Zohran Mamdani made news a few weeks ago when he announced that he planned to do away with the city's gifted and talented program for kids, at least the part of it that started in kindergarten. 

Not surprisingly, Mamdani's positions on education seem to align with the rest of his far-left views, which means that he's generally against sorting students by ability and doesn't like standardized tests that are used for admissions in the city's top schools. This is true even though Mamdani himself attended one of these eight schools, the elite Bronx High School of Science.

What I hadn't realized, until today, is that Mamdani has apparently backed away from his longstanding promise to do away with the admissions test for the schools, a sign that he's feeling some pressure to moderate his extremism.

Bronx Science is among eight specialized high schools where a standardized test is the sole admissions criterion. Amid yawning racial gaps in admissions, the exam has come under consistent criticism from lawmakers and activists for creating student bodies that fail to reflect the city’s demographics — an issue that has surfaced in Mr. Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.

For years, Mr. Mamdani called for the abolition of the test, saying he had “personally witnessed just how segregated New York City public schools are” as a student. But in a signal of his pliability ahead of the November election, he has recently backtracked, saying the issue was a “struggle” for him.

The change of heart was announced two months ago in a radio interview with WNYC.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Next topic, school segregation, including the specialized high schools and the SHSAT, the test that determines entry into those schools. Congratulations on being a Bronx Science alum.

Zohran Mamdani: I tried to be a Stuyvesant alum, but I couldn't get in.

Brian Lehrer: You know the stats. This year, for example, out of 781 seats at Stuyvesant, only eight went to Black students in the report that I read. Those stats just came out. In 2022, you told the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, "I support measures to integrate our public schools and fully fund our education system, including the abolition of the SHSAT." This year, you told city and state, "Maintain the SHSAT as the exclusive test for all of the eight schools where it's currently used for admission." Assuming those quotes are accurate, why the change on the SHSAT?

Zohran Mamdani: As you've noted, Brian, I took that test myself. I attended Bronx Science. I graduated and am very much aware of both what those schools offer New Yorkers and the limitations of the manner in which New Yorkers are able to get into those schools. I struggle with it. These statistics that you've cited, and also these are statistics that we've seen in the past, they are jarring.

The reality of this is that, as those opening words you cited say, this is part of a larger crisis of segregation here in our city. We have the most segregated school system in America. What my focus has been over the course of this campaign has been one that ensures every single public school, not just the specialized high schools, get the resources and support that they need to survive, that families can actually afford the city.

Also that we build on the recommendations that we saw, a number of which embodied within the School Diversity Advisory Group, SDAG, within the previous mayoral administration that spoke about the ways that at middle and elementary schools, we can do the hard work of desegregating the system and ensuring that each and every student is actually getting access to a high-quality education.

If that long block of text from Mamdani made your eyes glaze over, that's because he didn't really say anything. The interviewer noticed as well and tried to press Mamdani to be a little bit more real about the reasons for his change in perspective.

Brian Lehrer: One more thing, on the SHSAT, your Democratic primary coalition included many east and southeastern New Yorkers, and the current system is fairly popular in those communities. Is your change, to any degree, a matter of supporting the communities that support you?

Zohran Mamdani: My change is a recognition of the enormity of the task at hand with regards to our school system and the need to focus on how we can empower the most students through the set of recommendations that will transform the conditions that then are the basis of that specialized high school test.

If the first answer was a word salad the second answer is a word side-salad. His answer is vague and he's certainly not offering a reason for the change in policy. He was against the tests and now he wants to leave the test alone even though he finds the outcome "jarring."

In case you're wondering what the outcome is that he dislikes so much, it's elite schools that are about 50% Asian in a city that is only 16% Asian.

The test remains popular with many Asian voters, a key bloc in Mr. Mamdani’s Democratic primary win. More than half of the roughly 4,000 students who were admitted to the specialized schools this year were Asian American, according to city statistics.

Why do Asians succeed at such disproportionate rates? Because their parents emphasize education and their kids work harder than kids from other groups. At least that's how I see it. Leftists like Mamdani usually start bleating about the Model Minority Myth. Someone should ask him about that.

Mamdani is actually right, to the degree you can make any sense of what he's saying. The place to fix this problem is not as kids are testing into elite high schools, it's much earlier. If you want black and Hispanic kids to do better on the test, help them do better in school in the years preceding the test. But that approach is at odds with his decision to drop gifted programs for kindergarteners. Holding back the advanced kids is never going to fix the problem for the kids falling behind.

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