Report: Nearly Half of NYC Schools are Failing in Reading and Math
“No other public institution would be permitted to operate in this way.”
A new report from the Success Academy charter school network claims that as many as half of New York City schools are failing in reading and math, despite the city spending more per student than any other city in the country.
Contrast this with the success the state of Arkansas is having in schools while spending far less.
Also, it is worth noting that while Zohran Mamdani backs pretty much all the policies that are causing this problem, the problem began long before he arrived there.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
Close to Half of New York City Schools Are Failing, New Report Says
Nearly half of New York City public schools are failing to get a majority of their students to pass standardized tests measuring math and reading, even though the city is spending about twice as much money on the schools as other districts do, a devastating new report from the Success Academy charter school network says.
Success Academy founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz, a former chair of the New York City Council’s education committee, is billing the report as “profoundly shocking” and “the most complete accounting of school failure in New York City ever assembled.” At 35 pages, with an additional 11 appendices, it tells the grim story of how 409,379 public school students, 43 percent of the city’s total, are in failing schools.
New York is by far the largest public school district in the United States. Failing schools there have far-reaching effects on the workforce, electorate, and business climate in the nation’s largest city.
“These are not schools teetering at the edge of success. They are schools that have been massively failing — persistently, systemically, and at staggering public expense — for years, and in many cases for decades,” says the report, titled “By Any Honest Measure: New York City’s Long Record of School Failure — and the Price We Keep Paying.”
“The cost is enormous. New York City spent $40 billion on public education in 2024 — $36,293 per pupil, double the national average of $17,619,” the report says. “The city is now committed to billions more to fund a class-size mandate that the evidence does not support, while propping up hundreds of vacant schools that drain resources at a premium rate with no return.”
More from the New York Post:
About a third of the 906 schools have appeared on state “accountability” lists since 2012, and some have been designated as failures for decades, the analysis found.
Instead of attacking the 5-alarm fire, the stinging indictment claims city and state policies have only worsened the situation by failing to address the scandal or trying to hide it.
“These are not accidents. They are the product of a system that has chosen, year after year, to protect itself rather than serve its students,” the report, titled, “By Any Honest Measure,” said.
“Imagine a hospital where more than half of patients died from routine procedures. A fire department that failed to respond to more than half its calls. A municipal water utility that delivered contaminated water to more than half its residents, or air traffic controllers whose lack of oversight regularly resulted in massive casualties.
“No other public institution would be permitted to operate in this way.”
The solution to this problem is very simple.
Knock off the DEI, social justice, and gender nonsense, and get back to teaching the basics.
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Comments
“No other public institution would be permitted to operate in this way.”
This is simply untrue. We have plenty of public institutions that have failed completely, and their failures have neither been addressed nor remedied, nor have they been unfunded and a complete waste of taxpayer dollars. For some of these institutions, a 50% success rate would be considered a marked improvement and a laudable goal.
“…and are a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.”
“The solution to this problem is very simple.
Knock off the DEI, social justice, and gender nonsense, and get back to teaching the basics.”
That, along with firing under-performing teachers and administrators, is the real solution.
Unfortunately, if (a BIG IF) Democrats are confronted on this issue, they will simply claim that the solution is to expand school budgets and spend more money.
Why not? It’s the thing they really care about and the scam has worked well for them for at least a hundred years.
That might work if it wasn’t for the fact that most of the teachers are no better than semi-literate.
Expel disruptive students, for a start. The ones who “act black.” Once everybody’s acting white, learning can start.
I;m surprised at the numbers. I would have though 75% of the schools were failing.
Wanna bet they grade on a curve?
Math and English- so what!
It’s their lived emotional feelingness that counts.
Half of NYC schools are failing at reading and math—-
and that was before Mamdani the Great took office!
The problem is simple. It’s the same as always.
The teachers.
And I don’t want to hear the anecdotal OH I KNOW THIS PERSON AND THEY’RE A GOOD TEACHER HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT.
