Parents of the Gifted Resist a Call to Share a School Building

New York Times ^ | 6/6/06 | ELISSA GOOTMAN

[freespirited]

There they were, parents and students from the New Explorations Into Science, Technology and Math school, banging drums and shaking maracas in front of Cipriani Wall Street to disrupt the black-tie benefit where Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein was speaking.

There they were again, hundreds representing NEST, as the school is known, passionately chanting "Save the NEST" in front of City Hall. And there they were, hoisting "Don't Tread on Our School" signs on a wooded patch of East Hampton near the Ross School, a private school founded by Courtney Sale Ross, the wealthy widow of a former Time Warner chairman.

In the two months since parents at NEST learned of the city's plans to place the Ross Global Academy, a new charter school also founded by Ms. Ross, in their building on the Lower East Side, they have filed a lawsuit, hired a publicist and printed buttons and postcards. The city has not budged.

Now the battle over NEST, which has about 730 students, has become a tale about the intersection of class, race, parents, politicians and philanthropists in the New York City public schools. It pits the mostly middle-class parents who have nurtured NEST, a kindergarten-through-12th-grade school for gifted and talented children, against Ms. Ross, a multimillionaire with homes in the Hamptons and on the Upper East Side whose supporters say she is creating a school to help the poor.

"They're trying to destroy our school," cried Arianna Gil, 12, a NEST seventh grader, at the Cipriani rally, as she handed out gift bags embossed in silver lettering with the NEST logo and filled with publicity materials. She warned of "complete chaos" if the Ross charter school moves in.

[Lancey Howard]

"When liberals collide."
Screw 'em all.

[CobaltBlue]

I wouldn't send my dog to a public school...

Your dog couldn't go to public school even if you wanted it to. So there.

[cyberaxe]

How old are your kids?

.....9,11,and 20.....

.....and it's the 11 year old that's in the GT program.....

.....(i know, we had a dry spell there fer a while! lol).....

.....we were lucky that the 20yr old decided on his own that public school was not for him.....

.....he attended FUMA in VA for High School(No Better School in the country imho).....

.....and is now attending UM (Montana),and it's pretty liberal according to him :(.....

.....we are probably going to let our middle one stick it out one more year in the GT program and then move her and the "baby" into a private middle school together.....

.....Thank You for those links!.....

[after dark]

Yes,I do realize kids with talents deserve to be challenged. You have posted some excellent websites. The problem is in my area your child could have an astronomical I.Q. backed up by three independent leading researchers in the field of intelligence testing ,and you would still need to win a blasted lottery before your child would be placed in gifted and talented classes. Crony ism is also a public school problem.

[subterfuge]

It was a reference to your mindset.

You may want to go grab a dictionary Mr. genius cobalti

[Lancey Howard]

but I think it will be decided on the basis of "what would be best for the most number of politicians".

Absolutely correct, and many factors come into play, not the least of which is "who are the richest of the rich liberals and how have they invested their political donations over the years?" Additionally, the politicians cannot seem to be favoring rich snobs over "doze udder guys who ain't rich" - - most political wards have more of "doze guys" than they do rich liberals.

It's quite a balancing act - - these politicians sure do earn their money.
/sarc

[pabianice]

Re: Trouble Brewing...

[CobaltBlue]

Gifted means the light is on upstairs. Enough said.

[CobaltBlue]

The problem is in my area your child could have an astronomical I.Q. backed up by three independent leading researchers in the field of intelligence testing ,and you would still need to win a blasted lottery before your child would be placed in gifted and talented classes.

That's ridiculous.

[after dark]

Exactly right! I think the lottery is used as an excuse to keep gifted children out of the gifted classes. Not that it makes a difference to me ,I think the lottery should be audited by a good accounting firm.

[webheart]

The whole ridiculous Gifted & Talented thing is hoax, put together to make certain parents feel better about themselves. Flame away.

No flames here. An anecdote, though: When my daughter was in 4th grade, she went to a school near Auburn, California. Interestingly enough, the principal of the school and one of the teachers were married to each other, and their two children were both GATE students at the school. GATE programs are created for liberal elitists, so they can have the necessary exception to thier own liberal doctrine of Equality in Mediocrity. Thus, they don't have to send their kids to private schools.

[patton]

Yeah, sometimes I do good. Even if by accident.

[leda]

yes you do! :D

[subterfuge]

Interesting. That Cobalt Blew guy says that that sort of cronyism doesn't happen and the notion is utterly "ridiculous."

[CobaltBlue]

I didn't say that cronyism doesn't happen. I said that a mandatory lottery for equally gifted children is ridiculous.

If you don't have anything better to do than foment trouble, at least be honest.

[after dark]

My point was that our lottery insures that there will always be a few children in the regular classes who are more intelligent than the children in the "gifted and talented" classes.Maybe if normal children were as disciplined and as educated as they once were public schools would not squander so many resources.

[Riverman94610]

"If your mama ain't black,you ain't black"
To that gem I must quote Boz Scagg's song,Lowdown
"I wonder,wonder,wonder,wonder who, put those ideas in your head"

[CobaltBlue]

My point was that our lottery insures that there will always be a few children in the regular classes who are more intelligent than the children in the "gifted and talented" classes.

My point is that parents of GT children should have the choice to put their kids in GT classes, if they want to.

If they don't, they don't have to. It's a personal decision.

My husband and I both grew up gifted at a time when GT classes didn't exist (as did most of us). I lived in a poorer state, and the lack of resources held me back. My husband lived in a richer state, where they had accellerated learning programs.

When it came time to make the choice for our own children, we chose to put them in the exclusive GT program. The only classes they shared with non-GT kids were gym, art, choir, theater, stuff like that, staring in high school. There are almost zero behavioral problems with GT kids. They were surprised, and repelled, by bad behavior.

In college, again, these behavioral problems in the general population can be avoided, and also in employment.

Maybe they grew up in an ivory tower, but I don't think that's a bad thing. No gangs, no drugs, no theft, no assaults, no cursing the teacher, etc. in GT classes.

[after dark]

Yeah, but it is the fact that gifted and talented kids are perceived as being protected that is causing people to do all sorts of things to see to it their children are labeled as gifted and talented.Gifted and talented classes are viewed as a rubber stamp ticket to easy street.My area had an influx of Asians and engineers. Both of these groups are extremely gifted ,so the lottery was invented . I feel many kids are not as well educated as they could be.This is sad on many levels. I collect old text books from 100+ years ago. It is very jolting to realize how much material "normal" kids were expected to learn .If old fashioned discipline and learning were brought back to "normal" classes, people would not resort to dirty tricks in trying to put their children in exceptional classes ,and you would not be worried about geniuses being dumbed down.

[CobaltBlue]

Gifted and talented classes are viewed as a rubber stamp ticket to easy street.

My experience is that GT teachers have much higher expectations. There's no "easy street" in AP classes, and GT classes are the functional equivalent for earlier grades.

I agree that public schools used to be more challenging in some classes, but back then public school wasn't mandatory.

Of my four grandparents, only my dad's side graduated high school. My mother's mother only finished 8th grade, her husband only 4th. Strange because the brains are on my mother's side, but they had to work and it was considered normal not to continue.

Also, I doubt that most public schools back then were teaching calculus, much less matrix algebra or differential equations. Not to mention microeconomics, macroeconomics, anthropology, psychology, astronomy, etc. being taught by Ph.D.'s in the field.

Which is a small fraction of the classes offered at my kids' high school. Every time I read people complaining about public schools, I can't help but wonder what home schooler or private school can offer all this and more. Some very elite private schools do, but not many.