He’s right about the underrepresentation.  But ending gifted programs doesn’t fix inequity; it removes one of the few formal routes to advanced learning. Wealthier families replace it with tutoring and private schools, while low-income parents are left with fewer options. Eliminating public gifted programs doesn’t level the field; it tilts it.

Even more concerning, it narrows the very top of the nation’s talent funnel — exactly the opposite of what should be happening. True equity comes from identifying more talent earlier, broadening how it is identified and ensuring every child has a pathway into demanding coursework.

When I moved my family from Newark to Moorestown, New Jersey, an affluent suburb outside Philadelphia, I saw how wealthier school systems deliberately nurture talent. In kindergarten, children took a standardized test; the top scorers entered gifted programs in first grade. By fourth grade, they were tracked into advanced classes. It was systematic and designed to nurture academic potential.

I’ve seen that kind of cultivation in another field entirely: sports. When I was a middle school principal in Newark, one of my students was an average basketball player in sixth grade. Two years later, scouts were at our games; Dariq Whitehead went on to Duke and then the NBA. Athletics systems are relentless about finding and developing talent early. Academic systems rarely are.

At Thrive Scholars, we identify thousands of high-achieving teens from low-income backgrounds — through a national selection process that looks for exceptional academic performance and persistence — and give them the sustained help they need to excel in rigorous colleges and high-growth careers. These are remarkable young people who made it from kindergarten all the way to high school largely unnoticed. During the summers after their junior and senior years, they spend six weeks taking three hours of calculus and three hours of academic writing each day — the kind of deep preparation wealthier peers often access through private programs. Throughout college, they receive four years of one-on-one career coaching, so academic gains translate into opportunity. 

Some 95% of our scholars graduate from college, many in STEM fields; their average GPA rivals that of their wealthiest peers, and their starting salaries are roughly twice their families’ household income.

But providing academic catch-up and economic mobility, while essential, are not the same as cultivating excellence. Charters and programs like mine help more students reach and finish college, and that is progress. But it is not the same as moving more students into the most influential seats in American life. Look at , elite research labs, federal clerkships, venture capital firms and tenured STEM faculties: they still overwhelmingly come from affluent, largely white pipelines. While getting more low-income students to college is necessary, it isn’t sufficient for diversifying who leads, invents and allocates capital.

You can see the structural gap in our intake. Even exceptional scholars arrive having had uneven access to advanced math and writing. We compress years of enrichment into two pre-college summers. If gifted students were identified and nurtured earlier, far more would enter college ready to lead rather than catch up — and programs like Thrive could help them accelerate instead of remediate.

That’s why the top of the funnel matters. The fewer districts that identify and challenge high-achieving students early, the fewer promising high schoolers organizations like mine will have to work with. Some charter school networks have raised expectations for all students from the earliest grades — but many lack gifted-and-talented programs. In focusing so heavily on bringing everyone to grade level, they fail to push advanced students further. The unintended message is that low-income students of color aren’t gifted — or aren’t in ways that merit cultivation. That isn’t equity; it’s a missed opportunity.

America needs an ecosystem that does both: lift every student and accelerate the most advanced learners. I’m encouraged by newer initiatives like — which finds mathematically gifted students as early as second grade and surrounds them with advanced coursework, mentorship and competitive opportunities —and by established programs like the , which identifies exceptional middle schoolers and supports them through college. These programs show what’s possible when talent discovery is treated as a national priority. The country needs many more like them.

The blueprint already exists. The challenge is scale and scope. Policymakers and education leaders can act now by requiring early talent identification in Title I schools and reporting on advanced achievement, not just proficiency; funding advanced learning from the early grades, including acceleration, enrichment and summer study; and backing partnerships among schools, nonprofits and universities that place promising students in rigorous academic settings early and sustain them through college and into careers.

This is more than an equity issue; it’s about America’s competitiveness. The shows that only about a quarter of eighth-graders are proficient in math, and gaps by race and income remain wide. By , Americans who are now labeled minorities will collectively be the majority. If the nation keeps overlooking talent in the communities growing fastest, it will be choosing decline over dynamism.

