| Top Stories ICYMI – NYC Schools AI Policy In N.Y.C. Classes, Teachers Can Use A.I. to Plan but Not to Assign Grades NY Times, 3/24/2026 In New York City schools, teachers can use artificial intelligence to generate ideas for lesson plans. They are also encouraged to deploy it for research and drafting some documents. But it should never be used to determine disciplinary action against a student or to assign grades to homework or tests. Those examples of how artificial intelligence should or should not be used by teachers across New York City’s nearly 1,600 public schools are laid out in an initial A.I. playbook released on Tuesday by the school system, which is the country’s largest. The guidance represents the first major step in establishing ground rules and safeguards for artificial intelligence in New York City classrooms, in what is shaping up to be a larger embrace of the technology, including the possible creation of an A.I.-focused high school. Mayor Controlled Mamdani unlikely to get four-year mayoral control of schools, top state lawmaker says Spectrum News, 3/24/2026 After campaigning against mayoral control of city schools as a candidate last year, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is singing a different tune now that he’s running the city — and the school system. The mayor wants lawmakers in Albany to give him a four-year extension of his control over schools, but some legislators are saying not so fast. Reality Bites NYC DOE chancellor admits class size mandate will be ‘very difficult’ to meet NY Post, 3/24/2026 The head of Big Apple public schools admitted Monday it will be “very difficult” for the city to comply with the state’s new class size mandate — despite declining enrollment. …“I think it’s going to be very difficult to get to 80% by September,” Samuels warned, adding that the city’s compliance rate currently stands at 64%. “Are we funding empty seats?” Will NYC school budgets take a hit next year? Education Department officials are mum. Chalkbeat, 3/23/2026 During a City Council hearing about Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed budget for New York City’s public schools, one question came up again and again: Will school budgets take a hit next year? It’s a question Education Department officials repeatedly sidestepped — but the answer may influence the fate of Mamdani’s first budget plan. …“Are we funding empty seats?” asked Queens City Council member Phil Wong. “And is there a long term plan to phase this out — or this is now a permanent policy?” Advocacy Corner |
| NEW PODCAST EPISODES Educational Redlining in NYC PLACE NYC, 3/25/2026 AI in Schools: The Good, Bad, and Ugly PLACE NYC, 3/19/2026 Top 10 Questions From Parents on NYC High School Offers PLACE NYC, 3/12/2026 Sorting Out Specialized High School Enrollment PLACE NYC, 3/5/2026 Pay It Forward – 2026 High School Lottery Admissions Results By Amelie Marian If you’re a parent of an 8th grade child who applied to high school this year, please consider paying it forward and help other parents out by filling out this survey on your results. This form is to crowdsource information from families whose students participated in the HS school match in 2025. The goal is to identify the cutoffs and selectivity of different schools. Results from the 2026 NYC School Admission Lottery Surveys Chancellor Listening Tour Schedule for the chancellor’s listening tour, “Our Schools. Our Future: Conversations with the Chancellor.” Click here for times and locations.Bronx, March 28Staten Island, April 11 Other Headlines San Francisco Killed 8th-Grade Algebra. Now It’s Set to Come Back NY Times, 3/24/2026 A Brief History of San Francisco’s Middle School Algebra Mess Center for Educational Progress, 3/24/2026 “Where’s Your Pass?” New digital hall passes track bathroom breaks, gather data in NYC schools Gothamist, 3/24/2026 Permission to use the bathroom has taken an Orwellian turn at more than 150 New York City public schools, students say. New digital hall passes allow teachers to more closely monitor how long a student is spending in the bathroom — and who else has requested a bathroom break. The tech, called SmartPass, says it allows educators to track where students in the school have gone and for how long, making it easier to “disrupt bathroom meetups.” But some students are up in arms over what they see as an expansion of the surveillance state. How a Family of 3 Lives on $500,000 on the Upper West Side NY Times, 3/23/2026 Why Won’t Mamdani Take On Educational Redlining? Wall Street Journal, op-ed by Derrell Bradford, 3/20/2026 Judge tosses racial bias challenge to Boston’s elite school admissions policy Reuters, 3/19/2026 Topping the Charts Charters call to lift the cap as they dominate public schools on NYC top 100 list for math, reading NY Post, 3/19/2026 Charter schools make up more than half of the top 100 performing public schools in New York City based on results of state math and English exams, a new analysis found. Their domination on the top schools lists, compiled by the Washington Free Beacon, was noteworthy given