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Top Stories
PLACE NYC Prevails in CEC Elections
Low turnout, a shakeup in District 2, and more: what to know about NYC parent council elections
Chalkbeat, 6/16/2025
…PLACE, which maintains it is focused on rigorous academics and does not want to get involved in national politics, endorsed almost all of the winning candidates, keeping a major presence citywide. The increased engagement in District 2 and some other parts of the city didn’t make a dent in the abysmal voter turnout rates.
…Only 18,158 households voted in the elections this year — a participation rate of 2%. About 19,000 caregivers cast ballots in 2023 and 22,000 did so in 2021.
PLACE-backed candidates won 112 seats citywide (the group also endorsed over 200, the highest of any of the groups that endorsed CEC candidates).
PLACE NYC Media Advisory
Majority of PLACE NYC-Endorsed Candidates Win Seats on NYC’s Community Education Councils
PLACE NYC, 6/17/2025
Holding Them Back
NYC kids are so unchallenged by dumbed-down curriculum they read novels in math class
NY Post, 6/7/2025
Students in New York City’s largest school district are so bored by the DOE’s dumbed-down math curriculum they read novels in class, parents say.
…“D2 middle schools hold them back and make them repeat sixth-grade math, taking them off track to finish geometry in eighth grade,” she told The Post. “They don’t need more puzzles. They need to be accommodated to stay on the track they’re already on.”
Small Class Size Conundrum
Parents Wonder: Where Will NYC Get More Teachers, Space to Make Smaller Classes?
The 74 Million, 5/29/2025
Thanks to a smaller-class-size mandate, by September 2027, New York City classes will be capped at 20 students in kindergarten through third grade, 23 in fourth through eighth grade and 25 in high school.
…A parent in Queens District 24 explained that their school “decided not to go for the extra teacher funding because they would have to get rid of the science, art and music classrooms — which seems so wrong! Something isn’t working here. Why would anyone want to cut art, science or music from schools to get an extra teacher?”
Advocacy Corner
Open Letter for Rigorous Math in District 2
Send this Open Letter for Math Path Support in NYCPS School District 2*
Concerned D2 Parents
*works best from phone
Petition for Queens SHS
Grant a New Building for Queens High School for the Sciences at York College (QHSS)
QHSS School Community
“We, the students, families, staff, and supporters of Queens High School for the Sciences at York College (QHSS) respectfully call attention to the urgent need for improved facilities and a new school building.”
Free NYC School Funding Workshop
IBO School Budget Workshop: July 8, 2025, 12 pm
IBO School Budget Workshop: designed to help you better understand how NYC public schools are funded.
Elections Coverage
District 30: Phil Wong gains momentum in race to replace Holden with wave of endorsements
QNS, 6/16/2025
Our Advice to Voters in a Vexing Race for New York Mayor
NY Times Editorial, 6/16/2025
Keep menace Zohran Mamdani completely off your NYC ballot in the Democratic mayoral primary
NY Post Editorial, 6/14/2025
UFT says it won’t endorse in NYC Democratic mayoral primary
NY Daily News, 6/13/2025
Vote anyone but Mamdani
Queens Chronicle Editorial, 6/12/2025
Jewish leaders condemn John Liu for endorsing Zohran Mamdani for mayor
NY Post, 6/10/2025
Other Headlines
The Dumbest Phone Is Parenting Genius
The Atlantic, 6/17/2025
Blue States Used to Lead in Education. Not Anymore
City Journal, 6/17/2025
Automatic Enrollment Gaining Traction
From algebra to calculus (or stats!): Connecting the math pipeline
Advance, 6/16/2025
A new wave of middle school math policies is poised to reshape who gets access to advanced math options, and when. By automatically placing academically ready middle schoolers into Algebra I by eighth grade, “automatic enrollment” (also called “opt-out”) policies open the door for more students to take higher-level math courses, like calculus or statistics, before high school graduation.
Randi Weingarten Quits D.N.C. Post in Dispute With Chairman
NY Times, 6/15/2025
Math shaken as 200-year-old polynomial rule falls to Geode number discovery
Interesting Engineering, 6/12/2025
NYC school playgrounds would stay open longer under bill expected to pass City Council
Gothamist, 6/11/2025
Spending to Save
Colleges Hope to Stave Off Big Tax Hike by Pledging to Spend More Endowment Cash
Wall Street Journal, 6/6/2025
Some of the nation’s wealthiest universities are hoping to avoid a huge potential tax hike by pitching an alternative plan to Congress: a pledge to spend more of their own money.
…Now, nearly two dozen schools, including many of the wealthiest, support a requirement to distribute 5% of their endowments’ value annually. Backers of the plan include Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Duke and Rice universities, as well as the University of Chicago, according to people familiar with the group.
NYC mayoral candidates weigh in on school safety and security
Chalkbeat, 6/4/2025
Faizan Zaki pulls off dramatic, breathless win at Scripps National Spelling Bee
USA Today, 5/29/2025
Stuck on a school bus for over an hour? NYC students see 35% increase in extreme delays
Gothamist, 5/29/2025
Spotlight on SHSAT
NYC mayoral candidates weigh in on high school admissions and the SHSAT
Chalkbeat, 5/28/2025
The New York City high school process is notoriously complicated.
