On Education - Equity of Test Is Debated as Children Compete for Gifted Kindergarten - NYTimes.com: ... Bloomingdale, with headquarters at West 109th Street, is a highly regarded Head Start, and Ms. Mims says she has several 4-year-olds who she feels would do well in a gifted kindergarten program.Founded as a preschool in 1960 even before the federal Head Start program was established, Bloomingdale became a national prototype. To this day, it’s considered a model, and educators worldwide visit it — recently from Iceland, Indonesia and the Netherlands.
An early 4-year-old graduate, Patrick Gaspard, who grew up to become a White House political adviser, thinks so highly of Bloomingdale that he took one of its founders, Susan Feingold, to meet President Obama.
This week, Bloomingdale marks its 50th year by graduating 100 4-year-olds, 98 percent of them black and Hispanic and all poor (to qualify, a family of three must earn less than $18,300).
Not one of the 100 will be attending one of the city’s gifted kindergarten programs in the fall, according to Bloomingdale officials.
