Holding back gifted students in the name of equity

The Washington Post ^ | October 4, 2025 4:13 p.m. EDT | Editorial Board

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Zohran Mamdani treads on dangerous ground by putting equity ahead of educational opportunity.

Who could have guessed that Zohran Mamdani (D), the leading candidate to become the next New York mayor, would provoke a firestorm by announcing this week that he intends to phase out the city’s early elementary school programs for gifted students in the name of equity? Parents of bright children want access to schooling that meets their needs? Shocking.

Mamdani’s plan, first revealed in response to a questionnaire from the New York Times, would eliminate gifted programs for all children in public schools until they enter third grade. Currently, students can enter these programs as early as kindergarten based on nominations from their preschool teachers, as well as other measures such as report cards. The gifted program, which has spots for only about 2,500 children out of roughly 55,000 citywide, teaches the same curriculum but at a faster pace.

The left has long criticized the programs for exacerbating segregation in the city’s school system. Students who come from higher-income families are at an advantage of being selected, resulting in a disproportionate number of White and Asian kids. Black and Hispanic kids, who comprise 66 percent of total enrollment, make up only 21 percent of participants in these programs.

Mamdani’s campaign has also criticized the selection process. “Identifying academic giftedness at age 4 is hard to do objectively by any assessment, whether through testing or teacher nominations,” campaign spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement to Chalkbeat. Mamdani’s plan, she wrote, “will ensure that every New York City public school student receives a high-quality early education that enables them to be challenged and fulfilled.”

But what Mamdani and school systems that have made similar changes don’t seem to appreciate is that...

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TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: closekthru12; closepublicschools; harrisonbergeron; idiocracy

[beef]

20 years ago Neal Boortz was saying that sending your kids to public schools should count as child abuse. He was right on the money.

[mykroar]

Beat me

[FlingWingFlyer]

Sheik Madmani knows that his type are a bunch of retards so he doesn’t want any gifted American students, OF ANY COLOR, running around making the muzzies look bad.

[ABStrauss]

America’s institutions of learning are in free fall and a disgrace that’ along with everything else and with grace of God and DJT can resolve.

Never has the USA been in such a Democrap and RINO-caused calamity!

President Trump is the man of the year, decade and millennium. He will go down in history as the greatest!

[Henry Hnyellar]

This is because most teachers were/are lower achievers.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

---- " 'Harrison Bergeron come to life. I wonder who he names to be the Handicapper General.

Doctor Procrustes, because "trust the science...."

"In Greek mythology, Procrustes (/proʊˈkrʌstiːz/; Greek: Προκρούστης Prokroustes, 'the stretcher [who hammers out the metal]'), also known as Prokoptas, Damastes (Δαμαστής, 'subduer') or Polypemon, was a rogue smith and bandit from Attica who attacked people by stretching them or cutting off their legs, so as to force them to fit the size of an iron bed."

Procrustes

[antidemoncrat]

“Zohran Mamdani treads on dangerous ground by putting equity ahead of educational opportunity.”

In a typical Communist, Socialist, Muslim society the bourgeoisi, the ruling class are the only ones truly educated and capable of amassing wealth so to do that they keep the proletariat uneducated and in poverty and dependent upon them for everything. That means they must put all students, smart and dumb, into the same level of learning so they all end up as proletariat no matter how smart or talented they are.

[odawg]

From what I understand, that policy is already enforced by the Department of Education in a school district in a parish here. The Federal government enforced number crunching pertaining to racial balancing is incomprehensible. My info dates back to the Obama and Biden administrations.

Federal judges have completely destroyed the Baton Rouge shcool system and the New Orleans police force.

[cgbg]

Smart students are very dangerous.

They might learn to hate and who to hate.

Lol.

[Bernard]

Gifted programs for schoolchildren - another dinosaur remnant of the first time America was Great. It’s like losing shop class and early release work programs for high school kids.

[MayflowerMadam]

“They might learn to hate and who to hate.”