that the 285 charter schools in the Big Apple make up just 15% of the nearly 1,900 publicly-funded schools under the city Department of Education. The Dumbing Down of Advanced Placement Tests Education Next, 3/18/2026 Mayor Zohran Mamdani will lower speed limits to 15 mph in school zones NY Post, 3/16/2026 Secret NYC neighborhood has kids going to suburban schools but paying cheaper city taxes NY Post, 3/15/2026 New AI High School NYC plans new AI-focused school as rules for the tech are delayed Gothamist, 3/13/2026 A plan to create a new high school in Lower Manhattan dedicated to cutting-edge technology has fueled a debate over how artificial intelligence should be handled in New York City’s public schools. The new selective school called Next Generation Technology High School proposes to prepare students for jobs in cybersecurity, computer science, robotics and advanced math. The education department wrote in its proposal that the school would make students “builders as well as ethical users of AI.” There will be a hearing on April 14 on the new school ahead of a vote by the Panel for Educational Policy. Faster, thinner: Colleges are swiftly trimming a B.A. degree to three years Hechinger Report, 3/11/2026 Could NYC get a 2-year extension to meet class size caps? A key architect of the law is open to it. Chalkbeat, 3/11/2026 Educational Redlining in New York Manhattan Institute, 3/10/2026 Anti-Screen Movement iPads in Kindergarten, YouTube on Breaks: The School Screen-Time Battle NY Times, 3/10/2026 A few months before her daughter started kindergarten, Claire Benoist saw a Facebook post that stunned her. Another family with an incoming kindergartner was wondering if it was true that children in the Croton-Harmon School District, 40 miles north of New York City, receive iPads when they start school. …“I don’t understand how we’ve created a system that fosters this kind of screen time in school,” Ms. Benoist said. There is mounting evidence that excessive screen time can harm young children — contributing to anxiety and depression, delaying social and emotional skills, increasing the likelihood of obesity, straining eyes and decreasing attention spans. Mamdani launches $100M 3-K expansion including NYC’s wealthier neighborhoods NY Daily News, 3/10/2026 MoMath Brings Prime Numbers to a Prime New Location NY Times, 3/8/2026 Shortchanged NYC students spend 20 days less in class than national average — as per-pupil spending skyrockets NY Post, 3/7/2026 New York City kids are set to log 130 fewer hours in the classroom than the national average — the equivalent of 20 lost school days — even as the city shells out more per pupil than any major school district in the country. …New York State law mandates students be in school for a minimum of 180 days. But city students spend only 176 days in school each year, for 6 hours and 20 minutes each day, with city teachers getting four “professional development days” which the state treats as an exception to the 180-day rule. NYC earmarked $400M for dozens of preschools that were never opened: records NY Post, 3/5/2026 High Schools Are Losing the Struggle to Block Pot—Even During Class Wall Street Journal, 3/4/2026 NYC reverses Upper West Side middle school closure after mom’s viral racist remark sparks outcry Chalkbeat, 3/3/2026 “Panic Season” It Was a Tough February for New York’s Fanciest 5-Year-Olds The kindergarten-admissions season was a “bloodbath.” New York Magazine, 3/3/2026 Parents have complained for decades that getting into an elite independent school in Manhattan is harder than getting into Harvard; for the wealthy parents who are competing to spend about $70,000 a year, it’s an infamously complicated and time-intensive game of tutoring and networking that involves preschoolers sitting for assessments and “interviews” just before nap time. But the February 2026 notification week was more brutal than expected for Mark — or at least as brutal as applying to pay $70,000 for kindergarten can be. Former Chancellor Aviles-Ramos takes gig at company doing millions in business with city schools NY Daily News, 3/3/2026 There’s a novel solution to controversy over admission to New York City’s specialized high schools NY Post, op-ed by Wai Wah Chin, 3/1/2026 Parents trust report cards more than test scores — with consequences for kids Hechinger Report, 2/23/2026 Due Process Exponential Costs It’s time to fix a de Blasio era special-ed policy that’s killing NYC’s budget NY Post, op-ed by Jennifer Weber, 2/22/2026 Mayor Zohran Mamdani says New Yorkers face a choice: Tax the wealthy or raise property taxes to close a $5.4 billion budget gap. He left out a third option. “Due process” cases in the Department of Education alone account for $1.54 billion — 10.3% of the entire shortfall. Federal law did not create that bill. City Hall did. When politics comes to the parenting group chat Washington Post, 2/18/2026 For College Applicants, Pressure to Make Summers Count Has Gotten Even Worse Wall Street Journal, 2/16/2026 When school size matters and when it doesn’t Hechinger Report, 2/16/2026 |