Listen and read 19 The dignity of all the talents - Thấm Tâm Vy

Thẩm Tâm Vy, Jan 11, 2020 LISTEN AND READ 19

LISTEN AND READ 19

School policy

THE DIGNITY OF ALL THE TALENTS

NEW YORK A battle over educating gifted children is brewing in America

STUYVESANT HIGH SCHOOL is considered the crown jewel of the public schools in New York City. The magnet school is one of America’s biggest feeders to Harvard; a list of alumni includes four Nobel laureates. It is also one of New York’s most competitive schools, admitting pupils on the basis of a single, high-stakes exam and little else. To some, that seems the meritocratic ideal. To others, it yields alarming results. Of the 895 places available last year, only seven (or 0.8%) were offered to black pupils (in a district where 25% of pupils are black). Asian Americans do far better in the entrance exam and are 73% of the school population—or four times their share of the pupil population in the district. “You have to believe either that there are only seven black kids capable of doing the work of Stuyvesant or that there is something horribly wrong,” says Richard Buery, a graduate of Stuyvesant who is now chief of policy and public affairs for KIPP, a network of charter schools. The debate over whether education of gifted children segregates them on the basis of pre-existing privilege rather than cognitive ability is neither new nor uniquely American. The number of selective, state-run grammar schools in Britain reached its zenith in 1965, before the Labour government of Harold Wilson embarked on a largely successful effort “to eliminate separatism in secondary education”. The three-tiered German education system—which sorts children on the basis of ability at the age of ten into either university-preparatory schools or vocational ones—has always been criticised for fostering social segregation. The fact that the children of Turkish migrants are now disproportionately sorted into lower-tier secondary schools instead of selective Gymnasien adds a disquieting racial divide. In America the debate is kicking up anew. The issue is national: the most recent statistics show that whites are 80% more likely than black students to take part in programmes for the gifted, and Asians are three times as likely. But the principal battleground has been New York City. Much of that is due to Bill de Blasio, the city’s left-wing mayor, who has staked his administration (and recently imploded presidential run) on the promise of reducing inequality. In August a panel he convened, called the School Diversity Advisory Group, proposed a sweeping reform to “move away from unjust gifted and talented programmes and school screens”— eliminating them entirely. Though the policy has not yet been implemented, it triggered a furore among parents, particularly Asia

Americans, fearful that their children’s chance of a fine education was to be sacrificed on the altar of diversity. Emotions run high because the quality of education in New York City, as with most other aspects of life there, is so uneven. There are schools with perfect graduation rates and some where more than 30% of pupils drop out. An astonishing 40% of high schools in the city do not teach chemistry, physics or upper-level algebra, notes Clara Hemphill, the founding editor of Inside Schools, an education-policy website. “The problem is not learning linear algebra in schools, but not knowing arithmetic.”

Choice beyond a possibly poor neighbourhood public school is constrained both by geography and by financing. New York has exceptionally good private schools, available at exceptionally high prices. Horace Mann School in the Bronx costs $53,200 a year, from pre-kindergarten to 12th, grade. Charter schools, publicly funded but privately run, provide choices for the masses. Often they draw poorer pupils from local schools. Some of the city’s highest-performing charter schools, such as Success Academy, draw bids from the ranks of middle-class parents as well. Anxiety and resentment are rife. The programmes for …