Adams Commits to Keeping Gifted and Talented, But Leaves Details Unclear - The New York Times

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Eric Adams, the likely next mayor of New York City, rebuked Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan for gifted education. It’s not clear what exactly Mr. Adams will do.

Eric Adams, on the brink of becoming the next mayor of New York City, said Friday he would keep the city’s elementary school gifted and talented program assuming he wins next month’s general election. Mr. Adams’s comments, made during a television appearance, are a clear rebuke to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recent announcement that his administration would move to eliminate the gifted program.

“There’s a new mayor next year, that mayor must evaluate how he’s going to deal with the gifted and talented program,” Mr. Adams, the Democratic nominee for mayor, said on CNN. “He can’t get rid of it until next year,” he added, referring to Mr. de Blasio.

Asked directly whether he would eliminate the gifted program, Mr. Adams replied, “no I would not, I would expand the opportunities for accelerated learning.” Mr. de Blasio has also said his plan would significantly increase the number of children with access to accelerated education.

Mr. de Blasio said last week that he wanted to scrap the current system, including its much-criticized admissions exam for 4-year-olds, and start over with a new program that offers accelerated learning to every child in elementary school.

That plan has outraged some parents whose children have benefited from these programs or who see the programs as a way to keep their children enrolled in the public school system.

But it has been supported by other families and integration activists who believe the program excludes too many children and weakens instruction for children in general education classrooms.

Mr. de Blasio is term limited and must leave office at the end of the year. He is also considering running for governor next year, raising questions about the timing, viability and political implications of his announcement.

Mr. Adams, speaking on CNN on Friday, said that he would assess all children for giftedness. But he also said those assessments would be a part of a broader plan to frequently evaluate all students, not just for academic strengths, but also for dyslexia and other learning disabilities.

Mr. Adams asserted his right to make his own plan; he has the power to implement nearly any change to the nation’s largest school system. That does not mean it will be easy to come up with a plan for the gifted program next year.

There is currently no contract for administering a gifted exam to pre-kindergarteners because the last one was rejected in a surprise decision by the Panel for Educational Policy, the city’s advisory school board. If Mr. Adams wanted to restore that test, he would need approval from the panel, which could again reject the contract.

Mr. Adams would take office on Jan. 1, and students typically take the test beginning in January. Mr. Adams would also have to contend with deep resistance to the exam, even among proponents of gifted education.

The National Association for Gifted Children criticized Mr. de Blasio’s plan to get rid of the current gifted system entirely in a recent statement, but praised his action on the test. The association said it was “supportive of the mayor’s plan to eliminate the one-size-fits-all standardized test to identify gifted students, as it often fails to recognize a significant number of Black, Brown and impoverished gifted students.”

Many parents, including those whose children are enrolled in gifted classes or who support the program, have said the test causes unnecessary anxiety for young children, and has created an arms race that benefits some wealthy parents who can pay for test preparation for their 4-year-olds.

Still, Mr. Adams’s aides said he was considering delaying or altering the test next year, and then seeking broader changes to the entire program the following year. Mr. Adams’s transition team is currently working on a plan for gifted admissions, and will announce more details after the election, according to a person with direct knowledge of the work.

Recent history suggests that it is also possible that Mr. Adams may change his mind on the future of gifted education. As Brooklyn borough president, Mr. Adams was one of the strongest supporters of a plan to eliminate the high-stakes admissions exam for the city’s so-called specialized high schools. Those schools enroll tiny numbers of Black and Latino students, which had infuriated Mr. Adams.

A few weeks after standing alongside Mr. de Blasio to call for an end to the test, Mr. Adams reversed his position, following an outcry from some parents. Mr. Adams now says he wants to keep the exam in place.

Mr. Adams has been clear throughout the campaign that he did not plan to get rid of the gifted and talented program. He has called for an expansion of gifted classes into low-income neighborhoods, a response to the steady decline in gifted offerings in many parts of the city in recent decades.

Researchers who study gifted education, including those who support the programs, have said Adams’s solution is deceptively simple. Just expanding gifted classes without fundamental changes to admissions may do little to diversify the programs, which serve about 16,000 elementary school students out of a total of roughly 1 million students.

About 75 percent of students enrolled in gifted classes are white or Asian-American while the school system overall is 70 percent Black and Latino. Gifted and talented, which puts students on a separate academic track even before they enter the public school system, has exacerbated segregation in the city’s schools.

Mr. Adams acknowledged that problem on Friday, saying, “the gifted and talented program was isolated only to certain communities. That created segregation in our classrooms.”

But the program is also popular with many parents, including the relatively small number of Black and Latino parents whose children are in gifted classrooms, which are considered an alternative to struggling neighborhood schools.

Gifted programs in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods have all but disappeared in many parts of the city after former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg implemented a citywide test-based threshold for admission into gifted classes.

Today, there are nearly twice as many gifted programs in Manhattan’s District 2, one of the city’s whitest and wealthiest districts, as there are in all of the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough. In order to change that dynamic, Mr. Adams would almost certainly have to make big changes to the admissions system.

Mr. de Blasio, who has kept the gifted and talented program in place for nearly his entire tenure, defended his plan during a radio appearance on Friday, though he was not asked about Mr. Adams’s comments. The current system, he said, is “incredibly exclusive and unhelpful.”

Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.

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