middle and towards the slower learner. That's the reason why people are so anxious about these gifted and talented programs and accelerated learning programs.

Brian Lehrer: Tracking is back, but new and improved if the Eric Adams-David Bank's plan works. With me now to explain what was announced yesterday, and to take your calls is Christina Veiga, a reporter for the education news website, Chalkbeat. Her beat covers early childhood education, school diversity, and the department of education. She previously covered K-12 education for the Miami Herald. Maybe we'll even get an interstate comparison, but hi, Christina, welcome back to WNYC.

Christina Veiga: Hi, Brian, thank you for having me. There isn't a whole lot of comparison for New York City to anyone else. It is a massive, complicated [unintelligible 00:04:59] place to cover education.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. You don't mean in terms of the tracking debate, you just mean in terms of the size and complexity of the system?

Christina Veiga: I think the tracking debate is a little different here too, just because the extent of tracking that happens in New York City, especially with having entire schools set aside just for kids who are already performing on grade level. That's actually pretty rare. We do it probably more than anywhere else in the country. In most places, people just go to their neighborhood school and the neighborhood school serves all kinds of kids.

Yes, there's a lot of tracking that happens within those kinds of schools. Even still New York City stands apart and it's not just gifted. Anyone who's been through the middle school application process and the high school application process, it's the same deal where a lot of the schools have very competitive admissions criteria just to get into a public school. We're unique in a lot of ways, including I think in this area of gifted. Where we're not unique is the places that do have gifted programs much like New York City, they do tend to be segregated. This is not a New York City unique problem.

Brian Lehrer: Regarding the problem that Mayor de Blasio was trying to solve by abolishing gifted and talented programs in the lower grades. Your article uses the word stark segregation. Just to remind people of the background and if they're not personally involved in this, they may not see it. How stark is it?

Christina Veiga: Across New York City, we see that almost 70% of students are Black or Latino, but in gifted classrooms, enrollment is only about 14%, Black and Latino. The largest share is Asian students, about 43%. This makes this whole debate pretty complicated because lots of people of color, Asian-American families feel that they're benefiting from these programs, these gifted programs, and that they can be a ticket to a good school in neighborhoods where they may not have many opportunities for that. Then we also have to look at other segregation that happen in these programs.

There are almost no students who are learning English as a new language in gifted programs. I was just scanning the numbers before coming on. I saw that about 60 out of 80 programs in New York City have zero students who are learning English as a new language, or there are so few that the data is suppressed and the education department does that to protect student privacy. Across all of New York City, about 13% of kids are English language learners. Then there are very, very-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Is there a reason-- Let me follow up on what you just said about the English language learners. What kind of scenario would a new English language learner be in a general lower grades' gifted and talented program, or what both banks and de Blasio prefer to call accelerated learning. Because wouldn't by definition they not be super advanced in reading and writing English?

Christina Veiga: I guess it depends on how you're defining gifted. The way we have traditionally defined it is preschoolers who can do well enough on a standardized test that's administered one on one. I'm not sure how many people take that test in a language other than English or even know that it's available to take. I think a lot of the under-representation probably of students who are English language learners goes back to the way that we traditionally admitted kids to these programs. I also do want to note, there are very few kids who are homeless in gifted programs right now as well. There's all kinds of lack of representation happening in-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, help us report this story. We know many schools are out today for Good Friday and Passover Prep. Teachers and principals and other educators, we're inviting you to call in with your experiences teaching tracked and untracked elementary school students. 212-433-WNYC. For now, middle school teachers, high school teachers seat this one out, let's keep this to the lower grades because that's where the policy change or affirmation is right at this moment.

212-433-9692, do you agree with Chancellor Banks from the clip of him on the show that teachers in academically mixed settings usually teach to the middle, or the bottom and the accelerated learners do suffer? If so, what does that suffering look like or mean for those kids? 212-433-9692. On the other side of the pros and cons coin, if your kid is tracked into a slower-paced classroom, are you okay with that because they're being taught to their comfort level, or do you think they're just getting something inferior? What about the racial segregation versus integration aspect of all this? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692 for Christina Veiga, a reporter for the education news website Chalkbeat.

Christina, in the clip of the NYC School's Chancellor David Banks, in that exchange we had he had first agreed with de Blasio that it's better in theory for all kids to have academically integrated classrooms when they're done well, but he said the problem is they're not usually done well and so teachers wind up teaching to the middle, or the bottom of the class and the accelerated learners feel stifled. I guess my question is, is that experience of being stifled and then maybe bored and disengaged in school what parents of G&T kids most expressed when arguing to keep tracking kids into separate rooms?

