Great article, Katie! You nailed where all “sides” are coming from. I might only add that we’re failing to step back to identify why outcomes are so segregated to begin with. Better access to quality preschools and more supports for parents would go much further to close the gap than blowing up HCC.

in which Seattle Public Schools will now force the middle-class parents of talented kids into the private system, at crippling costs, instead of trying to educated a kid who's merely 20% smarter than average. What a system!

Good for Pedersen. I’ll have to read his bill but yeah, leaving it to the district to virtually allow schools to decide what HCC services look like is folly.

Every single school, every year has to submit a plan to the district in covering things like highly capable programming, Speciel Education, homeless and ELL services. For years, some didn’t get their plans done on-time while for other schools, it was words on paper with zero enforcement from the district. So with that record in mind, why should parents believe doing away with cohort system will be better?

And again, the effort should be to find the black and brown kids who ARE out there who could use highly capable teaching and learning.

"Keisha Scarlett, the district’s Chief of Equity, Partnerships, and Engagement, wrote that HCC programs are “based upon the ‘manufactured brilliance’ of the children of mostly white and affluent families. Children who are not inherently more gifted than other children but benefit from the resources their families and our systems leverage to uphold to redlining in educational spaces."

So kids with two parents in their house, who value education and enforce expectations, do better in school than the fuckups?

That probably explains why so many Asian kids do disproportionately better in our schools than any other group.

Why is this news?

@5 “Equity Ellen,” your argument puts an awful lot of burden on CHILDREN to create an environment for academic success, ie, be from a two parent family.

That’s not to say blowing up HCC with only a half baked plan (and a crappy district track record of doing anything) is a good idea.

Sounds like Scarlett nailed it. There are a handful of kids who are truly gifted. They can do calculus at age 6. But if you think the "gifted" programs are for the next Doogie Howser, you are naive. They may have started that way, but now they are largely for well to do kids who are pressured by their parents to "do more". More homework, more time in class, more, more, more. Some thrive, some fail, some go nuts with all of the pressure.

If this was truly about kids that are gifted -- kids who have the ability to do more thanks to their genetic makeup -- then you would see a more diverse group of applicants. Income, family background and culture would have nothing to do with it. Yet that obviously isn't the case. These are simply more advanced classes for those who come from a better background.

Should the city spend more money catering to kids who as Pedersen so aptly put it "will be fine" regardless of what we do, or should we spend money so that the kids who aren't rich or don't have a stable household -- the kids that on occasion go hungry -- have a decent education? Seems to me that if we really want to be a Democracy -- if we really want to provide for each and every child -- then the answer is obvious.

@3 "the Black, HispaniX, and Native Parents don't give a flying fu*k if their kids do well in school or not."

Damn. That is some serious racist shit right there. Might as well call them all monkeys, while you are at it.

" And the District has zero credibility when they say they're going to somehow meet the needs of advanced learners (those who score in the top 2% of the test, which is available to every student) when they are all returned to their neighborhood schools."

And yet, back when the U. S. really did have the best K-12 schools in the world, the schools did exactly that. Somehow really smart people, like Elizabeth Warren, managed just fine in those regular old public schools. I've been around really smart people -- people who could compete with Warren on a debate stage (which is saying something), people who were junior grand masters in chess -- yet they all went to a public school, without any "gifted" programs. They simply spent extra time working on their craft, or reading, or hanging out after school, with other smart kids. The needs of the super smart kids will be met -- the problem is meeting the needs of the disadvantaged.

@8 in what universe do you read that and think 'Monkeys'?

Seriously, please walk me through your thought process there

The soft bigotry of low expectations.

I'll say this, I was part of the district's "Horizon" program which was at least one version of G&T program SPS used to do. I was that kid who scored 99th percentile in every category and on every national test (somehow, there were 3 of us in that program at once, which seems mathematically unlikely) and - it took me almost all of my 40 years to actually realize this - I was actively bored and not intellectually challenged and acted out/lost interest as a result. I did dip my toe into "regular" classes by my Sr year of high school and they were at a level I hadn't experienced since 5th grade. It was a real shock how low the expectations were (effectively non-existent) in non-honors/AP classes.

Anyhows, I probably would have jumped off a bridge if I'd been forced into regular curricula my entire life. We we're talking about 2 Live Crew and freedom of speech and the ethics of Iraq War I and going deep on Civil War and reconstruction in 4th and 5th grade, I find my colleagues from other places... never did any of that stuff, not in elementary, not in high school, and barely in university.

