Students Deserve to Learn at their Own Pace

Including the gifted

Tom, IQ 140 Bill, IQ 90

Charismatic communist Zohran Kwame Mamdani has unveiled yet another strategy for dismantling New York City: the elimination of gifted and talented education. It’s a move that fits seamlessly within the progressive left’s broader vision—a world where excellence is suspect, ambition is punished, and everyone is equally impoverished, equally deprived, and minimally educated. With that in mind, CRISIS has revived the following essay, first published in 1997 and now updated.

On the first day of school in 1958, I entered my biology class at Evander Childs high School in the Bronx and sensed something was wrong. The atmosphere was different: noisy, negative and intimidating. The squat, raspy- voiced teacher, Mrs. Niremblatt, announced, “Just because this is a fundamentals class, don’t think it’s all gonna be fun and games.”

I ambled up uncertainly to Mrs. Niremblatt. “Uh, I think I’m supposed to be in honors biology.

She looked at me appraisingly and rasped, “No program changes ‘till next Monday.”

Two days later, with homework neatly in hand, I took my seat in Mrs. Niremblatt’s class. She asked a question; I raised my hand and answered it. She asked another question. Again, I answered it. Several kids looked at me. A girl with frizzy hair rolled her eyes. After class an Elvis wannabe with slicked back black hair said, “Jeez, I didn’t know you was such a brain.”

“I’m not a brain,” I wanted to say. “I just did my homework. Doesn’t everybody do their homework?”

Monday came not a moment too soon. When Mrs. Lombardo, (fortyish, calm, smiling, positive, industrious, well-prepared and lucid – who forever after would be my one of my role models as a teacher) asked a question in honors biology, seventeen hands went up.

“Very good, Shiela,” said Mrs. Lombardo.

When she asked the next question, eiighteen hands went up.

“Very good, Fred.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I was home.

I resurrect this story from my pre-historic past because of an unsettling headline in the August 14 Denver Post: Schools dropping classes for gifted students.

Around the country the practice of ability grouping, offering honors classes, and developing gifted programs is tapering off.

Susan Winebrenner, author of Teaching Gifted Kids in a regular Classroom, argues that unless the gifted kids are together for at least part of the day, “peer pressure will make them normal.” That’s true to some extent, but an even bigger negative is that they are not learning up to their potential.

Why has the trend been away from ability grouping? The answer is often “elitist.” The anti-smart kid crowd argues that when we group the brightest kids together, we are indicating they are smarter than the rest.

What’s wrong with that?

Players who make the football team are better than those who don’t. Ditto for the cheerleading squad, the debate team, the leads in the school play, and the Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards at the end of the season.

Advocates of mixed ability classes argue that the brighter kids can help the others. In some circumstances with some subjects, this can work very well. However, the brighter kids are not in school to teach; they are in school to learn at their own level and their own pace.

Advocates of heterogeneous grouping argue that the brighter kid will serve as role models to their classmates. According to this optimistic projection, low ability, discipline problem Bill will watch high-ability, crowd pleasing Tom and think, “golly, it sure is neat the way Bill does well in school. I’m going to do all my homework and behave in class.”

Not likely.

In reality Bill will be contemptuous, not envious, of Tom. In many cases, Bill will intimidate, not imitate, Tom.

Teachers also argue – and I completely agree -that if the brightest kids are separated from the rest, there will be no sparkplugs to make their regular classes livelier and more interesting.

I understand. I’m a teacher. In my give and take discussions with students, I cannot exaggerate how helpful the three or four sparkplugs are to the classroom dynamics and to everyone’s advantage. The quieter kids listen and learn from class discussion. I agree, but with this caveat: gifted kids are not in school to make the teacher’s job more pleasant or to aid the comprehension of others. If they help, all the better. But they have the right to learn at their own level.

A few years ago, the Education Department reported that, “the United States is squandering one of its most precious resources – the gifts, talents, and high interests of many of its students. In a broad range of intellectual and artistic endeavors, these youngsters are not challenged to do their best work.”

Let’s start challenging our brightest students.

Let’s stop frustrating our slower students. They are important and need our help.

-The Greeley Tribune – November 7, 1997

Update – October 15, 2025

Which brings us back to Zohran Kwame Mamdani who will likely be elected the next mayor of New York City.

“Ultimately,” said Mamdani, “my administration would aim to make sure that every child receives a high-quality early education that nurtures their curiosity and learning.”

Empty words in the quiet streets of cliché City.

Critics of ability grouping have attacked it as racist because honors classes are dominated by white and Asian students. But these decisions are not based on race, they are based on objective evaluations. Besides, eliminating higher level classes would eliminate opportunities for thousands of bright students from low-and-middle income families, who might have benefitted. Mamdani’s wealthy parents sent him to the Bank Street school, whose tuition runs up to $66,000 a year. Very few parents can do that.

“He’s taking away opportunities from families who are not as fortunate as his family,” said Danyela Souza, vice president of Community Education Council 2 in Manhattan, and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate for mayor of New York City, noted that Mamdani did “outstandingly well” at The Bronx High School of Science,’ where students need strong scores on a single-test exam to get in.”

Mamdani benefitted from attending Science, one of the most elite High schools in the country.

Yiatin Chu, co-president of the group, Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, asked, “Why do we think every kid is the same?”

Very. Good. Question.

Answer: because people believe what they want to believe.

Answer: because if every kid is the same, (meaning equal in intelligence, industriousness, attitude, and psychological health) then if they all don’t score at the same level, they come to the flawed conclusion that there must be something wrong with “the system.”

When I was in college, one of the axioms in education classes, repeated over and over again was to “take into account individual differences.”

The educational establishment understood that we are not all the same, we are not equal. We are equal in our God-given rights of life, liberty, and opportunity, and a government that promotes the general welfare and provides for the common defense. But we are not equal in our God-given (genetic) endowments.

If we blind ourselves to the obvious differences between individuals, if we ignore the fact that nature dictates diversity through genetic mixing (and abhorrence of incest), making us all unique, (i.e. the opposite of “the same,”) if we cling to misconceptions and wishful thinking, if we deny reality to fit those misconceptions, then our flawed premises will lead to flawed policies.