Who Loses if Zohran Mamdani Rewrites Gifted Education?

The city of New York, with 8.5 million people, has a $41.2 billion budget for public, K-12 education. To put that in context, that’s more than the GDP of all but 99 countries in the entire world. So when mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani told the New York Times that he wanted to end the gifted and talented program for kindergarteners, all hell broke loose — reopening long-simmering tensions about who, exactly, New York’s schools are designed to serve. 

Supporters of the policy say not much is lost: children can still enter the program in third grade. Critics say that they don’t want their children to be guinea pigs and these programs are most crucial for high-achieving students from Black, Hispanic, and immigrant communities, including many South Asians. The Juggernaut spoke to educators, parents, and students who went through gifted and talented programs or specialized high schools (Reader, as a disclosure, I am an alum of both). Here’s what our reporting found.