| Top Stories G&T Survey Results NYC parents would not enroll kids in public schools if Mamdani’s Education Department ends kindergarten gifted and talented program: survey amNY, 2/3/2026 Nearly half of NYC parents said they will not enroll their children in NYC public schools if the city eliminates the kindergarten gifted and talented (G&T) program, according to a pro-accelerated education survey released on Monday. Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education (PLACE NYC) surveyed 521 parents from the five boroughs to find out how they feel about a possible end to the high-achieving program. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has not been shy about wanting to end the G&T program for kindergarten students. Parents largely opposed (68%) cutting the program, the survey from the academic standards group showed. PLACE NYC was founded in 2019 to oppose efforts to reduce access to accelerated programs and specialized admissions. Mixed Feelings City Council mixed on school governance Queens Chronicle, 2/12/2026Mayoral control, New York City’s public school governance system, faced scrutiny Tuesday as members of the City Council’s Education Committee pressed Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels on whether centralized power has truly delivered for students — and how families can reclaim a stronger voice in the system’s future. …Councilmember Phil Wong (D-Maspeth), a former Community Education Council president, said members often don’t hear back from the city Department of Education after passing resolutions. CECs give parents the opportunity to support and impact education at the district level. “No replies, no follow ups. We felt that our voices are not being heard,” Wong said. New Chair Priorities Eric Dinowitz is City Council’s new education chair. Here’s what he wants to prioritize Chalkbeat, 1/28/2026 The nation’s largest school system is now under new oversight. City Council member Eric Dinowitz, whose district spans the northwest Bronx, was recently tapped to chair the council’s education committee. …Among the committee chair’s most significant powers is to convene oversight hearings that require top Education Department officials to publicly testify on crucial issues facing the city’s schools…Dinowitz’s first oversight hearing next month will focus on mayoral control of the city’s schools, a governance system Mayor Zohran Mamdani criticized during the campaign, but now says he wants to keep. Advocacy Corner |
| Schooled Podcast NEW EPISODE Straight Talk with Senator John Liu PLACE NYC, 2/15/2026 |
Chancellor Listening Tour Schedule for the chancellor’s listening tour, “Our Schools. Our Future: Conversations with the Chancellor.” Click here for times and locations.Manhattan, Feb. 24Brooklyn, Feb. 28Queens, March 7Bronx, March 10Manhattan, March 14Queens, March 17Brooklyn, March 24Bronx, March 28Staten Island, April 11 Other Headlines I’m a Harvard Student. It’s Too Easy to Get an A. The Free Press, 2/13/2026 Mamdani Finds Allies, and Skeptics, in Albany as He Asks for Funding NY Times, 2/11/2026 Elephant in the Room New York City’s Gifted Problem New Yorker, 2/13/2026 …Mamdani would be the fourth consecutive New York mayor to implement major changes to G. & T., which offers accelerated and enriched curricula to qualifying children. Until the mid-two-thousands, a patchwork of G. & T. programs operated all over the city, with widely differing admission criteria. …If Mamdani ends G. & T. for the youngest kids, it may be an acknowledgement that a lottery can’t evaluate whether a child might benefit from an accelerated curriculum. What it can do is divide its young participants into a small group of winners and a much bigger group of losers. Engineer or entrepreneur? NYC parents want career aptitude assessments for high schoolers Chalkbeat, 2/12/2026 Racially Offensive Remarks Made During District 3 School Meeting: Superintendent Responds I Love The Upper West Side, 2/12/2026 Humanities Dilemma The Multibillion-Dollar Foundation That Controls the Humanities The Atlantic, 2/12/2026 In 1964, an influential report identified a disquieting trend in academia. “Increasingly during the past few years,” it began, “concern has been expressed about the condition, in this country, of those fields of intellectual activity generally called the humanities.”