Our current chancellor is aggressively campaigning to be continued in her job: the first question should be, are we satisfied with the current education model?
Eric Nadelstern, a former deputy chancellor offers prescient advice,
Mamdani’s biggest mistake at this time would be to focus on a governance system before his administration has come up with a better system of learning for students and teachers. If you start with governance, you never align the management system with the instructional one. In contrast, when you begin by defining a better system of delivery of instructional services and then determining what governance model best supports your instructional vision, then you create an aligned and coherent school system.
Currently we have a triage system, we serve the kids who come to school every day and struggle educating the others.
Only 80% of Black and Hispanic students graduate high school, one in five students fail to graduate, Why? How are we addressing?
Racial/Ethnic Gaps:** White (86.7%), Asian American (91.7%), Latino (79.8%), Black (80.3%).
A staggering percent of students are chronically absent, defined as absent 10% of school days: how are we responding?
- Black students: 41.5%
- Hispanic students: 41.7%
- Low-income students: 39.1%
- White students: 26.2%
Are the current teaching of reading and math strategies effective?
Prior to her appointment as chancellor NYC was doing better than other large city districts. (only “modest” declines!)
- 2024 Results: NYC was one of only four NAEP TUDA districts to be statistically flat (showing no significant change) across all four tested areas (4th and 8th-grade NAEP math and reading) compared to pre-pandemic levels (2019).
- 2022 Results: In eighth-grade reading, NYC was one of 21 districts that had only modest declines, effectively outperforming the country as a whole, which saw significant declines.
Virtually every district improved on the 2025 State tests, with sharp criticism of the accuracy of the scoring methodology
Who do you trust? NAEP or the NYS Standardized tests?
Before the mayor chooses a chancellor and a governance structure we must address the underlying issue: is our current system serving the needs of all of our students?
Poverty Risk Load Indices exist (see here), and perhaps the data should drive services,
When the tool above is sorted from highest average rate of chronic absenteeism to lowest, the connection between chronic absenteeism and the characteristics of deep poverty are clear. But as important: The risk load and risk profiles vary greatly from school to school, even among schools with similar simple poverty-level measures. City efforts to improve support to high-poverty schools should be assigned and designed with a school’s risk load and risk profile in mind. And school leaders and community service providers on the ground should have access to an even wider range of indicators about the student populations they are serving.
About two years ago the DoE assigned an Attendance Compliance Director to each district and created a data collection system, attendance for every student at the end of every school day, identifying soon to be and actual chronic absentee students, the ability to note (i-log) any interactions with parents/guardians/agencies. Every school has an attendance plan and an attendance team, chronic absence families receive texts, designated staff members contact parents: How successful are the efforts, the DoE says, “modest improvements,” not surprisingly the highest poverty districts have the lowest average daily attendance and highest chronic absenteeism.
I’ve been told time and time again, “poverty is not an excuse,” however it is a reality.
If poverty is the underlying issue why not give unrestricted cash payment to poor families
… a lot of studies are finding that cash benefits aren’t really doing much to improve quality of life for the people who get the cash. You can measure various things we think curing poverty ought to improve, like health, education, employment, housing, etc. And unfortunately, these recent studies show that cash benefits aren’t making those indicators look much better.
Can the Mamdani administration address the burden of generational poverty?
The Research Alliance for NYC Schools, housed at the NYU School of Education, around for many years, is tasked with exploring a range of issues, RANYCS collaborates with the Department of Education, see a recent report here, I’m a big fan of the Alliance and suggest the new administration recommend the Alliance explore:
Can we identify potential high school dropouts while they are still in elementary schools and, if so, how can we intervene?
What are the root causes of chronic absenteeism and what interventions does research suggest result in regular school attendance?
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Ed in the Apple: Blogging on the Intersection of Education and Politics Title 