Last week, my colleague Catherine Salgado wrote that "New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who received a pricey, private school education, is now looking to restrict a program for gifted and talented students that helps low income children from kindergarten onwards break the cycle of mediocre public education."
As you might imagine, this isn't sitting well with many folks. People like Dr. Camilo Ortiz, a board-certified psychologist in New York, took to social media to tell their own stories. "New York City’s gifted and talented program is what allowed me, an immigrant from a poor family of divorced parents, whose father was in prison, to rise above that and become successful. That this nepo baby is going to take that away is infuriating," he wrote.
New York City’s gifted and talented program is what allowed me, an immigrant from a poor family of divorced parents, whose father was in prison, to rise above that and become successful. That this nepo baby is going to take that away is infuriating. https://t.co/bRSXOSYV8U
— Dr. Camilo Ortiz 👨🏼🎓 (@DrCamiloOrtiz) February 1, 2026
Behind the scenes here at PJ Media, the decision also sparked a big discussion. As it turns out, many of us were the products of gifted and talented programs ourselves.
I was one of them, and I don't say that to brag — I say that because I have no doubt that I would not be who I am today without it. In my little Georgia county, we had something called Program Challenge. Kids who qualified — there were maybe eight to ten from each grade — got to go spend half days, two or three days a week, with a special education teacher. I tested for it in first grade, started that year and continued until high school.
Related: Mamdani Restricts ‘Gifted’ Student Program Despite Parental Advocate Objections
During those classes, we learned things we'd never learn in a regular classroom setting. It was still science, history, math, reading, etc., but it went above and beyond the basic curriculum. We learned biology by dissecting lambs' brains. In middle school, we learned about space by preparing lessons for elementary students and teaching them. We did exciting math and logic puzzles instead of solving monotonous problems. We read books. We had discussions. We took field trips. We even invested in the stock market at one point. When I look back on my years in school, those things are the ones I remember most. Those were the times I wasn't bored and actually learned something.
But what I remember more than what I learned is that it saved me. I hated school as a child. First, it was boring. My mom had already taught me to read when I entered kindergarten, and I soon found that I already knew most everything else they were teaching us in those first few years. Second, I was lazy. But I had no motivation not to be because I was bored to tears. I wanted to be at home reading, playing, pretending, hanging out with my family, exploring outside, and creating. The only time school work ever interested me was when it was creative, and, let's face it, most of it wasn't.
Third, I was socially awkward. I've always been shy and introverted. Starting my school years as the "smart kid" didn't help me make friends. After a while, it led to bullying that forced me to shrink. I stopped speaking up in class. I learned that I couldn't trust my peers, which diminished my social skills even further. I tried to dumb myself down. When I went to those Program Challenge classes, I felt like it was the only time during my school career that I could be me without judgment. I came alive. It scares me to think where I'd be today if I didn't have that outlet.
When my best friend Melissa's parents eventually sent her to private school, I begged my parents to do the same. But they didn't have the money for that.
My point is that every kid doesn't respond to the same boilerplate curriculum that defines public education. It's why I'm a strong advocate for school choice.
Years later, when I was in my twenties and unsure of what I wanted to do with my life, I returned to the same school district as a substitute teacher, and I was shocked to learn that the gifted program as I knew it no longer existed. When I asked another teacher about it, she told me they'd done away with it because it wasn't "fair" to the kids who were not in it. In other words, they were punishing the kids who excelled.
The problem is that research consistently shows that when schools remove gifted programs in the name of equity, the kids they're aiming to help often get hurt the most. Some call it toxic empathy.
In general, the "less fortunate" children — minorities, low-income, immigrants, etc. — are already underrepresented in gifted and talented programs.
Students from the wealthiest 20% of families are six times more likely to be identified as gifted than students from the poorest 20%. Schools in wealthier neighborhoods average a gifted population of 13% compared to 8% in poorer neighborhoods. In 2019, Purdue University found that there were over 3.6 million kids in the United States who should be in gifted programs but aren't. According to Vanderbilt University, black students are only half as likely to be assigned to gifted classes as white students, even when they have similar test scores.
So officials look at numbers like these and think, well, we'll just do away with the gifted programs. The parents of the wealthier children see that and say, okay, if you're going to do that, we'll just take our kids to a private school, hire a tutor, or sign them up for expensive enrichment activities. How is that helping anyone?
Not only is it not helping these young students, but it's not helping our country.
Studies have shown that the cognitive top 5% are far more likely to achieve doctorates, publications, patents, and leadership roles than the general population. And developing gifted programs to tailor to these students' learning needs improves those outcomes even further, increasing "the likelihood of solving multiple (including presently unforeseen) consequential real-world problems in the future that can promote the common good and enhance our standard of living."
It impacts our economy. Research shows that ignoring gifted talent can lead to billions in losses in productivity and long-run GDP losses by entire percentage points.
When stacked up against other wealthy nations, U.S students also rank below average in several subjects, particularly math. In 2022, out of 37 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries, the United Sates ranked number 28 out of 37 in math scores.
Forcing equity by saying if everyone can't be in gifted classes, no one will be in gifted classes will only keep us headed in the wrong direction. It's the educational equivalent of inviting China into our military bases.
As Hannah Frankman Hood wrote for the Daily Economy, "It’s dystopia in utopia’s clothing."
She also points out a common problem that we often see from the left: These types of ideas see children as groups rather than individuals. Going back to New York:
Mamdani’s campaign argues that the GT system is imperfect, because five-year-olds 'should not be subjected to a singular assessment that unfairly separates them right at the beginning of their public school education.'
The 'unfair' verbiage here is important. At the surface, it sounds like it’s referring to the child, but most public criticism of New York’s GT program centers around identity groups. The program has been criticized for contributing to segregation and retrenching biases along racial and socio-economic lines, because wealthier white and Asian students are overrepresented, and black, Hispanic, and poorer households under-represented.
But on the level of the individual student, focusing on that doesn’t help anyone. A child isn’t a fractional part of their identity group, but a little kid who needs to be supported at their level, to have their curiosity nurtured — regardless of their skin color or race or academic level.
If White and Asian students are overrepresented, the 'solution' (if that’s even the government’s problem, which is debatable) isn’t to punish those top-performing students by boring them with backwards-looking instruction in the name of equity.
The real solution is to figure out ways to raise the students who are falling behind.
She concludes:
Demolishing gifted and talented programs doesn’t make the world better. It makes it measurably worse. Even staunch collectivists must acknowledge that the collective benefits from individual achievements. A world where gifted kids are enabled to excel, are given every chance to succeed, to go forth and build things that are valuable and make the world better – that world becomes progressively better, for everyone.
There are other ways to fix the equity problem without punishing gifted students.
One of the most commonly cited is universal testing for all students. Most of the time, students enter these programs through teacher or parent referrals. School choice and competition that leads to higher-quality education all around is another. Our country is working on that, but it's not happening fast enough. Some experts even suggest state policies and laws that protect the needs of gifted students, so that some leftist can't come in and eradicate the programs as is happening in New York.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that as long as we have public education, getting rid of these programs is not it. For some of us, they're all the difference in the world. For our country, they're the path toward continuing world dominance.
