With all eyes on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, we’d like to propose a resolution for his first year. The city’s gifted and talented (G&T) program has long been trumpeted as a way to retain middle-class students in the city’s public schools. But the program enrolls only 18,000 students, or a mere 2% of the city’s children. The program is also highly segregated – with its disproportionately white, Asian, and affluent population – and doesn’t reflect the diversity of the city’s many communities.
As two academics who have spent over a decade studying school choice and educational policies including in NYC, interviewing hundreds of parents about their school choices, we know that there are more effective and equitable ways for Mamdani’s newly-appointed schools chancellor to serve the city’s schoolchildren.
For years, the city’s G&T programs have selected students at age 4. That process led to a highly inequitable program. Issues such as the test-prepping of preschoolers exacerbated inequality at the expense of lower-income students and families of color. And while under the Adams administration, preschool teacher recommendations have also been used to select students for the program, that process has still been criticized for potential bias. Although there is some evidence that racial representation for Black and Latino students in G&T programs has improved, they still do not represent the rich diversity of the city’s students. They also create within-school segregation in conflict with the NYC Mamdani represents.
What’s more, and as our research with “happiness-oriented” parents in NYC has shown, the G&T programs do not meet all families’ priorities. We have found that NYC parents, even those from privileged backgrounds, often choose schools that promote their children’s social-emotional well-being, rather than ones that solely promote academic rigor based on test scores. As one NYC mother we interviewed put it, “When most people think about top schools, they think of them in terms of test scores … yet we know test scores don’t really tell the whole story. I’m definitely more interested in social interactions in the school … diversity of the school, in terms of race makeup, in terms of how they deal with social issues in the school.”
These “happiness-oriented” parents in NYC that we identified in our research are financially privileged, live in different neighborhoods across the city and come from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. They have a more expanded view of what constitutes a good school than the media and politicians would have us believe. To keep their families happy, they look beyond prestige, demographics and test scores and choose schools that offer other benefits. These benefits might include elements such as specialized curricula in the arts, experiential education, wellness or dual language enrichment programs. Such parents also frequently prioritize school diversity to affirm their child’s racial identities or to expose them to diverse peers in NYC and choose schools close to home that will be convenient for family life.
In Mamdani’s acceptance speech, he said, “We have stepped out from the old into the new.” This should hold true in his agenda for education. Rather than maintaining and simply tweaking the G&T program, the city should instead phase out the separate G&T program model and expand schoolwide enrichment offerings that highlight creativity, language, movement and diversity.
The Mamdani administration should also build upon the School Diversity Advisory Group’s recommendations to mandate that districts phase out G&T programs to improve schoolwide diversity, and the Brilliant NYC model that would replace G&T with project-based learning and “enrichment for all” that builds upon and cultivates each student’s strengths. Community school models, which have shown success, should be supported, and expanded and provide avenues for enrichment for all.
Mayor Mamdani’s administration should listen to all parents – not only the most vocal ones. Politicians and educational leaders should consider the views of parents outside the heated debate about the G&T program, like the NYC parents in our happiness study, whose voices could aid policy efforts to promote school equity and improve school offerings for all students and families.
