New York Schools Seek New Gifted Admissions Test - NYTimes.com: ...The current testing program for the city’s gifted kindergarten and first-grade classes was adopted in 2008 as a way to standardize admissions across the city, to address longstanding complaints that favoritism played a role when districts were allowed to set their own rules, as well as to increase racial and economic diversity in the programs.
But a result has been that while more students now take admissions tests for gifted programs, fewer students now enroll, and they are less racially diverse, council members said.
Under the previous policies, 15 percent of the students admitted to gifted programs were Hispanic and 31 percent were black. In the 2009-10 school year, 12 percent were Hispanic and 15 percent were black. Over all, 39 percent of kindergartners are Hispanic and 27 percent are black.
Six districts in central Brooklyn and the South Bronx will have no gifted kindergartens in the fall because so few students qualified.
