You can't do everything with one tool
This article in today's New York Times talks about gifted education in New York City. Specifically, it talks about the mayor and the Board of Education's efforts to make the City's gifted programs "more diverse".

The piece caught my attention because it, again, shows government trying to do two disparate things with one action, and as a result, failing at both. In this case, gifted education is special program for students with above average minds who can do more and more advanced work. It allows students to get that much more out of their public education. And though there's usually a greater cost for such programs, it's an acceptable cost because the students, we assume, will contribute that much more to society when they complete their schooling.

The other goal they trying to attain is to wipe out racial, social, class, what-have-you barriers; to treat all the children in New York as equals with equal potential. And while that's a laudable goal, and indeed, they should all be treated equally, this is not the place to do it. According to the article, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein "set a uniform cutoff of the 95th percentile, as measured nationwide, on the combined score [of two chosen standardized tests, which were administered to all students seeking entry into the programs]. There were so few top scorers that the city lowered the cutoff to the 90th percentile." How far must we lower the cutoff before the programs cease to be "gifted"?

The article laments the fact that fewer students from poorer neighborhoods are admitted to the gifted programs than those from wealthier areas. And just because their parents are poor, that's no reason to assume they don't have equal ability. But as the article tangentially mentions, early education (as in, parents teaching children before they reach school) is a major determinant in school ability and later achievement. The system isn't shunning the poorer children; it's simply placing children based on proven ability.

And in the end, the more unqualified students who are admitted to the gifted programs, the worse things will be for all of them. Those with the ability will either be held back by classmates who can't keep up, or teachers will slow down to keep them from falling behind, shorting the gifted students of the gifted programs they're expecting.

I applaud the effort to identify and admit as many students as can benefit from the gifted programs as possible. But I question if there's a problem simply because the social engineering isn't working the way some had hoped.