The number of students who qualified for the city’s gifted and talented programs in grades K-to-3 plummeted this year, education officials announced Friday.
Only 26 percent of kids who took the entrance test were deemed eligible to attend the elite district and city-wide programs, down from 33 percent last year, the city Department of Education reported.
That’s 9,993 students, or nearly 2,000 fewer than the 11,876 who scored 90 or above on the placement exam last year.
Mayor de Blasio and other critics have long complained the exam excludes too many low-income, minority students and have sought to broaden the admissions criteria.
The latest results show the more affluent school districts — with the highest percentage of white and Asian kids — had the highest pass rate and the poor, minority areas the lowest.
Only 21 students in District 7 in the South Bronx qualified out of 213 tested — just 11 percent.
By comparison, 43 percent of 3,668 students made the cut in Manhattan District 2 that takes in Tribeca, Greenwich Village and the Upper East Side..
And nearly half of the 1,677 students in District 3 on the Upper West Side — 46 percent — passed the test.
“We continue to look at alternative ways to identify gifted students through verbal and non-verbal assessments and promote geographical diversity in these programs,” said DOE spokeswoman Devora Kaye.
The assessment exam includes verbal and nonverbal sections.
Last year, the DOE weighted each section equally; the prior year it gave a 65 percent weight to the non verbal portion and 35 percent to the verbal.
That decision was made by the Bloomberg administration.