…The report recommended that federal funding for the humanities be supplemented by ideologically diverse, nongovernmental donors. “The day must never come when scholars and artists can look only to the federal government for the help they need,” it said. “The notion of any one ‘chosen instrument’ of government in this area must be abhorrent to anyone who cherishes the humanities and realizes that if they are not free they perish.” …Today, no single entity, including the federal government, has a more profound influence on the fiscal health and cultural output of the humanities than the Mellon Foundation. …Under Alexander’s leadership, even as it has cut back on funding for less political projects, Mellon has disbursed enormous sums of money to hyper-liberal academic initiatives at institutions both public and private. How 12th Grade Math & Reading Scores Have Changed Over Time The 74 Million, 2/12/2026 Should top colleges admit students who can’t do basic math? The Argument, 2/12/2026 Write it Out Please Use Script: The case for cursive. Wall Street Journal, 2/12/2026 Cursive is back. The handwriting technique sometimes known as longhand, or script, is once again being taught to a generation that nearly missed it. A new law passed in Pennsylvania on Wednesday requires schools to incorporate cursive handwriting into their curriculums. Last month New Jersey announced that schools will be required to teach cursive to students in third through fifth grades. These states join 25 others that are reviving cursive lessons in public schools after the 2010 Common Core standards dropped it as a national requirement. Smaller Classes: Mamdani Does the Math NY Times, 2/11/2026 Catholic schools closing: Diocese of Brooklyn shuttering seven struggling academies this June, including six in Queens QNS, 2/11/2026 Small Class Size Law Tradeoffs Theater lessons in the cafeteria: Class size law forces tradeoffs for NYC schools Gothamist, 2/11/2026 P.S. 3 in Manhattan highlights the tradeoffs facing the nation’s largest school system as it adjusts to a new law limiting class sizes. Theater teacher Michael DeShields said he’s able to give students at the West Village elementary school much more tailored instruction thanks to the lower head count in some classes. But next year, he expects he’ll lose a dedicated classroom to make room for the smaller classes and might have to haul his materials from room to room — which he called “art on a cart” — or hold classes in a partitioned section of the cafeteria. A Stanford Experiment to Pair 5,000 Singles Has Taken Over Campus Wall Street Journal, 2/10/2026 NYC Private School Tuition Breaks $70,000 Milestone for Fall Bloomberg, 2/9/2026 Inflated Problem Easy A’s, lower pay: Grade inflation’s hidden damage Hechinger Report, 2/9/2026 For more than three decades, grades in American schools and colleges have been going up, up, up. A’s are more common. Failure is rarer than it once was. At the same time, student achievement, as measured by standardized tests like the ACT and NAEP, has stagnated or declined. Grades say students are learning more. Tests say they are not. Why Unemployment is Rising Among Young College Grads Wall Street Journal, op-ed by Allysia Finley, 2/8/2026 The end of college racial quotas is already making America more just NY Post Editorial, 2/7/2026 Balancing Act Smaller N.Y.C. Classes Will Cost Millions. Can Mamdani Pull It Off? NY Times, 2/7/2026 While Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to replicate the experience at P.S. 9 in schools across New York City, making that happen in all corners of the nation’s largest education system will be a formidable task. To pull it off, his administration will need to hire more than 10,000 new educators — it has 75,000 already — even as the state’s new teacher pipeline dries up. And the price tag is steep: Mr. Mamdani needs up to $700 million in additional funding, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office. For Some at Elite Colleges, ‘Extra Time’ Means Gaming the System Wall Street Journal, 2/6/2026 Cutting Back Harvard Proposes Capping A’s to Curb Grade Inflation NY Times, 2/6/2026 Harvard undergraduates would compete for a limited number of A grades in their courses under a faculty committee proposal released Friday meant to tame grade inflation at the Ivy League school. During the last school year, about two-thirds of all undergraduate letter grades were A’s. Under the new proposal, grades of A would be limited to 20 percent of grades in a course, with an allowance of four