New York City’s school system can be maze-like, and helping your children navigate it can feel like a part-time job, especially in the transitional years of pre-school, fifth grade, and eighth grade. There are a lot of options — public school vs. private school (if you can afford it or get financial aid); choices between different public schools in the same district; and selective citywide programs for children scoring in the highest percentiles on school ability tests. There have been times when I’ve wished everyone in our neighborhood just sent their kids to the same school, like in the suburbs where I grew up, but that’s just not the way things work here. Fortunately for me, my wife Caroline has been very involved in the process of looking for the best possible schools for our kids, and so far we’ve been very lucky.

Back in 1997, my daughter tested well enough to get into the Anderson Program, which was then a part of PS 9, and now she’s at Bronx Science. My son is in the Gifted and Talented program at PS 9, and several other younger siblings of children from the Anderson Program are there, too. We were very happy that both of our kids got into such well-regarded programs and were able to go to the same school. A few years ago, the Anderson Program became a separate school (PS 334) in the same building, and it started its own middle school. My daughter was in its first graduating class.

Gifted and Talented programs offer a lot of enrichment — interesting, creative long-term projects, juggled with curricula everyone else is using along with the universal preparation for standardized tests. Unfortunately, the programs have been unevenly distributed around the city, and neighborhoods like the Upper West Side have had more options than others. In addition to being scarce in some areas, some critics have argued that G&T programs lack diversity and are a way of keeping middle-class parents in the public school system through de facto segregation. In response, New York reorganized its G&T programs. The city standardized the admissions criteria, using Harcourt’s Otis-Lennon School Ability Test and the Gifted Rating Scales, and originally planned to make the cutoff for acceptance the 95th percentile and above. After input from parents and finding that many neighborhoods might not have enough kids meeting those criteria, the cutoff is now the 90th percentile and higher. The cutoff for citywide programs like the Anderson School is still the 97th percentile.

The city is trying to do more outreach to inform all families about G&T programs, but the best educated parents are still the most likely to take advantage of them. It seems inevitable that a few kids will slip through the cracks, and the system will still confuse or disappoint some parents. It’s also strange that so much of a four- or five-year-old child’s future is determined by how well he or she does on a test. When I was younger, my dad — a psychology professor who had administered IQ tests — gave me some perspective on the predictive value of intelligence assessments. He told me that scores can be higher or lower because of a child’s rapport with the tester, how well the child feels, and other factors. Unfortunately, this being New York City, some families with kids who test into selective programs feel a sense of entitlement, and dealing with educational snobbishness and cliquishness is unavoidable.

It’s great that New York is trying to make G&T programs fairer and more available to kids in all ethnic groups and income brackets, but I hope the city will put as much energy into making all elementary schools and programs more stimulating, interesting and rewarding places for children of all backgrounds and abilities. I also hope that no matter what track they’re on, all of the kids at a school will have many opportunities to learn, play and socialize together, too.