WHY WE MUST SAVE G&T
MAYOR Bill de Blasio last month announced his wrongheaded decision to subvert the will of public-school parents and end the Department of Education’s gifted and talented programs. Just as we successfully stopped de Blasio from destroying the city’s specialized high schools, we pledge to fight this new proposal with every fiber of our being.
We’re making this new push because New York City’s schoolchildren — especially students of color — deserve a first-rate publiceducation system, not one that denies opportunity to those who show potential for greatness.
As in the fight over specialized high schools, both parents and facts are on our side. And we have another arrow in our quiver this time around: an incoming mayor who is levelheaded, thoughtful and focused on what’s best for New Yorkers, not on advancing a socalled progressive agenda.
Like us, Mayor-elect Eric Adams is a product of New York public schools. He brings new perspective and hope for those of us who wish to see the city’s gifted and talented programs and specialized high schools expanded. Though undoing the damage done during de Blasio’s administration will take time, there are a few measures Adams can and should take his first year in office.
Even before de Blasio’s latest decision, gifted and talented programs had been eroding. Just 4 percent of the city’s students are in gifted programs. While some Manhattan districts have as many as seven gifted programs, some districts in communities of color in Brooklyn and Queens have just one. Maintaining such an imbalance and overall low number forces countless families to choose between school proximity and accessibility on one hand and the quality of their child’s education on the other. That’s a choice no parent should be forced to make.
Adams should grow the programs back to a scale that serves as many students in as many neighborhoods as possible. One program in each district is nowhere near enough in a city our size.
To give the broadest possible number of students the opportunity to access gifted classes, the city should dramatically expand the number of pilot programs for screening and test preparation. On average, just 15,000 of Gotham’s 65,000 pre-kindergarten students take the gifted and talented entry exam, an unacceptably low rate that reflects the de Blasio administration’s indifference to achieving educational excellence and equity.
Our Education Equity Campaign has spent more than $4 million to help hundreds of students prepare for the specialized high school entrance exam, and those students, most of whom were from underserved communities, were four times more likely to gain admission than their peers. This year we plan to help another 400 students because parents, teachers and experts all agree that test preparation is a key to success.
Test prep works. The city should employ a broad public-education campaign to encourage as many families as possible, especially those in less-advantaged communities, to enroll. When Brooklyn Councilman Robert Cornegy successfully pushed the DOE to bring a test-preparation program to his district, just one child signed up. Adams can fix this by bolstering test-prep marketing and rebuilding public faith in the public-education system by articulating that he values excellence and opportunity.
Finally: To build the best, most equitable public-education system in the world, we should begin by doubling the number of seats in our specialized high schools by erecting new ones, just as State Sen. Leroy Comrie has proposed with legislation in Albany.
To accomplish these priorities, Adams will need a broad grassroots coalition of parents, advocates and experts. The new mayor has an incredible opportunity to address these challenges, and we are eager to stand by him and support him as he does. He is the right mayor at the right time to permanently change public education across the five boroughs.
We love New York City, and we are fully prepared to invest the time and resources necessary to make sure that happens and our city’s public-school students receive an education that is second to none.
We’re encouraged by Mayorelect Adams’ commitment to educational excellence — and we hope that among his first acts will be a vigorous defense of gifted and talented programs.
Ronald Lauder is a philanthropist, business leader and graduate of Bronx Science. Richard Parsons is the former CEO of Time Warner and a graduate of John Adams HS in Queens.