Eliza Shapiro and Jeffery C. Mays

That group announced its main recommendations Tuesday, calling for the city to adopt a far-reaching plan, eliminating most selective admissions and all gifted and talented programs. Both have led to selective schools being filled mostly with white and Asian students, unlike the rest of the public school system, which is largely black and Hispanic.

Now, de Blasio faces one of the biggest decisions of his tenure: whether to follow his task force’s recommendations, which would lead to a sweeping, and likely polarizing, overhaul of the nation's largest public school system.

De Blasio, who prioritized education and made inequality the cornerstone of his political agenda during his campaigns for mayor, has long vowed to reorient the system toward vulnerable children, who he believes have been left behind by previous administrations.

Regardless of what he chooses to do, the mayor’s decision is likely to prompt outrage across the city from all sides.

The plan could appeal to some families in mostly low-income and minority neighborhoods, who believe that selective programs unfairly divert money and attention from neighborhood schools.

But the proposal could force him to expand his education agenda far beyond his initial goals, which were focused on early childhood education and providing more resources to struggling schools. Also, the changes would likely anger many of the tens of thousands of white and Asian parents who have children in gifted and screened schools.

The group recommended that the mayor replace gifted schools with nonselective magnet schools and screened admissions with enrichment programs, available to all students.

“Education is the third rail of politics,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “Is this a task force to nowhere? And we’ve spent time and money, but de Blasio will just run out the clock, like the Eric Garner case where he punted?”

De Blasio earlier Tuesday already seemed to distance himself from the proposal; asked about it during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” he demurred.

“It’s literally a recommendation that just came out,” de Blasio said. He promised to “assess it.”

De Blasio’s lukewarm response to the recommendations of a task force he appointed seemed to indicate how fraught this issue is for the mayor, who has often talked about the need for bold change but has sometimes shied away from potentially disruptive action on thorny issues.

De Blasio’s office said Tuesday evening that he did not have a timeline to make a decision about the report’s recommendations because he was still “digesting” it.

Richard A. Carranza, the city schools chancellor, struck a much more urgent tone than his boss at a news conference Tuesday afternoon to announce the report, which the mayor did not attend.

“These recommendations point to a future where every student has access to a rigorous, inspiring, engaging education,” Carranza said, though he stopped short of endorsing the proposals. “This is not about lowering the bar, it’s about giving all of our students what they need to meet the bar.”

Carranza has consistently been more outspoken in favor of citywide desegregation than the mayor, and their deliberations about the proposal could widen the daylight between the two.

Asked Tuesday whether members of the task force were frustrated that de Blasio, rather than Carranza, would issue a final decision about the report, Hazel Dukes, a co-chairwoman of the group and president of New York’s NAACP State Conference, said the proposals transcended this administration.

“We understand the politics, but this is about our children, regardless of who is the mayor of the city of New York, or who is the chancellor,” said Dukes.

Several likely candidates for mayor in 2021 said they did not support the idea of scrapping the city’s gifted programs, but said they would support other ways to achieve a more equitable racial balance in the city’s selective programs.

“I don’t believe eliminating gifted and talented programs outright is the solution,” said Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker. “We need to revamp admissions to gifted programs on the district level so that they reflect the diversity of our city’s students.”

Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. of the Bronx said, “We should be expanding gifted programs to every community, not eliminating them.”

There were only nine gifted classes in the entire borough of the Bronx last year, compared with eight in Manhattan’s mostly wealthy and white District 2.

Borough President Eric Adams of Brooklyn, and Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, did not take clear positions, and said they wanted to more fully examine the report. Stringer noted he has two children in gifted classes.

One of the most powerful forces in New York City education, the United Federation of Teachers, a union, signaled that it would not support the proposal.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the union, said gifted programs should be “revamped” and access “expanded” across the city.

De Blasio will also have to consider strong support for gifted programs from some black and Hispanic families.

Over the past few years, Robert E. Cornegy Jr., a councilman from Brooklyn, has fought to have gifted programs restored in largely low-income and black neighborhoods, like Bedford-Stuyvesant.

He said he would resist any effort to eliminate gifted programs because “the segregation argument doesn’t equate in communities of color.”

The proposals, Cornegy said, sound like they came from a group of “uber liberals.”

“If you eliminate the gifted and talented program it eliminates the chances of getting into specialized programs and institutions of higher learning,” he said. “Just like there’s a pipeline to prison, there is a pipeline to higher academic success and college.”

The recommendations drew strong reactions — varying from exuberant to outraged — from national experts who study gifted education.

But there was general agreement that the way New York City admits students in gifted and talented programs can be improved.

Children as young as 4-years-old take a standardized exam that some families spend months preparing their children for. The panel recommended that the test be scrapped as a first step toward phasing out the city’s current gifted offerings. After removing the test, the panel said the city should put a moratorium on new gifted programs and not add any new students to existing gifted classes.

“The way that New York City public schools are admitting gifted students into programs is in tension with the goal of integration,” said Allison Roda, a professor of education at Molloy College who has studied the city’s gifted programs for years. “It results in winners and losers in a public education system.”

Mulgrew agreed that the exam should be eliminated.

The test “makes no sense whatsoever,” said Jonathan Plucker, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the National Association for Gifted Children’s board of directors.

Still, Plucker, who is a proponent of gifted education, called the proposal “feel-good equity.”

“You can say every one is being treated the same, but if they are being treated poorly, that’s a horrible form of equity.”

But Maya Wiley, a former counsel to de Blasio and co-chairwoman of the task force that developed the recommendations, said the proposals were based on research about what has worked to improve other school districts.

“We’re not taking away, we’re expanding and adding based on what works rather than what excludes,” she said.

This article originally appeared in

Eliminate Gifted Programs in New York? Momentous Decision for de Blasio

NEW YORK — Two years ago, under pressure from progressive supporters to integrate New York City’s deeply divided school system, Mayor Bill de Blasio set up a task force to develop proposals.

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Eliza Shapiro and Jeffery C. Mays

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Eliminate Gifted Programs in New York? Momentous Decision for de Blasio