New York, NY, March 23, 2022 — PLACE NYC, a parent advocacy group for accelerated education, urges Mayor Eric Adams and Chancellor David Banks to fulfill their campaign promise to reinstate the NYC Gifted & Talented Program (“G&T”) and expand them in underserved neighborhoods. The NYC public school system is seeing an unprecedented decline in enrollment with the lack of clarity on the future of G&T further exacerbating this trend for many PreK and prospective G&T families.
In recent remarks, Chancellor Banks recognized that there are families leaving the system due to the lack of accelerated learning choices. Mayor Adams ran on the promise of expanding G&T and repeatedly affirmed that promise since taking office. However, we are fast approaching the end of the school application cycle with no news on the state of G&T. Despite the late timing, it is critical that the DOE improve upon last year’s inadequate G&T admissions process.
We support the following as a short-term solution for this year, with the goal to engage with parent leaders and the broader community to create a permanent, more equitable G&T admissions process for the coming years:
- Universal teacher evaluation of all students in DOE PreK or DOE-sponsored community programs to be certain no children are left unidentified and to reduce the burden on parents to opt-in for evaluation.
- Ensure that teachers recommend students for G&T using standardized assessments where available or other evidence of readiness for accelerated curriculum.
- Open up 50% more seats, with priority to those districts that are currently underserved.
- Guarantee yellow bus service for students attending district G&T programs.
“We hope that the DOE will quickly reopen the G&T admissions process to provide clarity and rebuild trust with families who wish to remain in the NYC public schools”, said Yiatin Chu, PLACE NYC co-President. “We look forward to engaging with the DOE in the coming months to develop a more rigorous identification process for the 2023 admissions cycle and beyond.”
PLACE NYC encourages the DOE leadership to read our G&T Position Paper for further ideas on short-term and long-term solutions to improve G&T. We stand ready and welcome the opportunity to partner with Chancellor Banks and his team to develop improved and expanded K-12 accelerated programs that are available to all students in all schools and districts.
###