And WHY. That would be super dangerous!

[jimwatx]

This will just cause more parents to pull their kids and either send them to a private school or just move to somewhere with better schools. Mamdani’s policies will ruin NYC but let them have what they’ve voted for. Might wake some of them up.

[MarlonRando]

there is some truth to that

[Paladin2]

Zohran the Commie heeds to be held back from governing anybody and everybody.

[qwertyz]

Read Lionel Shriver's satire, Mania: "... it's not like we don't all know which kids are total pea-brains. The teachers are always calling on them, and no matter what they say it's always, 'Ooh, Jennifer, that's so wise!' And then wen one of the thickos claims five times seven is sixty-two, our math teacher says, 'Excellent! That's one answer, and a very good answer. So would anyone else like to contribute a different answer?'"

Video interview with the author here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N17dF847rpM

[Paladin2]

My wife was an elementary school teacher [over the decades, she taught all grades, except K, eventually] in a largely working class, rural district way back in the day.

She claims the teachers could pretty well guess which [a very few] kids would end up in jail as adults. I tend to believe her.

[Tired of Taxes]

No, parents, you are not entitled to a special taxpayer-funded “gifted program” in public school.

Anyway, the testing given to little children in NYC to determine whether they are “gifted” is a joke.

But, if you don’t think the public school is good enough, either send your kids to private school or homeschool.

Many homeschooled kids start college early. No taxpayer-funded special “gifted” program is necessary.

[Myrddin]

The left has long criticized the programs for exacerbating segregation in the city’s school system. Students who come from higher-income families are at an advantage of being selected, resulting in a disproportionate number of White and Asian kids. Black and Hispanic kids, who comprise 66 percent of total enrollment, make up only 21 percent of participants in these programs.

The left is wrong again. Claiming higher income is the cause of better academic performance is incorrect. It's the other way around. Better performance generation after generation brings higher income. Generational failure brings lower income. There are often exceptional students from a lower income family that would benefit from a gifted program sponsored by the school system. They don't have the same opportunity to fallback on private school for lack of income. It is those students who Mamdani is screwing. The higher performing students from higher income families will still be able to opt for private schools.

The percentage disparity is explained by our old friend the Bell Curve for group IQ. When viewed through that lense with a minimum required IQ to access the "gifted" programs, there is no disparity.

[Myrddin]

Society lost some good people who grew up without encouragement and opportunities——such as boys who raised their hands in class but never got called on by the sexist feminist women teachers pushing female empowerment.

My middle son experienced that BS. He brought home papers "corrected" by his teachers. There was glaring incompetence on the part of those teachers. I reviewed the papers and showed him the actual errors so he could do it right in spite of the teachers. He finished high school with a 4.33 GPA including multiple AP courses where he presented course material the teacher assigned didn't understand and achieved the perfect "5" scores on the AP exams.

[Myrddin]

Ha ha gifted students. My daughter went to school in fourth grade where the principal was married to the “head teacher” and they had two gifted children in the gifted and talented program.

My son begged to attend a "magnet school" in San Diego with a special program supplied by Scripps Institute of Oceanography. I allowed it in spite of having to put him at a bus stop at 5:30 AM and pick him up at 5:30 PM. He began to have problems at the inner city, predominantly hispanic and black school. He would get beat up at recess for being the academic "top fly" on the manure pile. The "magnet" program was 30 minutes on alternating Thursdays. Otherwise, the school was a glorified feeding program with breakfast, lunch and public financed babysitting. We pulled him out immediately after reports of a gunfight on the street within a block of the school.

We put my son back into the local school. The "magnet" school was over 4 weeks behind in the prescribed coursework syllabus compared to the local school. It took my son 2 weeks to catch up with the wasted time. There was a small silver lining. My son got to learn Spanish by immersion and polished that so well that he could represent real estate clients in court cases to help them understand the issues on the table and the explanations of what was expected of them. He parlayed that into a real estate business with 80% Spanish speakers in 2008 before the market crashed.