Mamdani Should Focus on Diversity and Enrichment Over ‘Gifted and Talented’

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.