The Gifted Program Squeeze: From Coast to Coast, Excellence Is Being Treated as the Problem

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced plans to phase out gifted and talented programs starting at kindergarten — even as enrollment has already plummeted 15% since 2019, with parents citing ‘lack of rigor’ as the top reason for leaving. Top private schools now charge $75,000+. Wealthy families buy their way out; working-class kids — disproportionately Asian and immigrant — lose their only path to advanced instruction. Same pattern San Francisco saw when SFUSD gutted merit-based admissions at Lowell.

Conservative commentator Helen Andrews argued white families are engaging in ‘educational flight’ from Asian academic success — framing immigrant excellence as a cultural threat rather than something to rise to. Y Combinator’s Ankit Gupta flagged the viral thread, calling it Chinese Exclusion Act rhetoric repackaged. The framing matters: whether it’s conservatives blaming ‘grind culture’ or progressives dismantling gifted programs, the students penalized are disproportionately Asian American.