Education and Class

• New York City Schools Struggle to Separate the Gifted From the Just Well-Prepared – NYTimes.com

  Parents game the screening assessments for early childhood “gifted” programs in New York City, with the help of test prep companies who offer new programs for any changes that the city makes to more “fair” assessments.

  The city (and the article) frame this as a technical problem of finding more objective assessments.

  Yet this is a deeply ethical problem, of parents consciously buying advantage for their children to the disadvantage of others.

  tags: social class

• New York Parks in Less Affluent Areas Lack Big Gifts – NYTimes.com

  As the wealthy become more insulated from others in neighborhoods and social circles, and as public funding drops for community resources like parks, private funding of public amenities sustains inequalities.

  “The unequal distribution of philanthropy is not particularly surprising, said Linda R. Cox, the parks department’s Bronx River administrator, who also directs the Bronx River Alliance, a nonprofit group. After all, most major philanthropists tend to live near a few parks in the city’s most affluent neighborhoods, she said.”

  tags: social class

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.