Mamdani’s callous school plan steals hope from NYC’s brightest kids

Last week, when mayoral candidate Zohran Mandani disclosed plans to phase out Gifted & Talented programs in New York City’s public schools, he committed to finishing a job former Mayor Bill de Blasio started.

That is, to dismantling the city’s only tuition-free opportunity — apart from charter schools — for low- and middle-income parents to secure advanced education for their kids.

New York City has a large number of high-performing students, but cannot offer advanced seats to all of them.

Prior to 2021, when the city used a standardized test to screen for its G&T programs, 3,500 kindergarteners a year were deemed gifted.

Since then, the city has identified nearly 10,000 children as gifted each year, based on teacher referrals.

But only 2,500 G&T seats are available for kindergarteners, forcing the vast majority of gifted kids into classes beneath their academic level.

If anything, this mismatch suggests that the Department of Education should increase the number of advanced seats.

On the other hand, eliminating the program would accelerate declines in enrollment, with devastating effects on the entire public-school system.

Since 2020, the city’s public schools have lost 70,000 students in grades K–12 — an 8% drop — despite an influx of 48,000 recent-immigrant students in the last three years.

Why? In large part, due to dissatisfaction with an insufficiently challenging curriculum.

A city DOE survey published this year revealed that 41% of families who chose to leave public schools did so in search of “more rigorous education than possible” in the city system.

Another 40% of them reported moving out of the city altogether.

Removing the only public option for advanced education will give parents even less reason to stay in the city’s public schools — or in the city itself.

The harshest impacts will fall on poorer families.

Wealthy parents can always find ways to accelerate their children’s learning through private schools or tutoring.

Advanced-curriculum private schools are surging — the Russian School of Mathematics, for example, began with a single New York City location in 2017 and has already grown to six.

Look no further than Mamdani himself as a beneficiary of this phenomenon.

The candidate’s well-off parents sent him to the exclusive Bank Street School. Current annual tuition: $57,731 and up.

He then attended the Bronx High School of Science, a specialized high school built on the concept of accelerated learning — and a destination school for many G&T students.

There’s nothing wrong with parents ponying up to send their kids to the best school they can afford.

But low- and middle-income families with high-potential children don’t have that luxury.

Equalizing income disparities therefore requires public options for accelerated learning.

Mamdani instead seeks to deny low- and middle-income families access to the kinds of opportunities that he enjoyed as a privileged child.

Students do best when they learn alongside peers of similar academic ability.

Research over the past century shows that grouping by ability, and accelerating the curriculum of high-achieving students, benefits them without harming their lower-achieving peers.

For example, one recent study of NYC’s G&T program by a team of University of Pennsylvania researchers found its students showed “significant gains in middle school English language arts and math proficiency.”

“Black and Hispanic students showed the largest increase in academic proficiency scores” after participating in G&T, the study noted.

Mamdani’s plan would eliminate such progress by dragging down achievers in the name of “equity.”

His vision would lower the academic ceiling for high-achieving students — without raising the floor for the lowest-achieving ones.

It’s unreasonable to expect the same outcomes from 900,000 students of diverse backgrounds.

Achievement gaps at the highest levels shouldn’t distract city educators from their most important priority: ensuring that all children can read, perform math and write at grade level.  

This city’s students deserve a mayor who will create schools designed to make them reach their full potential, regardless of their family background.

A more effective approach would involve expanding the number of G&T seats — particularly in poorer neighborhoods — and making sure they are available in every school district.

At the same time, the DOE should seek to improve results for kindergarteners across the board.

That starts by reducing the nearly 41% of kindergarteners who are chronically absent, focusing on rigorous implementation of its promising new reading curriculum, and closing schools that have low enrollment and poor performance.

New York City shouldn’t waste talent.

By squandering opportunities for our brightest children, Mamdani would make our city a place where fewer dreams come true.

Danyela Souza Egorov is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. All views expressed are those of the author and not the Manhattan Institute.