We have noted in the past that smart kids are often sacrificed first on the altar of politics, funding and social engineering. The claim is that 'they are smart, they will succeed anyway'. Which is like saying Olympic athletes will be fine without training.
Regardless, when politicians want to put on a show, they cut firefighters and special needs budgets for schools and blame the public for not wanting a tax increase. But gifted programs are whacked for all kinds of crazy reasons, even when budgets are fine.
New York City, unsurprisingly, has done it again. This time an elementary school program in Brooklyn said it was canceling its gifted program in order to heterogeneously reflect the diversity of the community.
Yes, the principal said its gifted program had to go because it does not match the average makeup of the entire school. Only 28 percent of the school is Asian or Caucasian but they made up the bulk of the gifted students.
Luckily, that does not impact the world of science, right? It absolutely does. Every day in universities academics declare they got their jobs and fundings because of their gender or their color rather than their abilities and feel like mandated diversity would be better for science. Unsurprisingly, they do not offer to quit to make room for the women, minorities or Republicans under-represented in campus faculties.
Asian kids learn this crazy lesson early - in the interests of diversity, they are going to be penalized the most and they will need higher scores to get into college because, though they are only 5 percent of the US, they are not considered a minority. Well, not penalized at Caltech. Caltech refuses to admit based on race so it's 30 percent Asian. Asians get advice from other Asians that if they have an American last name, check off Caucasian rather than Asian on their college application. They'll have an easier time getting in.
Gifted classes for kids at that age seem a little weird anyway - very New York - so the school is probably better off making sure everyone is mediocre; that will work fine until all of the kids are older and they do terrible on international standardized tests, and then the same people who put mandated demographics ahead of education can talk about how "dismal" education is and demand more money.
