Even kindergartners aren’t safe from woke ideology.

During his campaign for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani vowed to phase out the city’s gifted and talented program for elementary school students. Currently, the selective program in the nation’s largest school district begins in kindergarten.

It has faced scrutiny before. In 2021, the mayor at the time, Bill de Blasio, announced a plan to phase out the program. That policy was reversed by his successor, Mayor Eric Adams. Adams expanded the gifted program for kindergarten students and third graders.

The program’s critics don’t claim it is ineffective — just the opposite. In 2021, The New York Times reported that many believe entry into accelerated classes sets children up for future academic success.

The problem, critics argue, is that those gaining entrance into the program have the wrong skin color.“Though 70 percent of the students in the city’s school system are Black and Latino, around 75 percent of the students enrolled in gifted classes are white or Asian American,” the Times reported in 2022.

Worries about students being diverted into various tracks at an early age may be understandable. But that doesn’t negate the success of nurturing high achievers, particularly when students have the opportunity to participate in gifted programs as they progress and gain the necessary skills.

Disparate outcomes aren’t so much the result of discrimination as they are the result of judging students as individuals.

But critical race theory adherents prefer dividing people into ethnic categories and focusing on group outcomes. If there’s a disparity in results based on certain characteristics, such as race, they deem the entire system to be racist.

This false binary ignores the many other factors that influence student achievement.

“Disparities in achievement gaps are largely tied to differences in family stability,” Maud Maron wrote in the Free Press, adding that, “When adjusted for family structure, parental involvement and related factors such as religious engagement, racial gaps in achievement often shrink significantly or disappear.”

Spot the tragic irony of Mamdani’s worldview. The left’s obsession over race keeps it from addressing the factors that would most help African-American and Hispanic students.

This isn’t simply a New York issue. Gifted programs have faced attacks in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 2019, the Clark County School District lowered standards for magnet schools. Students can apply to some schools without meeting academic benchmarks.

A private company would seek to expand initiatives that are working. Progressives instead want to destroy one of public education’s most successful programs.

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