Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels speaking at a press conference on Sept. 2, 2026. Gregory P. Mango for NY Post See more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on Google It’s back-to-school time in New York City — and while the names at the top this year have changed, the path to improvement has not.
Last fall, the city Department of Education wasn’t ready.
Student performance was appalling, as the National Assessment of Educational Progress made clear, and the plan to fix it? Absent.
One year later, under a new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and new Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, it’s the same plan.
Official results released in August show that on the state’s 2026 standardized tests for grades 3-8, citywide English Language Arts proficiency fell to 50.3% — a six-point drop from the 56.3% scored in 2025.
Math scores were flat, up a meaningless 0.1 point to 57%.
Third-grade reading cratered 13.8 points, to 44.2%; fifth-grade reading scores fell 13.1 points, to 46.6%.
In class, 65% is passing — but when only half the kids achieve state “proficiency,” the system earns a big F.
And the state’s assessments are inflated when compared to NAEP results, the test that measures performance across the country.
The NAEP show just 29% of NYC eighth-grade students proficient in English and 23% in math — a huge gap compared to the state’s results.
Note to Albany educrats: “Passing” more students by lowering the performance bar doesn’t mean they’re learning.
Chronic absenteeism remains a stubborn problem — more than 30% of students are frequent no-shows.
But fear not: Starting this year, every school will have a “school avoidance liaison.”
You can’t make these terms up, but education experts do.
If you can’t fix truancy, no problem — just call it something else.
“School avoidance” is the current preferred term; expect “school refusal” or “school phobia” to follow.
When an organization can’t deliver a product? Change the name!
That’s what the system as a whole is attempting to do, with an ongoing rebrand of America’s largest school district that began quietly three years ago.
The legal name remains the New York City Department of Education, and so does the copyright at the bottom of each page on its official website.
What sits big at the top of each webpage? NYC Public Schools.
Get used to calling it NYCPS, the better to wish away the failures that came before.
If Shakespeare hadn’t been relegated to dusty shelves, students might have known that a pig by any other name would still smell as swine.
The DOE’s — sorry, NYCPS’s — current “Vision and Mission” declaration reveals one notable change: It now begins with a sentence mentioning “rigorous academics.”
Last year’s Vision and Mission was a master class in erasing the 3 Rs, and that class is still in session.
Its nine sections include three focused on showering recognition on teachers and staff, expressed in a gushing word salad that should embarrass English teachers.
Any variants of the terms “arithmetic,” “reading”, “writing,” “math” or “science” were invisible last year, and remain so today.
Ideology remains everywhere, with buzzwords like CRT and DEI, culturally-responsive-sustaining education and social-emotional learning continuing to shape the educational framework.
“Diversity,” “equity,” “justice,” “restorative,” “marginalized,” “identity,” “bias,” “inequality” and their ilk still flood the mission statement’s pages and links.
That signals another year of cudgeling students constantly with Marxist critical theory until they see everything in terms of oppression and division, and even 1+1=2 appears biased and racist (after all, DOE staff trainings have painted “perfection” and “objectivity” as white supremacy).
The biggest change in form is a new ninth section on artificial intelligence.
It’s 2026, after all — you have to mention AI, even if the text itself, mostly concerning restrictions on AI, doesn’t belong in a mission statement.
Basic academics? Absent. Chronically. Almost totally.
Academic avoidance in action. Academics refusal. Academics phobia.
So back-to-school in New York’s public schools this month will feel familiar.
Performance won’t soar, despite a 2027 budget well over $40 billion while headcount drops below 800,000.
Families are voting with their feet: Homeschooling in NYC has soared by 200%.
Unions, here’s your chance to get the smaller class sizes you want — just support more homeschooling, and parents will take care of it for you.
Bright lights exist, but only in schools that ignore the DOE’s warped “vision and mission.”
The good schools educate our students in academics — basic reading, writing and arithmetic — and don’t make them obsess over oppression by suggestion.
When an institution repeatedly states its priorities and acts accordingly, believe it.
That won’t change until parents demand accountability — and insist on academics first.
Demand it now. Another school year is one too many to waste.
Wai Wah Chin is founding president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York and a Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow.
