Proof NYC’s education leaders put kids last

The sad, short tale of what would’ve been an AI-focused high school is all-too-emblematic of why public education keeps getting worse in New York City.

Chancellor Kamar Samuels pulled the plug at the first hint of woke opposition, as race-obsessed activists fumed that opening Next Generation Technology HS would “exacerbate existing disparities” among city students.

Meaning: Selective admissions to a cutting-edge computer-science-focused school would be a boon to the kids who were prepared to do the academic work — and so expose how badly so many K-8 public schools fail low-income black and Hispanic families.

NextGen had attracted a qualified applicant pool of 1,000 students, with 39% Hispanic, 21% black, 20% Asian and 17% white — but critics were sure the final screen would “disadvantage” the non-white, non-Asian ones.

Opponents included Greg Faulkner, who chairs the Panel for Education Policy, who claimed to back the idea “of a school dedicated to advanced technology” and to appreciate “the academic rigor of this model” — but opposed the selective admissions that are transparently necessary to making such school work.

And so no teens get to attend a challenging school, partnered with Carnegie Mellon University and Google and offering a strong math and science curriculum.

Then again, Samuels is an enemy of the Gifted & Talented programs in lower grades that would prepare students for such challenges: As a superintendent on the Upper West Side, he worked to dismantle G&T in the name of “equity.”

This is the chancellor hand-picked by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Bronx Science grad who evidently thinks future generations shouldn’t have as much opportunity as he grew up with.

This nonsense mainly serves to cover the system’s failure to serve the very children Mamdani, Samuels and Faulkner pretend to care about.

No wonder minority families are fleeing Department of Education outlets for public charter schools whose rigorous instruction has seen poor black and Hispanic kids greatly outperform their DOE-“served” peers on every academic assessment.