@7: Interesting theory. Prove it.

@3
I don't seem to recall George H. W. Bush saying much about his kid's, what was it, a C-? average.

And if you think Geo Dub II became president because he was gifted, this is me, laughing right in your stupid, stupid face.

HCC kids are the cheapest kids to educate in the city. Per student dollar spending is far lower than at Gangbanger High.

Why?

Parents who give a damn.

If it’s white racism how come African immigrant kids are doing so well in our schools both in Seattle and nationwide?

“African-American students whose primary language is English perform significantly worse in math and reading than black students who speak another language at home — typically immigrants or refugees — according to new numbers released by Seattle Public Schools.”

Kind of funny to say the cohort model comes from a scarcity mentality while at the same time arguing that some kids shouldn’t get their needs met because their needs aren’t real needs.

These folks are in charge of racial equity?!?

Has the SPS made a case for how getting rid of the HCC program, or replacing it with the TAF program, will benefit students? Is the only selling point that it will disproportionally impact white and asian students?

TAF raised graduation rates in Highline to 45%.

This is considered a “success” by the shitty, low rent bureaucrats at SPS. It’s also aimed at African American males so expect massive white/Asian flight and from middle class blacks. Remember what a disaster the African American Academy was if you don’t believe me.

First of all "Besides the fact that some parents don’t want their kids hooked up to screens all day" is a gross misrepresentation of the education model that TAF is presenting. Look on their website, they advocate for Project Based Learning which is a pretty well researched and well-received model that is very similar to organizations like Expeditionary Learning and BIE. Just because they have Technology in their name doesn't mean that students will be hooked up to screens all day. It would be great if the author talking about education would do their research on what the alternative to HCC is.

Second, tracking (which is what the HCC is) has been shown to disproportionately categorize white students into the "advanced" track and black and brown students into the lower track. The author's use of "neurodiversity" completely disregards the nature vs nurture argument. These students have been the "advanced" track since 2nd grade. One would presume that most of those students have parents who can afford tutors and other resources that would give the child a better chance to getting into that "advanced" track. It comes down to who has money to afford more resources, who has more time to make sure students are playing the system well. Does an immigrant child, who is learning English starting in 1st grade, with parents that do not know how to play a foreign system deserve to get tracked into a lower tier for the rest of his/her education career? I would argue absolutely not.

Get rid of the tracking system so you can desegregate schools, give every child a chance, and start treating teachers like professionals who can differentiate for multiple tiers of students in one classroom.

A Teacher

I'm the non-white parent of two mixed race, highly capable kids. Scrapping HCC would be a disaster for my kids. Most of the kids in my children's classes are mixed race, although a high percentage including mine have one white parent. I don't think it's fair to punish my kids and artificially flatten the curve. Perhaps white educators should learn to stop treating non-white gifted kids as the other?

SPS foolishly chose to put TAF (which specifically focuses on kids who are working below grade level - see their website) at Washington MS which is comprised of 50% HCC kids working significantly above grade level. It's simply a bad idea, despite TAF actually being a good program (side note, TAF does not just put kids in front of screens, that part is inaccurate). In addition to reducing the academic rigor for kids in HCC in Southeast Seattle, this would leave HCC fully intact in (whiter) north Seattle and wouldn't do anything to address the continuing racial disparity of HCC identification and access across the district. It's about SPS leadership wanting to point to something tangible and claim success on racial equity, without doing the work required to actually solve problems.

@23 Unfortunately, my kids are in the same dingy boat with your kids being blown around the SPS ocean by political winds of bloviating l̶i̶a̶r̶s̶ politicians. Politicians should be ashamed for treating the most successful students in schools with the contempt usually reserved for pawns. Just look at the HCC schools they are dismantling first, the south end schools that need programs like this to rescue the students with real academic potential from the most needy neighborhoods, where residents simply cannot afford to send their kids to private school. Now that charter schools are a thing of the past, what choice do these kids have for a better education? Seattle Public Schools must not be allowed to get away with reducing access and quality of advanced learning programs, the success and future of publicly educated students of Seattle depends on programs like HCC.

Does SPS still let parents use outside (private) assessments of achievement/capability to get their kids into the HCC? That was the case up until at least a few years ago, and always struck me as one of the greatest travesties of the system.

@27, I’d love to see the scientific backing to your claim that races that enjoy privilege (relatively) suffer more from neurodiversity diagnoses. Even then, it would be hard to disentangle access to healthcare from actual disproportionality of a disease. Your claim is a bit of a stretch and, well, biased.