New York City’s Newest Experiment in Test Fraud: Its New Test for Admission into Public Schools’ Gifted and Talented Program for Kindergarteners

By Nicholas Stix

If you have a dark sense of humor, my VDARE colleague Steve Sailer has done a send-up of a straight-faced Wall Street Journal story on the city’s new, multimillion-dollar testing boondoggle. The scam’s supporters claim it will get more black kids into gifted and talented programs through being more abstract and less verbal, which as Steve sardonically suggests, is a recipe for disaster.

As a result, they expressed the hope that it would “improve the diversity of students that are recognized as gifted and talented,” said Adina Lopatin, the deputy chief academic officer for the city's Department of Education. City officials said they were currently compiling data on the program's racial breakdown but students who qualified tended to be concentrated in wealthier districts. Areas such as the South Bronx produced few candidates.

Some experts have raised doubts about the NNAT's ability to create a racially balanced class. Several studies show the test produces significant scoring gaps between wealthier white and Asian children and their poor, minority counterparts.

As the father of a New York City public school student who is officially recognized as gifted and talented, I happen to have intimate experience with the mechanics of how the New York City Department of Education handles these things. The black kids will do fine, because the DOE will simply cheat, the way it now routinely does in such matters.

I won’t get into specifics just yet, because I’ve been sketching out and thinking through a column on the New York City public schools for three years now, which I promise to finish before the millennium ends.