Crushing Student Success: Blas’ Gifted & Talented Nix

As a New York City taxpayer and former student, I am deeply disheartened for the youth of our city and confused by Mayor de Blasio’s elimination of the Gifted & Talented program from city schools (“Stolen dreams,” Oct. 9).

New York’s education system should nurture our children’s drive for academic excellence, instead of discouraging it with road blocks.

If we follow the mayor’s logic, we should also eliminate elite programs for sports. Donathan Salkaln

Chelsea

De Blasio claims that having a Gifted & Talented program discriminates against those students who are incapable of or choose not to work at an advanced and accelerated level.

What he’s not considering is that removing this program discriminates against those students who are capable of and opt to work at an advanced and accelerated level.

Unfortunately, in his mind, academic discrimination goes in only one direction. Ed Quinlan

New Hyde Park

By fiat — not by community consensus — de Blasio is ending the public-school system’s Gifted & Talented program.

Proponents support this move to remove “a glaring symbol of segregation.” That’s all it will do — remove a symbol.

It won’t do anything about the reality, which includes the fact that Asian-American students, on average, do much better in school than other groups. Is that

really “segregation”?

Unless you believe Asian-American students are inherently smarter, then obviously there is something to learn here about doing well in city schools.

It may be these children’s own drive for upward mobility. It may be Asian-American culture — a virtuous cycle of community expectations and practices — that powers their children’s school performance.

But whatever it is, de Blasio and his colleagues don’t seem to care.

Todd Pittinsky

Port Jefferson

What an insult to our city, its children and their families, not to mention an utter disrespect for the person who will no doubt be the next mayor — Eric Adams.

I spent an entire career in New York City’s most under-served school districts. I served as an acting principal in two junior high schools that had Gifted & Talented programs.

Without doubt, those programs met the challenges of educating those school districts’ best and brightest, and also served to motivate students who were not in the program to aspire to greater achievement levels than

they had been experiencing.

This is the most disgraceful, despicable strike against public education that I’ve witnessed in my lifetime.

Kenneth Karcinell

Hewlett

Is anyone really surprised that New York City’s boneheaded mayor would eliminate the Gifted & Talented program before he left office?

This is just another way to undercut the education that every child in this city deserves.

Why should a gifted child be brought down to the level of those who refuse to try harder, find the subject matter too difficult or have parents who are unwilling or unable to help them at home? And this man wants to run for governor of New York state? God help us all if he wins. Dick Mills

Bardonia

The real tragedy of de Blasio’s canceling of the Gifted & Talented program is that he was able to do it because the vast majority of voters in a one-party system stayed home on Election Day.

They either thought that opposition to de Blasio was futile or that his boneheaded and dangerous decisions would not impact their lives.

Now, with only months left in his hapless administration, we are seeing bad decisions pile up.

It’s obvious that de Blasio hates success, loves mediocrity and wants education to be dumbed down.

Alice Lemos

Woodside