Branding disparate racial outcomes as “segregation” is an effective way in Democratic polities to tear down programs some progressives don’t like.
by Matt Welch
Reason.com
As has been telegraphed for years now, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on his way out of office has announced the wind-down of his school system’s Gifted and Talented program.
The move is more symbolic than seismic—in a K-12 system with an estimated (though obfuscated) 900,000 or so students, only around 2,000 kindergartners will be materially affected by the change next fall, and the likely incoming mayor, Eric Adams, has said that he prefers expanding, not euthanizing, the G&T program. Basing any large educational fork in the road on a 4-year-old taking a test has always struck me as bizarre, so if Adams revives gifted tracks, I hope he changes the qualifications.
But at a time when public-school gifted programs across the continent are being dismantled in the name of “equity,” the decision accelerates the progressive policy trend of working backward from concentrations of educational status—whether gifted programs, specialized high schools, or even just institutions with a positive reputation—then measuring the racial composition of students and declaring the results evidence of “segregation” if there are too few black and Latino participants.