Big things happening in Seattle, where the city's public schools are dropping their gifted and talented program — the Highly Capable Cohort — which was "oversaturated with white and Asian students," and replacing it with a "more inclusive, equitable and culturally sensitive" one.
Nope, not kidding.
Apparently if white and Asian kids excel at school that's a bad thing?
I guess Seattle thinks so.
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 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.
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.
Oh no!
White kids!
RUUUUUUUUNNNNN!!!!!
So now they'll replace the program, and I'll quote the school district because it's free comedy.
'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.'
It's getting better. Better as in the curriculum will be at a lower level as to accommodate the students who didn't test in the upper 2%.
Here's what that new program will look like.
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.
The district said it is working to provide teachers with curriculum and instruction on how to make it work, but an estimate from 2020 suggested an enrichment-for-all program would cost the district $1.1 million over the first three years.
Let us know how that works out for ya, Seattle!
Like, we don't know how we're going to make this work, but it's definitely going to work.
Socialism, ladies and gentlemen.
One last thing before I go:
Over the past few years, though, more and more minority students have joined the ranks of the Highly Capable Cohort.
In the 2022-23 school year, 52% of the students were white, 16% were Asian and 3.4% were black, according to the Seattle Times.
Seattle was making progress at including more minorities in the program, but that's just not enough. Scrap the program and bring in the Highly Capable Neighborhood School Model, a program which will undoubtedly fail, mark my words.
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