Christina Veiga: That concern gets expressed often for sure, but let's not also lose sight of the fact that oftentimes gifted and talented programs are seen as a way to keep white and more wealthy families inside the public school system. This issue of how to serve kids who might be falling behind or who might be pulling ahead, yes, is a big part of the debate. There is some research that suggests that kids benefit from mixed stability classrooms and that as long as the gaps between kids in the classroom is not too large that it can be doable.

The problem is that often yes, there are huge gaps inability within the same classroom and yes, it can be hard. Speaking with educators and reporting on these issues, a lot of them feel, "Hey, we can do it. We do it every day and even in gifted classrooms, you would be surprised at the range of abilities that we find. Especially because the way New York City has traditionally done it, admission is based on a test for a preschooler, they get in at kindergarten, and then they're in the gifted program for their whole elementary career. Just because you did well on a test when you were in preschool, doesn't mean that now in fourth grade you are advanced accelerated, whatever you want to call it in every single subject across the board," but yes.

Then you have teachers who say it's incredibly hard, especially with large class sizes, let's be real and that some kids are going to slip through the cracks.

Brian Lehrer: Based on that clip and now that they've affirmed that G&T Programs in elementary school will continue, I guess chancellor Banks thinks it's just not doable to train teachers on the mass scale of the New York City public schools to do academically mixed classrooms well that don't leave the more accelerated kids bored.

Christina Veiga: Yes, and it's interesting that the city is deciding to stick with it in kindergarten because we are an outlier for separating kids that early on into gifted programs, but it seems the city has decided that that's necessary and that's going to be hard to take away now that we already have it. The city is really doubling down now and the new administration's approach on gifted programs starting in third grade which is more aligned with what other districts tend to do.

They identify kids later on for gifted services. I also want to point out that this separation of children into completely different classrooms or even completely different schools is based on having this label of giftedness that's really rare and something that only about 10% of school districts do. We will continue to be an outlier with the way that the city is deciding to continue on with gifted programming.

Brian Lehrer: Is that because school districts around the country mostly unlike New York City are segregated-- It happens within the city too, but school districts are segregated by property values. So they're therefore segregated by race given the socioeconomics of this country. Since socioeconomics do so much to predict whether a kid is going to come in "accelerated or not". That they just don't face the same questions in a lot of the countries because the schools are already more socioeconomically segregated than they are in New York?

Christina Veiga: I'm sure that plays a factor but even in the places that do continue to have gifted programming it tends to happen with what are often called push-in or pull-out services. Some additional services are provided within the context of the classroom, or kids leave the classroom to get specific enrichment programming or whatever it might be or through after school programs as well.

Brian Lehrer: One more thing before we go to some calls. I noticed that Banks made a point of not using the term gifted and talented in the clip of our exchange. He used that term we've been using accelerated learners, de Blasio used it too in the clip of him. Which is more accurate, isn't it? Because it can't be the giftedness which sounds like it's something genetic or biological concentrates in White and Asian children. Some small number of children in any group actually have some gift for reading or math but for the vast majority it's really about how advanced in a traditional academic sense the kids early experiences have left them when they enter school based on all kinds of family and socioeconomic factors. Would you put its something like that?

Christina Veiga: Acceleration has a very specific meaning within this context that I don't think is actually what is being talked about. Folks who study gifted and talented and the best way to serve kids who are advanced or whatever you want to call it will point out that acceleration usually means allowing kids to skip grades or move more quickly through a curriculum and that sort of thing.

In New York City, we don't really have a unified curriculum or vision for what these gifted and talented programs should look like or do. That is also something that the new administration says they're looking into. They want to bring some more cohesion and look at teacher training for these. The other thing is again how are you defining giftedness? There are plenty of kids who have artistic talents or are really good speakers or what have you and are there ways to capture and nurture that?

Some people note that is an important thing to think about too. Acceleration, giftedness, it's all muddied in its meaning and even what the point of these programs are in New York City is a little unclear right now.

Brian Lehrer: Despite what he said in the clip, it looks like Adams and Banks are going to keep using the term gifted and talented for the New York City public schools. Did I hear that right yesterday?

Christina Veiga: Yes, it looks like it. There is some interesting research that suggests that yes, the exclusivity and the label of this is something that some parents do seek out. The press release yesterday includes gifted and talented, calling it gifted and talented. I don't know whether the city will stick to that. Mayor Bill de Blasio had proposed calling his plan brilliant NYC. I think call it what you call it, parents will see through and understand what is being signaled by this lead or exclusive or other track for kids.

