Mamdani S Plan To Ruin Public Education In New York The Hill

Below is my column in The Hill on the pledge of Zohran Mamdani to end some of the early Gifted and Talented programs in the New York educational system. The move is part of a national campaign against such programs as racist or privileged due to the higher percentage of White and Asian students who qualify. The fear is that the Mamdani administration will return to the disastrous policies of the de Blasio administration in rolling back on the programs. Zohran Mamdani appears to have a plan for leveling the playing fields in education. Faced with a huge number of students with comparably dismal scores in math, English, and science, Mamdani is going to bulldoze higher-achieving programs. It is a pledge that only a Soviet central planner would relish.

By eliminating gifted and talented programs in lower grades, Mamdani will increase equity through mediocrity. With some on the left demanding the closure of all such programs, the concern is that New York is following the trend in other blue cities. (His opponent, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, has said that he would actually expand these programs). Even the Washington Post’s editors have objected to his plan as “damaging education in the name of equity.” Although Mamdani is currently focusing on lower grades, these programs are under fire as racist or privileged since less than a quarter of students come from Black or Latino populations. Activists have long objected that roughly 70 percent of students in gifted classrooms were white or Asian American, even though these groups comprise only about 35 percent of the student body.

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani recently announced that if elected, he intends to continue former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to abolish the gifted and talented program for kindergartners in public schools. Mamdani’s comments are not shocking. As a self-described democratic socialist, his proposal reflects a broader trend in education: trading merit for equity. As the process stands today, incoming kindergarteners hoping for one of the coveted 2,500 gifted and talented seats are evaluated through teacher recommendations. While the testing requirement to enter the program has been eliminated, admission remains highly competitive, with thousands of families applying each year. Under Mamdani’s plan, students currently in the program would remain unaffected, at least for the time being.

However, his comments sparked concern and added fuel to a fire that had been burning long before this election season began. In 2021, de Blasio and his education chancellor, Richard Carranza, proposed a policy that removed standardized tests given to incoming kindergartners applying for the program. Under their “Brilliant NYC” plan, accelerated instruction was expected to take on a more inclusive role, taught in every classroom. The plan was met with backlash, and ultimately, de Blasio’s term was up before it could be fully realized. Critics of the gifted and talented program argue that merit-based screening perpetuates inequality by unfairly dividing students based on their race and economic status. They view entrance exams not as neutral tools for assessing cognitive ability but as a form of “privilege,” benefiting only those students who grew up in English-speaking households or had family support and other...

The educational priorities of socialist Big Apple mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani could undermine progress in the nation’s largest school system, veteran education experts warn. The Democratic Party candidate was the only hopeful who said he wants to gut mayoral control of the city school system — a set-up that has been in place since 2002 and supported by... “Zohran supports an end to mayoral control and envisions a system instead in which parents, students, educators and administrators work together to create the school environments in which students and families will best thrive—strengthening... Mamdani repeated during a NY1 interview last week that he wanted to go beyond a mayor having an “automatic majority” of appointments to the Panel for Educational Policy. The socialist Democrat, who was endorsed by the United Federation of Teachers after he overwhelmingly won the Dem primary last month, said he is on the same wavelength as the union, which has long... Welcome to Politomix -- the political news wire where left, right and center mix.

Politomix aggregates the day's political news on the web and your mobile device. Politomix Home Trending Sites iOS App Search About 2025 GlassWave November 5, 2025 / 7:25 PM EST / CBS New York Of all the New York City agencies Zohran Mamdani will soon be in charge of, the largest, by a wide margin, is the public school system. Yet, the mayor-elect did not signal comprehensive plans for it during the campaign. Many are wondering if the status quo will remain or if major shake-ups are coming.

The public school system is in the midst of an ongoing bus contract dispute and has an enrollment that shrunk by 20,000 students this year, according to the Department of Education's preliminary data. On Thursday, just hours after he won the election, Mamdani held a press conference detailing his transition. Zohran Mamdani’s potential election as New York City mayor could be transformational for the city’s underfunded public K–12 schools and higher education system. Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani answers questions from the media during an event in Queens, New York, on June 19, 2025. (Adam Gray / Bloomberg via Getty Images) Jacobin‘s winter issue, “Municipal Socialism,” is out soon.

Follow this link to get a discounted subscription to our beautiful print quarterly and get it right when it’s released. As New York City gets ready for a historic mayoral election, Zohran Kwame Mamdani has exploded onto the scene as a candidate proposing transformative changes to the city’s educational framework. Central to his vision is ending unilateral mayoral control and redistributing wealth to support equity, development, and research. In this exclusive interview, organizer, union activist, and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY), Nivedita Majumdar, discusses the potential challenges to realizing Mamdani’s platform. These include barriers to funding, connections between education and climate, and the roles of civil society and union advocacy. Drawing lessons from historical city governance, she explains how New York’s public education landscape might evolve under a potential Mamdani administration.

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