The nation’s talent is its greatest asset — but only if it is found and developed wherever it lives. Strength will come not from shrinking advanced opportunities, but from expanding them so every child with potential has a fair chance to reach the top.

For decades, the city has administered an IQ test to 4-year-olds applying to kindergarten. Traditionally, over 5,000 students would qualify for placement in gifted-and-talented programs, but with only about 2,500 seats available, placement would be determined by a combination of test score, residency and lottery.

The district kept no data comparing the ultimate academic results of high-performing students who earned a place in a G&T program versus those who qualified but weren’t lucky enough to receive a seat. So no data was available as to whether G&T education actually provided a value-add to a student’s overall achievement. 

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the test has been scrapped in favor of a more nebulous teacher recommendation process. The number of incoming kindergartners qualifying for G&T has tripled.

When testing was initially canceled in 2021, I advocated for taking it a step further and placing all kindergarten applicants in a G&T lottery:

What if … the district held a lottery for all students in the public school system, without requiring them to opt in? Those who were selected could be offered a seat in an accelerated citywide school, or in a district program. … With this approach, families who never even knew there was an accelerated or enriched school track would have a shot at these options. Based on current school demographics, statistically speaking, more offers would go to Black and Hispanic students, those who qualify for free and reduced-price school lunch and English learners.

While the current selection system doesn’t quite go that far — parents still need to opt in by listing at least one G&T school on their kindergarten application form — it is a step in that direction.

The problem is, no one will know if it’s a step in the right direction without data. Which is why it’s imperative the city immediately begin gathering and comparing the academic results of those students admitted to G&T programs under the old, test-based method versus those who got in via a glorified lottery.

The biggest pushback against lottery assignments is that students admitted without a test might not possess the cognitive abilities to handle advanced work.

In the same 2021 piece, I answered a parent’s query — What if we just don’t know if our kid is capable of accelerated programs? Won’t many more students be in misplaced accelerated classrooms? — with the reassurance that:

What Americans call “gifted and talented” education would be considered general education almost anywhere else in the world. This means any child, if paired with a good teacher — and, since 97% of NYC teachers are deemed either “effective” or “highly effective,” that’s a given — can do the work we currently consider accelerated. According to , in some classes as many as up to . There’s no question that the bar is set way too low for all of America’s kids.

I still believe that. But to make others believe it, concrete evidence that students admitted via lottery can perform at the same level as those admitted via testing is desperately needed. Not as a means for legitimizing lottery admissions, but as proof that all kids can master a higher level of work than what is currently being doled out to them.

New York City is the largest school district in the U.S. Evidence-based practices honed here could then be applied across the country. Once those in charge of setting educational policy have data demonstrating any child can do “accelerated” work, parents and advocates can demand that standards be raised for all city students, followed by raising them for all children in America.

New York’s lottery-based G&T admissions system could prove the key to improving education for every single child. But that cannot happen without research to back it up.

Longitudinal studies are vital, comparing grades and test scores from before the pandemic and after. Breakdowns by race and by socio-economic status and even school by school, in case some instructional practices and/or teachers prove more effective than others, are also critical.

I suspect results will show that any child can do the work currently reserved for “gifted” students. But if I’m wrong, the data should demonstrate that, as well. Whichever side you fall on in the G&T debate, those of us committed to improving education for all students should be pushing for oversight, transparency and, most importantly, facts over conjecture.

The only question is: Will NYC collect this information, and will it then release it? In 2018, the city was forced to admit it had that “showed a strong positive relationship between doing well on the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test and high school academic performance,” because those were not the results district leaders were looking for.

So far, the district is ducking the question of whether it should be providing “accelerated” work to all public school students by not compiling records that might prove all children are capable of it. Whichever side of the G&T debate you fall on, this should be unacceptable.

NYC spent the past three years jerking families around, changing admissions criteria at the last minute. The least parents deserve after all that is for some good to come of it in the form of concrete data on the results of all those modifications. No matter what they show.