additional A’s. …Grades of A at Harvard are supposed to be reserved for work of “extraordinary distinction,” but they have exploded to become the majority of grades awarded. NYC school safety agent stabbed while breaking up fight between middle schoolers NY Post, 2/4/2026 New Tax Break for Private-School Scholarships Sets Off Power Struggle Wall Street Journal, 2/4/2026 Proposed move of Upper West Side schools presents early test for new NYC chancellor Gothamist, 2/4/2026 Shifting Admissions Colleges See Major Racial Shifts in Student Enrollment NY Times, 2/3/2026 The Supreme Court ruling in 2023 banning race-conscious college admissions led to declines in Black and Latino admissions at highly selective universities. At many other schools, the opposite occurred, according to a new analysis. Overall, freshmen enrollment of underrepresented minority groups increased by 8 percent at public flagship universities. The analysis, by a nonprofit organization, Class Action, concludes that those schools were among institutions that benefited as a result of higher rejection rates for Black and Hispanic students at the nation’s 50 most selective schools. New York Leads in School Spending—But Not Student Achievement City Journal, 2/3/2026 Teen Arrested, Accused Of Sending Antisemitic Emails At NYC School: Police Patch.com, 2/3/2026 ICYMI Judge rejects bid to raise burden of proof in NYC school suspension hearings Chalkbeat, 2/3/2026 A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit this week that sought to force New York City to use a higher standard of proof before issuing longer-term suspensions. When students are removed from school for more than five days, families have the right to a hearing where a hearing officer weighs the evidence and makes a discipline recommendation. In his decision dismissing the lawsuit on Monday, U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken wrote that the “substantial and competent” evidence standard is constitutionally sufficient. No More Gifted Students in Mamdani’s New York City The Free Press, op-ed by Maud Maron, 2/3/2026 Nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates claim they’re disabled. I’m one of them The Times, 2/2/2026 Why NYC teachers are sour on Hochul and Mamdani’s plans to expand child care NY Post, op-ed by Alina Adams, 2/1/2026 ICYMI The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Films The Atlantic, 1/30/2026 Men are opting out of college. New England’s campuses are missing them Boston Globe, 1/30/2026 “Yes, please” NYC Chancellor Samuels backs Gov. Hochul’s plan to extend mayoral control of schools by 4 years NY Daily News, 1/29/2026 Despite assurances that mayoral control of New York City’s schools would look different under Mayor Mamdani, his chancellor, Kamar Samuels, on Thursday backed Gov. Hochul’s status-quo proposal to extend it without major changes for Mamdani’s full first term in office. …“Please know that while Mayor Mamdani and I support the governor’s proposal, we are committed to democratizing the process to ensure that families and communities have more of a say in how our school system runs,” Samuels said during a hearing in Albany on the governor’s education budget proposal. Instead, the schools chancellor said he would host “community conversations” on mayoral control in each borough as soon as next month. 138 NYC Schools That Are Defying Expectations When it Comes to Reading The 74 Million, 1/29/2026 WATCH: Joint Legislative Public Hearing on 2026 Executive Budget Proposal: Topic Elementary & Secondary Education NY State Legislature, 1/29/2029 One Solution for Too Many A’s? Harvard Considers Giving A+ Grades. NY Times, 1/29/2026 Cheaters Gonna Cheat Students Are Finding New Ways to Cheat on the SAT NY Times, 1/28/2026 Three years ago, after nearly a century of testing on paper, the College Board rolled out a new digital SAT. Students who had long relied on No. 2 pencils to take the exam would instead use their laptops. One advantage, the College Board said, was a reduced chance of cheating, in part because delivering the test online meant the questions would vary for each student. Now, however, worries are growing that the College Board’s security isn’t fail safe. Zohran Mamdani must work with Eric Adams’ school board, at least for now Chalkbeat, 1/27/2026 Beware of the Toxic Mom Group Wall Street Journal, 1/26/2026 Ed tech is profitable. It is also mostly useless The Economist, 1/22/2026 |