Brian Lehrer: I'm live streaming @wnyc.org and with Christina Veiga from the education news website Chalkbeat as we talk about the announcement from the Adams Administration yesterday that they will continue to track students in elementary school into gifted and talented programs as they will still be called, unlike what Mayor de Blasio was trying to do. We'll take some phone calls starting with Deidre in Brooklyn. Deidre, you're on WNYC. Hello there.

Deidre: Glad to be on. I am extremely-- This is so interesting. My daughter is now 17 years old. When she was entering kindergarten, I had her tested for New York-- We live in Brooklyn and we are African-American and had her tested for the gifted and talented program. I am just now realizing what may have caused her not to be accepted into that program, listening to you this morning, and listening to Ms. Veiga. I didn't realize there was such a stark disparity, but I had my suspicions.

When my daughter tested for the program-- Let me just say I'm an educator. I had real confidence that she would be entered into the program. I came through a G&T program in Washington DC. Being an educator, I knew my daughter could handle an accelerated program. I was shocked when she wasn't accepted. When I tried to get answers to find out, what did they test? What did she score? It was completely closed off.

If we are going to keep this-- I understand the value, especially being an educator of having differentiated programs for students to do well. -it has to be done better than the way it was done. This situation turned me towards the charter schools and I was a public school educator for 15 years. I didn't have many options once she wasn't excepted into the program. We turned to the charter schools and I was a super advocate for public education. Charters are public but never less I had to keep finding a way. This is a core problem. We figured it out, my daughter is now a graduating senior. She is likely moving into Yale, but it is hard in this system. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Deidre, what would you like to see in terms of policy?

Deidre: I don't know if it's changed, but the testing into these programs, the way it's done, is extremely closed off. It should be extremely transparent. People should know what their children score. They essentially took her off into a room by herself and then told me, "No." Those kinds of things, those opportunities are closed off. I'll say one other thing really quickly. I have a 12-year-old son and he's deaf. I was looking for a great space for him to be educated. There are all kinds of issues. He was told that he couldn't-- I wanted to put him into a really great elementary school, and I was told that they had fulfilled their quota for African-American boys. There's a lot of issues.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Deidre, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Call us again. Matt in Inwood, you're on WNYC. Hi, Matt.

Matt: Hey, Brian. Hey, Christina. I sat on Mayor de Blasio's school diversity advisory group from 2017 to 2019. We made a number of recommendations related to G&T that ultimately were not about-- I wanted to correct some of the framing, Brian like Mayor de Blasio did not end G&T. We had no interest in ever ending G&T in New York City. He had recommendations in 2019, the call to commit the city to ensure that every single young person in this city, regardless of where they live has access to so-called accelerated learning, so-called gifted programming.

We have to invest in every single kid as if we have defined them as gifted. If we're not willing to do that as a city, then we shouldn't actually be offering 100 more seats or 1,000 more seats, because those are actually crumbs for our community. My-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Right, but his vision was in academically mixed classrooms, making sure every individual kid was taught to their ability to learn at a certain pace or whatever, right?

Matt: Of course. Again, there are models that we elevated not just outside of New York City, but in schools in New York City that have done away with their gifted programming in favor of programs like schoolwide enrichment, like district 16 in Bed-Stuy.

Recently, a few years ago said they no longer want G&T program, they want schoolwide enrichment because they want to ensure that every single child is deserving of differentiated instruction. If we're not willing again to make those investments as a system, then we actually shouldn't be giving out a handful of opportunities just for a handful of kids. The mayor and the chancellor's plan to offer a few more crumbs to our kids is completely unacceptable and flies in the face of so much of the work that was done to advocate by young people, by parents, by educators, to ensure that again, we are committing to give every single kid in this city a so-called gifted education. Again, it's disrespectful to see a few more seats thrown out as crumbs for our community.

Brian Lehrer: Matt, thank you very much for your call. Christina Veiga from Chalkbeat, what he's calling crumbs, here are the numbers. There are about 60,000 third graders each year in the city, and there have been only 2,500 gifted and talented seats. It's going to go up to 3,500. Do I have the numbers right?

Christina Veiga: I'm not sure you do. There's usually a little more than 60,000 kindergarteners who start kindergarten in New York City and the city is going to be adding 100 seats in the kindergarten gifted program so that there are about 2,500. It's about 4% of kindergarteners who are going to be served in gifted programs moving forward. What the city announced yesterday is those additional 100 seats in kindergarten, but then also they're going to be-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: 1,000?

Christina Veiga: 100 in kindergarten.

Brian Lehrer: 100 in kindergarten. Okay.

Christina Veiga: Right. Then in third grade, they're really doubling down on expanding the opportunity to enter the gifted program in third grade and expanding the seats at that level by 1,000. There'll be an additional 1.000 third-grade gifted seats. I don't know what that brings the total enrollment to, the city did not say. I think it would be helpful to have a little bit of background about how the gifted program has worked and will work.