And a small piece of it that occupies an outsized amount of attention — the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, which is needed to get into eight of the city’s most prestigious schools — is often considered a political third rail.
…Nearly 26,000 students took the SHSAT, with roughly 4,000, or about 16% of test-takers, receiving offers to the city’s eight specialized high schools that base admissions solely on the test.
SFUSD kills controversial grading proposal after backlash
San Francisco Chronicle, 5/28/2025
Mo’ Math, Less Problems
A big reason why students with math anxiety underperform — they just don’t do enough math
Hechinger Report, 5/26/2025
Math anxiety isn’t just about feeling nervous before a math test. It’s been well-known for decades that students who are anxious about math tend to do worse on math tests and in math classes.
But recently, some of us who research math anxiety have started to realize that we may have overlooked a simple yet important reason why students who are anxious about math underperform: They don’t like doing math, and as a result, they don’t do enough of it.
What happens to reading comprehension when students focus on the main idea
Hechinger Report, 5/26/2025
Small Class Size Leads to Loss of Art Room
NYC schools racing to reduce class sizes to spend $400M, hire thousands of new teachers
NY Daily News, 5/25/2025
Under the state’s 2022 class size law, 60% of classrooms must comply next school year with caps between 20 and 25 students, depending on grade level. It’s expected to be the first time schools have to make real changes to abide by the regulation.
…Olympia Kazi, a mom of two students at P.S. 187 in Washington Heights and the chief PTA member on efforts to lower class sizes, said the school is so overcrowded that it could only fit one more teacher — and had to give up an art room to make space available. It’s the second time P.S. 187 has to surrender a key facility: Before the art room was renovated for that purpose, it was a library, to which the school no longer has access.
College Board cancels award program for high-performing Black and Latino students
Hechinger Report, 5/23/2025
See how many new teachers your NYC school is getting to shrink class sizes
Chalkbeat, 5/21/2025
Thousands of NYC families don’t receive 3-K offers to their chosen schools
NY Daily News, 5/20/2025
Losing Interest
Exact moment children ‘stop enjoying school’ revealed in new study
The Independent, 5/19/2025
The moment in a child’s educational journey when they find less enjoyment in going to school to has been revealed by researchers.
A study by the Research Commission on Engagement and Lead Indicators found that pupils’ enjoyment of school drops sharply during their first year of secondary education. This can be seen by a stark decline in reported enjoyment levels commonly appearing between Year 6 and Year 7, when most pupils move to secondary school.
School Districts Plan To Spend Over $35K Per Student, Outpacing Inflation
Empire Center, 5/16/2025
Girls Rule the World
It’s Not Just a Feeling: Data Shows Boys and Young Men Are Falling Behind
NY Times, 5/13/2025
Boys and young men are struggling. Across their lives — in their educational achievement, mental health and transitions to adulthood — there are warning signs that they are falling behind, even as their female peers surge ahead.
In the United States, researchers say several economic and social changes have combined to change boys’ and men’s trajectories. School has changed in ways that favor girls, and work has changed in ways that favor women. Boys are often seen as troublemakers, and men have heard that masculinity is “toxic.”
Young people themselves tend to agree that girls are now at least equal to — and often doing better than — boys. Many young men say they feel unmoored and undervalued, and parents and adults who work with children are worried about boys. It’s not just a feeling: There’s a wealth of data that shows that boys and young men are stagnating.
Parents demand action over NYC school council election dysfunction
Chalkbeat, 5/13/2025
Learning Lost
Has America Given Up on Children’s Learning?
NY Times, 5/10/2025
What happened to learning as a national priority?
For decades, both Republicans and Democrats strove to be seen as champions of student achievement. Politicians believed pushing for stronger reading and math skills wasn’t just a responsibility, it was potentially a winning electoral strategy.
At the moment, though, it seems as though neither party, nor even a single major political figure, is vying to claim that mantle.
New formula for N.Y. State education aid turns out to be bad news for NYC
NY Daily News, 5/9/2025
The end of the math wars?
The Bell Ringer, 5/9/2025
ICYMI
New York’s cellphone ban: Exemptions, enforcement, and costs explained
Chalkbeat, 5/6/2025
There are still many questions about what New York’s recently passed statewide “bell-to-bell” student cellphone ban will look like across New York City’s 1,600 public schools.
Under the policy, announced last week as part of the budget deal between Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state legislature, districts have until August to craft their own plans for how to store phones, enforce the ban, and pay for it.
But some details came into focus Tuesday as state officials released additional information.
Collections Are Coming for Millions of Student-Loan Borrowers
Wall Street Journal, 5/5/2025
New Schools For NYC
Literacy support, HBCU classes, health care careers: 7 new schools coming to NYC
Chalkbeat, 5/5/2025
A new literacy-focused academy in central Brooklyn to help struggling readers. A health care-focused high school partnering with a hospital system in Queens. The city’s first-ever high school to offer early college classes through a historically Black institution.
Those are among the seven new public schools slated to open next year in New York City, part of a multiyear flurry of openings that city officials hope will reinvigorate the system at a time of faltering enrollment.
New York’s School Districts Are Shrinking — But Their Financial Problems are Growing
New York Focus, 5/2/2025