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NEW YORK, NY – New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's education agenda could be the most concerning of his administration and would have a detrimental impact, a local Republican leader told Fox News Digital, arguing that schools will move away from merit-based achievement during Mamdani's tenure.
Mamdani has proposed phasing out the city's gifted and talented programs for younger students due to inequity concerns, a move that critics say could limit academic opportunities for high-achieving students from low-income families.
“That's my biggest concern,” Forte told Fox News Digital. “The lack of merit and the lack of competitiveness… are going to lead to test scores going down and the quality of our education going down significantly.”
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New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview at City Hall in New York on January 29, 2026. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg)
Forte went on to warn that Mamdani and his appointees would “gut” the entire program.
“He's going to gut the gifted and talented program. He already said it,” he said. “Whoever he put in the Department of Education here in New York is going to destroy the program.”
He said Mamdani would transform the system into one “based on race and racial quotas,” undermining academic equity in schools.
“It will no longer be about merits,” he said. “Is it going to be about what color someone's skin is? What is their race? They're going to make this a system based on racial equity and quotas, and a lottery system. That's no way to have an education. That's no way to educate students.”
But he said this would be counterproductive and that Mamdani's plan would ultimately harm students.
““What this is going to do is lower test scores across the board, it's going to lower expectations across the board, and students are going to suffer for it.”
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As for the new curriculum, he said teachers will end up leading students to “hate their history.”
“We don't know what he will implement as a curriculum,” he said. “We don't know what it's going to do with American history. We don't know what it's going to do with New York history.”
“Will that be standard operating procedure for all schools in New York? Is that what they're going to teach? That they hate their history?” he added.
Shortly after taking office, Mamdani named Kamar Samuels, a former New York City educator and Manhattan superintendent, as the city's next schools chancellor, which many critics took issue with given Samuels' history of trying to dismantle the gifted and talented program.
Teachers' unions and their potentially growing power under Mamdani are another issue Forte raised, saying they will “play a more active role.”
“The teachers union is the most, I don't even want to call them progressive. They are more than that,” he said. “The most socialist and militant organization in the country. That doesn't make sense. That's not good.”
He said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten will be “a very powerful figure in Mamdani's New York.”
“That will be what educates the next generation of Americans and they will not keep their politics out of the classroom,” he added.
Forte also focused on teacher training programs. He said they are shaping how future educators will think and teach.
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Zohran Mamdani announces new members of his team at the Greenpoint branch of the Brooklyn Public Library in Brooklyn, Wednesday, December 17, 2025. (Shawn Inglima/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
“We have to do something with teacher colleges where they teach the next generation of educators how to be Marxists, how to be liberals… and how to indoctrinate the next generation of students.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Mamdani's office and the American Federation of Teachers for comment.
Mamdani found himself in trouble on education last week when he announced that his first veto as mayor was to derail a bipartisan bill aimed at combating anti-Semitism by expanding security safeguards during protests at places of education.
