Black Seattle Parents Furious Over Termination of Gifted and Talented Program for Having Too Many White Students
I heard this story briefly discussed on the television news – there were some black students in this program, but because the school felt there were too many white children in it as well, they cancelled the entire thing – so the black children who were in the program got kicked out, too, not just the white children. The entire program was called off.
Seattle Public Schools shuts down gifted and talented program for being oversaturated with white and Asian students
By Melissa Koenig
Published April 3, 2024
Seattle Public Schools is dismantling its gifted and talented program, which administrators argued was oversaturated with white and Asian students, in favor of a more “inclusive, equitable and culturally sensitive” program.
The district began phasing out its Highly Capable Cohort schools and classrooms for advanced students in the 2021-22 school year due to racial inequities, the school district notes.
The program will completely cease to exist by the 2027-28 school year, with a new enrichment-for-all model available in every school by the 2024-25 school year.
“The program is not going away, it’s getting better,” school officials said on the district website.
“It will be more inclusive, equitable and culturally sensitive.
“In particular, students who have been historically excluded will now have the same opportunities for services as every other student and get the support and enrichment they need to grow.”
The enrichment program currently only allows students who placed in the top 2 percent on standardized exams to be placed in the Highly Capable Cohort to receive enriched learning.
The students would then be sorted into one of three elementary schools, five middle schools and three high schools.
But in 2020, the Seattle school board voted to terminate the program, after a 2018 survey found that the students in the Highly Capable Cohort were 13% multiracial, 11.8% Asian, 3.7% Hispanic and just 1.6% black.
Nearly 70% of the students were white.
“Numbers would suggest that within our city … predominantly white children are more gifted than other cultures and races, and we know that is absolutely not true,” Kari Hanson, the district’s director of student support services, told Parent Map at the time.
Under the new program, dubbed the Highly Capable Neighborhood School Model, teachers will be required to come up with individualized learning programs for all 20 to 30 of their students — a task for which, they argue, they do not have the time or resources as the district faces a $104 million budget deficit, according to the Seattle Times.
…Some parents of black students in the program even argued against ending it.
“My request is that you please consider the disservice you would be doing to the minorities that are already in the HCC program,” one father said at the school board meeting to approve the new program in 2020, according to the Stranger.
“The program does more for black children, particularly black boys, than it does for their peers.” ..
Black Seattle parents furious over termination of gifted and talented program for having too many white students
April 7, 2024
by Sara Higdon
Parents in Seattle, Washington, expressed their anger over the city’s decision to close its Highly Capable Cohort (HHC) schools for gifted students by the end of the 2027-2028 school year because it has too many white and Asian students.
According to FOX 13, 11 schools in total were scheduled to be closed and will start to be phased out in the fall. The district says on its website that the decision was made to address “historical inequity,” because some races are underrepresented in them. Continue reading →
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