It’s a good thing that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has literally no chance of ever becoming president of the United States, because his definition of providing children with a good education means ruining educational opportunities for the middle class.
The long-shot Democratic presidential candidate recently proposed a new plan to make education more fair for hispanic and black Americans — remove all gifted programs from his city’s schools. According to de Blasio, this would make it more fair because gifted programs are inherently racist.
Granted, Mayor de Blasio isn’t the one who came up with the plan. A woke board that the mayor appointed to handle racial disparities in New York’s schools did. As one leading board member recently told news outlets, access to gifted programs and elite educational facilities is determined by a student’s academic prowess. In other words, students with high test scores are afforded better educational opportunities. This is somehow racist because, at present, most of the students in New York City’s gifted programs are white or Asian.
The panel believes that all the students should have the opportunity to learn together, even if this means that students who grasp a subject quickly would be unable to move forward until slower learners catch up.
Mayor de Blasio hasn’t decided if he will scrap the city’s gifted programs. Unfortunately, he has nearly unfettered power to make just about any decision he likes on the matter. The New York City public education system, unlike most education systems in the United States, is run entirely by the mayor’s office. This means that Mayor de Blasio would not be required to seek input or approval from the city council or the state legislature before making a final decision.
However, this doesn’t mean that he would be able to get away with making any decision he likes. The parents of children in gifted programs will naturally be furious if these programs are terminated. Even parents of black and hispanic children, whose children would supposedly benefit, disapprove of the plan. Instead, the board is entirely focused on setting diversity quotas for all the city’s best schools and coming up with ways to prevent wealthy and middle-class parents from abandoning New York City’s public school system in search of good educational opportunities for their children.
Mayor Bill de Blasio seems to be desperate to achieve “equality” in his city. Unfortunately for New York’s residents, “equality” in the mayor’s eyes means that everyone should go without good educational opportunities. The idea that school placement should be determined by skin color rather than test scores is, in itself, racist.
At this point, it’s hard to see how de Blasio has any support for, well, anything. His own city disapproves of his job performance as mayor, and polling for his presidential campaign is abysmal. This is only going to make it worse for him.
