fewer children entering gifted programs the number of children entering new york city public school gifted programs dropped by half this year from last under a new policy intended to equalize access with schools lacking enough students to open planned gifted classes and others proceeding with fewer than a dozen children the policy which based admission on a citywide cutoff score on two standardized tests also failed to diversify the historically coveted classes according to a new york times analysis of new education department data in a school system in which percent of kindergartners and first graders are white percent of this years new gifted students are white compared with percent of elementary students admitted to the programs under previous entrance policies the percentage of asians is also higher while those of blacks and hispanics are lower parents teachers and principals involved in the programs already worried at reports this spring that the new system tilted programs for the gifted further toward rich neighborhoods have complained since school began that they were wasteful and frustrating with highperforming children in the smallest classes in a school system plagued by pockets of overcrowding they took the knees out of a program that was working complained christopher spinelli president of the community education council for district in southeastern brooklyn for years the bloomberg administration has struggled to rationalize the gifted programs long derided by critics as bastions of white privilege yet seen by many middleclass new yorkers as a reason to stay in the citys public school system in his state of the city address mayor michael r bloomberg promised to maintain all of the citys existing gifted programs while creating more in historically underserved districts department of education officials said this week that they had not intended to reduce gifted enrollment radically but were satisfied in the knowledge that all children in the programs had cleared the same hurdle previously the city had a hodgepodge of programs with varied admissions requirements in when the city required applicants to take the same tests but did not set a uniform cutoff some were filled with students who had scored extremely low we have taken critical steps to expand gifted and talented including extensive outreach that has led to many many more students being tested but we wont compromise standards and thereby dilute our programs schools chancellor joel i klein said in a statement in the past when gifted and talented programs were run by the districts students scoring at the percent or percent level on a national scale were being admitted to gifted programs this is unfair to the students city officials said that in an effort to broaden next years gifted enrollment they planned to create citywide programs based in brooklyn and queens currently the three such programs that have a higher admissions standard are all in manhattan and begin all gifted programs in kindergarten percent now begin in the first grade but they have no plans to change the tests or the th percentile cutoff which was lowered from th percentile because too few children met the higher standard problems with the new admissions policy surfaced in june when an analysis by the new york times showed that children from the citys poorest districts were offered a smaller percentage of gifted slots than in the previous year while children in the citys wealthiest districts captured a greater share the new data and analysis go further by looking at actual enrollment and the race of students information the city could not previously provide the incoming gifted class is percent hispanic percent black and percent asian their kindergarten and firstgrade peers in the city are percent hispanic percent black and percent asian students admitted to gifted programs under the previous policies are percent hispanic percent black and percent asian but the most profound change is the overall shrinkage of the gifted program with kindergartners and first graders starting new classes this fall down from last year according to the education department that drop comes despite the fact that students applied for entrylevel slots this year up from in