Typically, the main entry point is kindergarten. Something like 12,000 people take an admissions test. They have their four-year-old take the admissions test to get into gifted at kindergarten. Once you're in, you stay kindergarten through fifth grade. There are technically no city-sanction gifted programs in middle and high school. Then the city also launched back in about 2016, a handful of gifted programs that didn't start until third grade.

They did that in districts that had lacked any kind of gifted programming. They lacked gifted programming because not enough students were taking the test and qualifying for the program to fill a whole class. You had these two parallel programs. The city has said, "Okay, we're going to preserve the kindergarten entry point, but we're also going to expand the third grade so that more kids can get in at third grade."

They're also changing the admissions. During the pandemic, the city stopped using the admissions test for preschool. The city was forced to do that after a citywide panel called the panel for educational policy refused to renew the testing contract amid a lot of these questions about representation and that sort of thing. Also, it was during the pandemic and so there were concerns about administering a test one on one to students. What the city did last year and will continue to do is there will be a recommendation and lottery system for kindergarten. Then for third grade, it's going to be based on the top 10% of third-graders based on their grades will be offered admission to gifted programs under the new model that was announced yesterday.

Brian Lehrer: What's the criticism of that if it's the top 10%, but based on their grades, their actual performance in K-2, not on some interview like the caller was describing before or some kind of standardized test?

Christina Veiga: The reality is that both the de Blasio plan and what's being proposed now, there are little threads of things that experts research what have you would recommend or suggest. Then there are other things that maybe are less supported. At the end of the day, a lot of this is a judgment call and what do you think is the best way to serve kids. The third grade basing it on students' grades is something that a lot of folks recommend to try to identify a more diverse group of children because the way that the preschool admission test previously worked is every student across the city was judged on the same standard.

Now going to the school level, you're comparing kids to their local peers. You're giving them advanced instruction relative to the kids who are in their classroom versus some kid in lower Manhattan, what they need versus a student out in deep Queens.

Brian Lehrer: Right. It's complicated. I want to get one more caller in before we run out of time. A parent who's very happy with her child's G&T program. It's complicated because we don't like standardized tests, for all the reasons we know we don't like standardized tests. You're saying they don't like the teacher human evaluations of the students either because they're not standardized across schools and across districts. That's a conundrum. One more call. Barbara in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Barbara: Thank you. Good morning, Brian. I love your show. Yes, I'm extremely happy that my daughter is in G&T. She took the test at age four. She aced it. I got a letter explaining to me exactly what she aced. Then I had to go pick a school. The only reason why my daughter is attending a DOE school is because she's in G&T. I would've probably paid otherwise because I didn't feel like the average--

Unless I'm really elitist, and I feel bad about that. That's just how I feel about it. I'm African-American. I'm, I guess working class. I wouldn't consider myself middle class because I don't know what that is in New York City. I work hard, she works hard. She went to a predominantly African-American and Hispanic Elementary School in- I guess that's Crown Heights. -in the Crown Heights area.

The trajectory of the G&T student in terms of where they go to middle school and where they end up in high school, really all starts in elementary school. It's not to say that kids won't do well if they're not in a G&T program, but I think each school should have a G&T program for every grade. What I noticed that her principal did was that there were students who were not in the official G&T via letter, they selected some of those kids to go into the G&T classroom and those kids kept up really well and graduated with them when they graduated to the fifth grade. I think-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: What is it- This is going to be the last word in the segment as we run out of time. -as concretely as you can say, what you think your child would not have gotten if they were in a mixed academic classroom?

Barbara: She wouldn't have gotten that push to excel. That's what I believe. In the classroom, because I do it at home, but she wouldn't have gotten that in the classroom.

Brian Lehrer: Barbara, thank you very much. Actually, Christina, I'll let you wrap this up. Just listening to Barbara, quite a contrast with the earlier caller, who was also a parent. Where do we go from here? 30 seconds.

Christina Veiga: Yes, I think it's interesting that she noted that part of what was important about getting into giftedness was that it would pave the way to middle school and a high school that might be perceived as better. That just goes back to the amount of screening and separating of kids that we do in New York City. I think that this is not the end of changes to the gifted program, the new mayor and chancellor have suggested that they're going to keep listening to parents, that they're again looking at the curriculum that's being used and teacher training. I guess, stay tuned.

Brian Lehrer: Stay tuned. Always good words to say around here. Christina Veiga, from Chalkbeat, thank you so much.

Christina Veiga: Thanks for having me.

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