The teacher’s union fights to keep the absolute worst dregs of humanity possible. They fought against any kind of actual testing or competency of teachers, and then fight like fury to keep any of them from being fired for any reason. So actual good teachers leave the public schools because they can’t be surrounded by the insanity and go to private schools.
You have to get rid of the union, get rid of a HUGE number of these bottom of the barrel freak teachers, and then replace them. And it will be incredibly painful.
The absolute minimum requirement for any teacher is the ability to pass the tests of the classes that they are allegedly teaching. We all know how few of the NYC public teachers could do that.
“Nearly half of New York City public schools are failing to get a majority of their students to pass standardized tests measuring math and reading,”
Because I am very proficient in math and English, I can translate this sentence as “Over half of New York public schools get a majority of their students to pass …”
I am shocked that so many New York students are doing well.
Likely because of all the cheating.
So why pay more? Time for choice.
Solution:
Subject matter content (scrap all the social junk – if you teach content you get unity.
Discipline matters – when behavior, not skin tone, is used across the board, while one group may misbehave more, eventually, when discipline is standardized, it will work.
Teachers who can teach content – not waste time on social justice junk – this just divides students.
All by design.
Meanwhile, in Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina …
Never fear. NYC’s city council has found the solution: give themselves an 18% pay raise.
Meanwhile:
The US doesn’t dare go down the road of charging “intellectual neglect” as a crime, for fear they would more than decimate their own public school systems.
” … as many as half of New York City schools are failing in reading and math, …”
That’s a feature, not a bug. The system exists for the benefit of the NYC teachers and their union, not the students. The last thing our government wants: students literate in subjects like history, with the skills to think analytically, and express themselves coherently. With math an physics skills students might become critical of global warming, and green energy.
Nothing new. Even when I attended NYC public schools many decades ago, they were terrible. Many of my teachers were communists. Most of my teachers had a very poor understanding of math and physics. The educational establishment provides the excuse: “We teach students, not subjects. In other words, teachers need not know the subject they teach.
The fix. Outlaw teacher’s unions. Better yet, do away with public education entirely, and replace it with something else. Many students can’t read an analog clock, write a coherent paragraph, know how to write a check, or even where to put a stamp on an envelope. The lack of even the most basic skills seems endless. NYC is simply one of the worst, the whole system throughout the country gets an “F.” Look at an 8th grade test from the 1920’s. Most of our college students couldn’t pass it.
Reading and Math are Racist (TM)
There! Problem solved! You don’t have to have educational excellence if you define excellence as a hideous evil to be avoided at all cost.
Yes but they are excelling in Palestine Studies, intersectionality and antiracism. So there’s that? After all who needs math and reading when you can just ask AI everything, blame the Jews for everything else, get your rent controlled apartment and eventually become mayor of NYC.
“Ignorance is Strength”….. (Orwell was an optimist)
“The solution to this problem is very simple.
Knock off the DEI, social justice, and gender nonsense, and get back to teaching the basics.”
This is sheer nonsense. The solution to this problem is to get the government out of running schools. Our government-run “public” school system is un-American.
Perhaps part of the problem is that people seem comfortable saying that 43% is nearly half.
Someone should tell randy Randi.
Literacy is overrated. When you have a benevolent socialist government, such as NYC, there is no reason why children need to read or do basic math. Government and friendly media folks are happy to tell children (and adults) all they need to know.
Teacher Unions were seized by SJW’s, who now offer lip service to their notional classes but are busy teaching SJW theology and creating more SJW’s. Who only know SJW ideology. This is how they always work, regardless of the institution or company they seize, Until it fails. And they spread out to new targets. Vox Day wrote about this in SJW’s Always Lie, and he was spot on.
“It’s never about the issue, it’s always about the Revolution.”
There is another major issue with USA large city schools.
It is telling some students they are the very best, but when they get to college, they find out the school system lied to them.
They never learned the basics.