Gifted & Talented Test Scores for Perry School

According to a recent NY Times article the number of pre-k students who got over 90% on the OLSAT test this year is much higher. According to the article:

” Of the 12,454 in New York City who took the test this winter, 3,542 (or 26 percent) scored at or above the national 90th percentile, up from 3,231 the year before, qualifying them for one of the 70 gifted kindergarten programs spread through the city’s school districts. But the most striking increase occurred in the number of children scoring at or above the national 97th percentile: 1,788, up from 1,345 last year. Those students qualify for one of the five citywide gifted programs, which have only about 300 seats in all, meaning the competition for them this year will be even fiercer.”

The article goes on to mention how tutoring facilities and nursery schools are preparing the children for these exams with good results. According the article:

At the Perry School, a preschool in the West Village, children spent an hour a day in a “think tank program” designed to expose them to the reasoning and materials they would see during the test. They also had professional tutoring. Of the five students who took the gifted exam, “we got two 99s, a 98, and two 97s,” said Dawn Ifrah, the founder. Bright Kids NYC, the tutoring company that worked with those children, reported that 80 percent of the 120 children for whom it had results had scored over the 90th percentile, and 60 children had scored in the 99th.”

http://www.nycpreschool.com


This past Friday was the deadline to submit applications for the G&T programs across NYC. There were many nervous parents as the deadline approached. From District 2 parents I heard that Lower Lab and P.S. 33 Chelsea Prep were by far the top 2 choices for the district 2 G&T programs. For city-wide it was toss-up between NEST and Anderson. I also heard from several parents whose children received a 99% on the OLSAT test decided to forgo the city-wide program and put P.S. 33 Chelsea Prep in District 2 as their first choice for gifted and talented so they would be guaranteed a spot in the hottest, up-and-coming G&T program.