Overview

• Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani said he would end gifted-and-talented placement for kindergartners, limiting his plan to early grades while keeping the specialized high school entrance test.
• Andrew Cuomo vowed to expand gifted offerings citywide and to increase specialized high schools from nine to eighteen, with Curtis Sliwa also calling for expansion.
• About 2,500 of more than 60,000 kindergartners are in gifted classes, a cohort that is roughly 70% white or Asian compared with about 35% of overall enrollment.
• Under Mayor Eric Adams, the rising-kindergarten test was replaced by preschool teacher recommendations, after which Black and Latino representation in kindergarten gifted programs more than doubled.
• Conservative and centrist opinion writers criticized Mamdani’s plan as harmful to academic excellence and warned it could drive families from public schools.