High School for Gifted Students

* In response to “An E for Excellence or Elitism?” March 23:

Every school district should be fortunate enough to have a Whitney High School!

It allows the students that want to learn the opportunity to be educated by teachers who want to teach without being burdened by the disruptive and rude young people that waste so much valuable classroom time. Attitude is everything. Hooray for Whitney High!

DONNA STREFLING

San Pedro

* With regard to your article on Whitney High, we think there are some items that need to be examined. There seems to be the assumption that if you are a gifted ABC School District student, Whitney is the only place to go if you wish to succeed. At Cerritos High School we offer 12 different Advanced Placement classes and last year 275 of our students took almost 500 AP tests; 36% of our seniors go on to four-year schools and a full 75% go on to either two- or four-yer schools, and those seniors going to the UC system do better than the Whitney students by the latest statistics. It is no crime to be bright at CHS.

Let us also point out that the students admitted to Whitney are not necessarily the brightest but rather those who do well on a sixth-grade standardized test. If Whitney does not want to be like other schools, why is there a demand for a gym and for an expanded athletic program? It would appear they want to have their cake and eat it too!

Also, by siphoning off the “best and brightest,” do not some students lose out because they no longer have access to advanced classes because the numbers do not warrant the classes being offered? How many of us did better in school because of the competition from the bright students now not found at most ABC schools? And if Whitney is not elitist, where are the special schools for the middle- and lower-quartile students, who also might like to have a school of their own?

MONTY ARMSTRONG

DAVID JOHNSTONE

Social Science Teachers

Cerritos High School

* As an Asian American student attending Whitney, one thing came to my mind as I read your article. I noticed that all the dissenters about the system were adults, not the kids who were left out of Whitney High School. If the kids themselves that couldn’t make it don’t mind, or seem to care, why should teachers and administrators at other schools seem to care? Kids generally respect Whitneyites for being smart, instead of harboring a grudge against them because they didn’t make it.

Whitney does not discriminate against African Americans or Latinos; it discriminates against Asian Americans. As an extreme example, my friend, who is Chinese, scored 183 out of a possible 194 and a writing sample of 4 and was not admitted. Another kid who is half-Asian and half-white scored 150 and 4 and was admitted. There may be other factors involved, but when one person scores 40 points above another and the lower score gets in, that is unfair.

No one seems to mention that dozens if not hundreds of people move to Cerritos or the ABC District to try to get into Whitney. So, let’s acknowledge Whitney as a first-rate school with great students and greater teachers and administrators.

JAE AHN, Seventh Grade

Cerritos

* One sure way to kill excellence is to call it elitism.

D. A. PAPANASTASSIOU

Pasadena

* Hurrah for the achievement of students at Whitney High School. Critics who charge that a selective school is elitist are ignoring the fact that forcing gifted students to remain in classrooms where teachers teach to the “middle” does a disservice to everyone. Gifted students deserve to be challenged to perform at the highest level they can; not to do so wastes a great human resource.

I am the product of one of the five public high schools in New York which give admission exams. I attended the Bronx High School of Science and had a marvelous education, which enabled me eventually to pursue a career as a college educator and administrator. Many of my classmates have gone on to be top performers in their chosen fields. My husband, also a graduate of Bronx Science, was so bored as a student in the traditional classrooms that he refused to go to school. My son, as a highly gifted child in a regular classroom, was sent to teach in the lower grades (he was 8 at the time) because his teachers did not know what to do with him.

Equal education does not mean keeping everyone at the same level. All students should be in classes where they are motivated to do their best. It serves no purpose to mix the gifted with average children in the same classroom; the gifted one is bored and the average ones feel stupid in comparison to the brightest ones.

RENEE KOGEL

Laguna Beach