So I think this critique of gifted and talented is wrong, and, as I’ve written before, the push to eliminate tracking in K-12 schools is extremely misguided, especially since there are pretty straightforward ways to address the most valid critiques of how kids are identified for advanced math classes.
At the same time, I do think the N.Y.C. gifted and talented programming deserves criticism, though my complaint is roughly the opposite of the one that Arnold-Ratliff offered.
Precisely because you really can identify which kids are the most promising ones in a pretty reliable way, the mere fact that the graduates of a gifted program do well in life does not convey any information at all about whether the program is actually any good.
If you read accounts of what’s happening in G&T, you’ll see that it’s a lot of special activities that have nothing to do with basic principles like “give the smartest kids harder math problems so they learn more.” And the research on the causal impact shows not much is going on.
The level of fighting over who gets into this program and whether it’s unfair is wildly out of proportion to the scrutiny of its actual educational efficacy.
And unfortunately, this is the case almost everywhere in American education, whether it’s the link between “good schools” and property values, the practical operation of charter and public school choice programs, the tuition that people pay for private school, or the battles over who gets into exam schools or gifted programs.