Recently, we received a post card letting us know that the NYC Department of Education had extended its Gifted and Talented Assessment process for students in pre-k. So, if we were interested, we still had time to test Michael (our four years old son) for possible placement to a Gifted and Talented program. I threw the card away.<\/p>\n
I just can\u2019t wrap my brain around testing three and four year old kids to see whether or not they are \u201cgifted and talented\u201d. It makes no sense to me. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m even concerned whether or not Michael would get placed in the program. I just think that it\u2019s fundamentally wrong to assess kids\u2019 potential this soon. I think about how random kids are at these young ages. Depending on whether they\u2019re having a \u201cgood day\u201d or a \u201crebellious day\u201d could totally affect how they perform on the test. It\u2019s ridiculous.<\/p>\n
I knew that this decision was coming up and I received a lot of input from my friends with kids a little older than my son. Without exception, everyone thought that it was ridiculous to test kids this young. However, some of them had their kids tested for a variety of reasons. The primary reason was that they wanted to give their kids a greater variety of options as to where they could attend school. I understand that. (We\u2019re moving from my beloved Manhattan to one of the other burroughs in order to be in a better school district!)<\/p>\n