New Test for City's Gifted and Talented Program

New York City's gifted and talented program will be overhauled with a new admissions test that gives more focus to abstract spatial thinking, in an effort to better diversify the program, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The new exam, the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test, will now count for two-thirds of a student's score, while the the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test, which has been in place, will account for 75 percent of a students overall score.

According to the Journal, city officials signed a three-year, $5.5 million contract with testing company Pearson earlier this year for the NNAT.

The new test hardly utilizes language, which some believe better captures intelligence in multilingual settings.

The exam is indicative of the city’s attempt to bridge the gap of equality in public schools – last month, the NAACP filed a civil rights complaint against the city’s admission test for it’s elite high schools, like Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech, alleging that they are biased against black and Latino candidates.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn even said that the admissions process should be looked at, and that the city needs more than one test to judge true aptitude.

"I think similar principles apply in the gifted and talented process," Damon Hewitt, director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund's education practice, told the Journal, adding that the group was considering investigating the city's gifted and talented admissions.

The gifted and talented program runs from kindergarten to third grade, and has become a highly coveted prize for parents wishing to give their kids a head start to the best city education.

According to the Journal, last year, nearly 5,000 children qualified for a spot in a gifted kindergarten program by scoring in the 90th percentile or above, and more than half scored in the 97th percentile or higher, though the top schools only had about 400 kindergarten seats available.