Mayor Eric Adams injected a fresh dose of common sense into the city’s civic landscape by announcing the restoration of Gifted & Talented programs in public schools. Unfortunately, his plan has two deep flaws.

New York educrats are still smarting after they failed to sway Adams to adopt the same thinking that they got former Mayor Bill de Blasio to use to kill G&T — that is, to “improve” student performance and promote “equity,” you must dumb down standards and limit opportunities for faster kids. Instead, Adams won considerable praise from parents for expanding the program.

His heart is clearly in the right place, but the details of his vision are off, as state Sen. John Liu (D-Queens) has insightfully suggested in recent press interviews. 

The first flaw: The only two criteria for qualifying into Adams’ G&T — teachers’ recommendations for pre-kindergarteners and grades for third-graders — are subjective. They may suit teachers’ pets just fine, but as one parent asked: What if the teacher doesn’t like my child? Or, what if the teacher is bigoted against Asians?

Recently, school officials around the country have had to apologize for their comments about Asians. Some may harbor ill will toward kids of other backgrounds, as well.

We need objective measures. We must restore G&T admissions by standardized tests. It’s the only fair way to ensure that kids are, indeed, accepted, free from bias or bigotry. 

The other flaw: Once qualified, under Adams’ plan, students are admitted by lottery. Subjective recommendations and grades already do poorly in identifying fast learners for G&T, but random lotteries have nothing whatsoever to do with G&T qualifications.

And consider: As teachers face mounting pressure from parents and administrators, they’ll qualify more and more students for G&T, so eventually the lottery would become the dominant criterion in G&T admissions. Are Adams and his Department of Education interested in identifying fast learners for G&T — or not? 

The DOE can’t feign ignorance; it already created a farce in “selective” middle and high-school admissions, where meaningless “academic” criteria mask a pure lottery. Now it’s doing something just like that with G&T.

A genuine G&T program that uses valid criteria should admit all qualified students. But no genuine G&T uses lotteries. That defeats the point.

Parents have fought long and hard on behalf of a real G&T program. The Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York led the first parents’ G&T rally against de Blasio’s schoolhouse shenanigans on the steps of City Hall in July 2018. At that rally, City Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) introduced a bill, mirrored by William Colton in the Assembly and Tony Avella in the state Senate, to mandate expanded G&T. 

Their bill would require at least one G&T program in each school district, plus an Honors Program in every school above a certain size. The G&T program would admit by standardized testing, while the Honors Program could use other academic measures the DOE deems valid. 

Neither would use lotteries, and both would run from elementary through middle school, with entry points in each grade; yes, 4-year-olds would be tested (that clearly works, based on the track record of the old G&T program), but so would students at every grade thereafter. That would open up opportunities for students to qualify later.

That’s the kind of G&T program that truly serves the fastest learners throughout the city, at any age and no matter students’ race, background or ZIP code. 

Adams deserves much credit for supporting G&T, boldly standing up to race-baiting educrats with their dumbing-down agenda. He has listened to exasperated families, as they protested in rallies or fled the public schools (120,000-plus in the past five years). Yet his G&T execution is flawed. He should instead implement the Holden/Colton/Avella G&T proposal.

The flaws in his plan show that, as well-intentioned as he may be, his DOE can go off the rails. Yet Adams’ willingness to heed parents’ wishes, as well as his ability to work with others, including at the state level, bode well for the schools. As he seeks to have the state renew mayoral control, the quality of his G&T plans should be a factor.

Wai Wah Chin is charter president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.