Last week, Zohran Mamdani revealed that, if he wins the mayorship this fall, he will end New York City’s “gifted and talented” program for kindergartners.

This triggered a minor firestorm. Mamdani’s chief mayoral rival, Andrew Cuomo, decried the socialist sensation’s proposal as “destructive.” In Cuomo’s account, when a city eliminates separate classes for its most intellectually sophisticated 5-year-olds, “the one possibility that your child might get a really first-class education in public schools goes with it.”

The Washington Post’s editorial board denounced Mamdani’s position in similar terms, deriding it as a scheme to “hold back gifted students in the name of equity.”

These criticisms are overheated. It is extremely unusual for schools to sort students by ability at the kindergarten level. In abandoning that practice, New York City would not be embracing a novel, communistic approach. To the contrary, Mamdani’s current education plan — which would retain gifted classes beginning in third grade, as well as the city’s selective high schools — entails far more advanced programming than is seen in a typical American school district.

That said, the adamance of Mamdani’s critics is understandable. His announcement came in the context of a much broader — and more consequential — debate within the Democratic Party about education policy.

For decades, some progressives have fought to restrict gifted programs, even at higher grade levels. This movement contends that “tracking” — the practice of sorting students into separate classrooms or schools, on the basis of their academic abilities — deepens racial inequities, while providing little to no benefit to high achievers. These arguments have led some blue states and cities to pare back advanced programming in recent years.

Yet “detracking” efforts have proven controversial. And many Democrats have called on their party to abandon such policies and unequivocally endorse tracking, at least in some grade levels.

On this broader question, I think the Cuomos of the world are largely correct. The Democratic Party can likely advance better educational outcomes for all children — as well as its own political interests — by championing some forms of ability grouping.

Gifted programs tend to produce racial disparities. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re unjust.

Opposition to tracking — both in New York City and beyond — has often centered on the concern that it perpetuates racial injustice. Gifted programs and advanced classes tend to overrepresent white and Asian students, while underrepresenting Black and Hispanic ones.

This story was first featured in The Rebuild.

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In New York City, for example, 42 percent of public school students are Hispanic, 20 percent are Black, 19 percent are Asian, and 16 percent white. Yet white and Asian students account for

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