{"id":279661,"date":"2025-10-05T14:15:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T14:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/279661\/"},"modified":"2025-10-05T14:15:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T14:15:15","slug":"mamdanis-callous-school-plan-steals-hope-from-nycs-brightest-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/279661\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani’s callous school plan steals hope from NYC’s brightest kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, when mayoral candidate Zohran Mandani\u00a0disclosed\u00a0plans to phase out Gifted & Talented programs<\/a> in New York City\u2019s public schools, he committed to finishing a job former Mayor Bill de Blasio started.<\/p>\n

That is, to dismantling the city\u2019s only tuition-free opportunity \u2014 apart from charter schools \u2014 for low- and middle-income parents to secure advanced education<\/a> for their kids.<\/p>\n

New York City has a large number of high-performing students, but cannot offer advanced seats to all of them.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Since then, the city has identified nearly 10,000 children as gifted each year, based on teacher referrals.<\/p>\n

But only 2,500 G&T\u00a0seats\u00a0are available<\/a> for kindergarteners, forcing the vast majority of gifted kids into classes beneath their academic level.<\/p>\n

If anything, this mismatch suggests that the Department of Education should increase the number of advanced seats.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, eliminating the program would accelerate declines in enrollment<\/a>, with devastating effects on the entire public-school system.<\/p>\n

Since 2020, the city\u2019s public schools have\u00a0lost\u00a070,000 students in grades K\u201312 \u2014 an 8% drop \u2014 despite an influx of 48,000 recent-immigrant students in the last three years.<\/p>\n

Why? In large part, due to dissatisfaction with an insufficiently challenging curriculum.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0city DOE survey published this year revealed that 41% of families who chose to leave public schools did so in search of \u201cmore rigorous education than possible\u201d in the city system.<\/p>\n

Another 40% of them reported moving out of the city altogether.<\/p>\n

Removing the only public option for advanced education will give parents even less reason to stay in the city\u2019s public schools \u2014 or in the city itself.<\/p>\n

The harshest impacts will fall on poorer families.<\/p>\n

Wealthy parents can always find ways to accelerate their children\u2019s learning through private schools or tutoring.<\/p>\n

Advanced-curriculum private schools are surging \u2014 the Russian School of Mathematics, for example, began with a single New York City location in 2017 and has already grown to six.<\/p>\n

Look no further than Mamdani himself as a beneficiary of this phenomenon.<\/p>\n

The candidate\u2019s well-off parents sent him to the exclusive Bank Street School. Current annual tuition: $57,731 and up.<\/p>\n

He then attended the Bronx High School of Science, a specialized high school built on the concept of accelerated learning \u2014 and a destination school for many G&T students.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing wrong with parents ponying up to send their kids to the best school they can afford.<\/p>\n

But low- and middle-income families with high-potential children don\u2019t have that luxury.<\/p>\n

Equalizing income disparities therefore requires public options for accelerated learning.<\/p>\n

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

Students do best when they learn alongside peers of similar academic ability.<\/p>\n

Research over the past century\u00a0shows\u00a0that grouping by ability, and accelerating the curriculum of high-achieving students, benefits them without harming their lower-achieving peers.<\/p>\n

For example, one recent study of NYC\u2019s G&T program by a team of University of Pennsylvania researchers found its students showed \u201csignificant gains in middle school English language arts and math proficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBlack and Hispanic students showed the largest increase in academic proficiency scores\u201d after participating in G&T, the study noted.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s plan would eliminate such progress by dragging down achievers in the name of \u201cequity.\u201d<\/p>\n

His vision would lower the academic ceiling for high-achieving students \u2014 without raising the floor<\/a> for the lowest-achieving ones.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unreasonable to expect the same outcomes from 900,000 students of diverse backgrounds.<\/p>\n

Achievement gaps at the highest levels shouldn\u2019t distract city educators from their most important priority: ensuring that all children can read, perform math and write at grade level. \u00a0<\/p>\n

This city\u2019s students deserve a mayor who will create schools designed to make them reach their full potential, regardless of their family background.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

A more effective approach would involve expanding the number of G&T seats \u2014 particularly in poorer neighborhoods \u2014 and making sure they are available in every school district.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the DOE should seek to improve results for kindergarteners across the board.<\/p>\n

That starts by reducing the nearly 41% of\u00a0kindergarteners\u00a0who are chronically absent<\/a>, focusing on rigorous implementation of its promising new reading curriculum<\/a>, and closing schools that have low enrollment<\/a> and poor performance.<\/p>\n

New York City shouldn\u2019t waste talent.<\/p>\n

By squandering opportunities for our brightest children<\/a>, Mamdani would make our city a place where fewer dreams come true.<\/p>\n

Danyela Souza Egorov is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. All views expressed are those of the author and not the Manhattan Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, when mayoral candidate Zohran Mandani\u00a0disclosed\u00a0plans to phase out Gifted & Talented programs in New York City\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":279662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,17452,407,113236,141607,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,5341,1269,40852,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5301],"class_list":{"0":"post-279661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-department-of-education","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-elementary-schools","12":"tag-gifted-and-talented","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-nyc-mayoral-election-2025","20":"tag-opinion","21":"tag-public-schools","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa","28":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115321983810286275","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}