Vivian Wang and Eliza Shapiro

The task force recommended the elimination of gifted and talented programs in the city, as well as a reconfiguration of middle and high school admissions practices.

If those proposals are approved by de Blasio, families at every grade level would apply to schools differently, and the district would be much less reliant on standardized exams.

The report sent shock waves through the city, drawing strong reactions from local elected officials, education experts and integration activists.

Here’s a breakdown of what the report calls for, what could change if the mayor approves the recommendations and why gifted programs and selective schools are under the microscope.

New York has a deeply divided school system

For years, lawmakers in deeply blue, proudly progressive New York City have grappled with a seemingly intractable problem: Its schools are among the most segregated in the nation.

Starting as early as kindergarten, an array of criteria — test scores, geography, interviews and more — sorts students into divergent tracks, ostensibly by ability. But the selection process has also led to gaping racial disparities.

Last year, nearly 75 percent of the roughly 16,000 students enrolled in elementary school gifted classes were white or Asian, even though black and Hispanic students make up nearly 70 percent of the city’s public school population as a whole.

De Blasio has made undoing segregation a central goal of his tenure. That promise has taken on urgency in recent months, after the city’s most elite high schools admitted single-digit numbers of black students, setting off a broader national discourse about racism and structural inequality.

The current admissions system has excluded some children

Broadly speaking, there are two types of selective academic programs in New York City. At the elementary school level, students can qualify for the Department of Education’s gifted and talented programs by taking a single standardized exam, starting in kindergarten.

After elementary school, students can compete for a spot at so-called screened middle or high schools, which use criteria such as test scores, interviews, auditions and attendance records to determine admission. In total, about a quarter of the city’s middle and high schools screen students for admission — more than any other city in the country.

All of the processes are seen as closely linked. “Because G&amp;T; programs are seen as a pipeline to the city’s best middle and high schools, the stakes of the admissions processes appear very high,” the report said, using the initials for gifted and talented programs.

Further increasing pressure on students is the widespread use of private — and often expensive — tutoring.

Students as young as 4 years old find themselves preparing for a single exam that can determine their educational futures.

While middle-class families often make full use of test preparation resources, low-income parents unaware of or unable to afford tutoring may find their children shut out of the city’s highest-performing schools.

The task force’s plan would virtually erase the current high-stakes admissions system

The report, written by a few dozen education experts and community leaders, calls for ending the city’s current crop of elementary school gifted and talented programs, eliminating most screened admissions for middle school and reducing screens for high school admissions.

Under the plan, the city would stop creating any new gifted and talented programs in elementary schools and not steer more students into existing ones; those existing programs would be phased out after current students graduated.

Middle schools would be prohibited from screening students by grades, test scores, interviews, auditions or other metrics such as behavior, lateness and attendance. High schools would also no longer use lateness, attendance or geography to select students.

The city would use magnet schools and enrichment programs instead

While the report offers some ideas to replace the current selective programs, it is conspicuously light on details.

According to the recommendations, middle and high schools would devise new admissions criteria in order to make their student bodies reflective of the demographics of their surrounding communities.

Instead of sorting high-performing students into separate classrooms or schools, neighborhood school districts would instead develop individually tailored enrichment programs within so-called “mixed ability classrooms.”

But the report did not lay out exactly what those enrichment programs would look like. That would be left to the Department of Education, although the panel pointed to Washington, D.C., and other cities that have revamped gifted offerings.

The city would also create magnet schools to attract students by interests rather than skill level. But the details of those schools, too, were left to city officials. The report specified only that the new schools should not have admissions based solely on academic prerequisites.

New York has not shown the same enthusiasm for magnet schools as other big cities. Other cities have relied on magnets as desegregation tools, even though the programs have become more selective in some places over time and have even worsened inequality in some cases — including Houston, where the schools chancellor, Richard Carranza, was superintendent before coming to New York.

The panel wants New York to keep its expanded Advanced Placement courses; science and technology-focused schools; and selective programs that create diverse student bodies or provide opportunities to vulnerable populations, including students with disabilities, students learning English and students in temporary housing.

The plan already faces strong opposition from some corners

The power to implement the report’s recommendations rests almost entirely with de Blasio. The city’s Department of Education, which the mayor controls, could single-handedly eliminate elementary school gifted and talented programs, and end screening at most middle and high schools.

But proposals to change the city’s educational system are among the most explosive of political issues — a fact made abundantly clear Tuesday, as de Blasio, who is running for president, dodged questions about the plan amid denunciations by powerful stakeholders, including the city’s teachers union.

“It’s literally a recommendation that just came out,” the mayor said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” He added: “I’m going to assess it.”

Even some ardent critics of the current admissions system rejected the recommendations, calling instead for the expansion of gifted and talented programs in low-income neighborhoods or a reassessment of admissions criteria in existing programs.

What de Blasio does not control is admission to the three most prestigious screened high schools, which regularly send students to Ivy League universities.

Those schools — Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech and Bronx Science — are required by state law to use one exam to determine admission. This year, Stuyvesant offered admission to only seven black students out of 895 seats.

Legislators in Albany have shown virtually no appetite for changing the criteria for admission into the specialized high schools. Still, some critics of the mayor have accused him of using Albany’s inaction as an excuse not to act on the 1,800 schools in the district that he does control.

This article originally appeared in

The Plan to Scrap New York's Gifted Programs: 5 Takeaways

NEW YORK — On Tuesday, a task force created by Mayor Bill de Blasio to find ways to desegregate New York City’s school system released a proposal to completely overhaul admission practices in the nation’s largest school district.

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Vivian Wang and Eliza Shapiro

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The Plan to Scrap New York's Gifted Programs: 5 Takeaways