| Top Stories Tracking Myths Debunked Teaching in classes grouped by ability does not hamper progress of less able pupils, study finds The Guardian, 4/28/2026 Teaching pupils in classes grouped by ability improves the results of high-flyers but does not affect the progress of less able children, according to a study that upends decades of debate over mixed-ability education. The research by University College London’s Institute of Education found that secondary school pupils in England with previously strong math performances made slower progress in mixed-attainment classes than when they were taught alongside children with similarly high ability. Crucially, the study backed by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) showed that setting by ability did not “significantly harm the attainment of low-prior-attaining or socioeconomically disadvantaged” pupils. A New Low N.Y.C. Schools Could Lose 153,000 Students in Next Decade, Study Finds NY Times, 5/7/2026 Enrollment in New York City’s public schools could plunge by as many as 153,000 students during the next decade, according to a stark new forecast that highlights the continuing toll of falling birthrates, an aging population and an exodus of families. The city’s public school system, the nation’s largest, has lost more than 123,000 students since the coronavirus pandemic, reflecting a nationwide decline that has exhausted budgets, led to layoffs and shuttered schools. If the outlook for New York schools pans out, the district will have shrunk by more than a quarter during a 15-year period ending in the 2034-35 school year, according to the latest annual projections released by the School Construction Authority, which oversees the design, construction and renovation of the city’s Department of Education buildings. Untouchable Money Pit A Mediocre Public-School Education for Just $40,000 a Pupil: How New York City’s education budget became an untouchable money pit The Atlantic, 4/28/2026 New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, will soon confront an ordeal that might finally knock that trademark smile off his face: balancing the budget. The city is projected to have a $5 billion deficit this year and is required by law to make up for that shortfall by raising revenue, cutting spending, or both. Mamdani has proposed large tax increases paired with modest cuts to city programs. But getting to $5 billion won’t be easy, in part because the biggest portion of the city’s budget is considered untouchable. I refer not to the police department or the transit system, but to the department of education. It costs about $40 billion a year, making up a third of the city’s gargantuan budget. …The problem, actually, is that the student body is small relative to the resources devoted to it, and shrinking fast—but the city and state governments won’t cut education spending accordingly. As long as that’s the case, the city’s financial situation will grow only harder to manage. Advocacy Corner |
| NEW PODCAST EPISODES The Untouchable Money Pit PLACE NYC, 5/7/2026 Politicking at the PEP PLACE NYC, 4/30/2026 Other Headlines The Only Thing Harder Than Getting Into College Is Getting Off the Wait List Wall Street Journal, 5/10/2026 NYC school suspensions down but assaults are up as city embraces woke disciplinary practices NY Post, 5/9/2026 The Era of the Tiger Mom Is Over. Enter the Beta Mom. Wall Street Journal, 5/8/2026 School Choice Win New York Gov. Kathy Hochul intends to opt into federal tax-credit scholarship Chalkbeat, 5/8/2026 New York Gov. Kathy Hochul intends to opt the state into the federal tax-credit scholarship. The announcement represents a major win for supporters of private school choice who have been lobbying Democratic governors to participate in the program. However, Hochul’s office said she intends to review the details before making the decision official. The American Federation for Children, a national school choice advocacy group, said Thursday night that Hochul first made the announcement at a private gathering. South Carolina moves to ban grade floor policies for public schools ABC4 News, 5/6/2026 Carter Case Concerns Private schools, public dollars: A staggering racial gap in NYC special education tuition payments Chalkbeat, 5/6/2026 As Mayor Zohran Mamdani scrambles to plug a multi-billion dollar budget gap, his administration is looking more closely at the money New York City spends on private school tuition for students with disabilities. The payments — which topped $723 million last school year, up more than 300% from a decade earlier, according to the Independent Budget Office — have long generated intense debate about which families are benefitting. Now, according to data the Education Department previously declined to share, officials have revealed a staggering inequity: The vast majority of students who have access to that money are white. 28-year-old woman accused of pretending to be high school student in the Bronx ABC7 NY, 5/5/2026 NYC announces 5 new public schools to open in Queens, the Bronx this fall ABC7 NY, 5/5/2026 Mixed Results Title: Did School Cellphone Bans Work? New Study Finds Mixed Results. NY Times, 5/4/2026 Banning cellphones was supposed to improve many of the problems ailing American education, including distraction, bullying, declining test scores and absenteeism. The idea attracted rare, bipartisan support, and over the past three years, two-thirds of states passed laws restricting cellphones in schools. But the bans have achieved only some of the goals that educators and parents hoped for, at least so far, according to a new study, the largest of its kind, which will be published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. State audit slams NYC schools for lack of student data privacy oversight Chalkbeat, 5/4/2026 As Enrollment Shrinks, a Clash Between the Have- and Have-Not Schools NY Times, 5/3/2026 Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan flunks Dems over terrible schools NY Post, 5/3/2026 Strategizing Admissions The College-Admissions Chess Game Is More Complicated Than Ever The Wall Street Journal, 5/1/2026 For high-school seniors across the country, May 1 is the denouement of a college-admissions chess game that has become more complicated than ever. Friday—the deadline for students to tell colleges their final decisions—marks the culmination of an admissions process whose intensity has accelerated in recent years. Schools are pushing to get commitments sooner, adding new early-admission rounds, and using wait lists aggressively. The tactics force students, in turn, to strategically optimize their odds. Exclusive | NYC parents lay bare the six-figure annual cost of childcare in the city NY Post, 4/30/2026 Title: How A.I. Killed Student Writing (and Revived It) The New York Times, 4/30/2026 How Silicon Valley’s Brightest Parents Broke Their Own School: Tech executives built the ‘it’ school for their gifted kids. Lawsuits, internal feuding and a breakaway followed. Wall Street Journal, 4/30/2026 Breaking the Habit How YouTube Took Over the American Classroom The Wall Street Journal, 4/29/2026 Amy Warren’s “mom siren” went off when her seventh-grader in Wichita, Kan., seemed to know too much about Fortnite, a battling-and-shooting videogame he is barred from playing. When Warren signed into his school Google account, she was aghast: Her son Ben had accessed more than 13,000 YouTube videos during school hours from December 2024 through February 2025, according to viewing data she provided the Journal. NY students face testing delays due to tech issues — for second year in a row NY Post, 4/29/2026 Op-Ed | New York’s senators turn their back on parents and children amNewYork, op-ed by William Henson & Danyela Souza Egorov, 4/29/2026 Discovery Challenged Brooklyn mom sues Mamdani over Asian ‘discrimination’ at elite schools NY Post, 4/28/2026 Zohran Mamdani and city Democrat leaders stand accused of “racially engineering” New York City’s elite public high schools, according to a Brooklyn mom who last week brought a federal lawsuit against the mayor and the Department of Education. Yi Fang Chen, 45, is challenging the admissions process for the city’s nine Specialized High Schools (SHS) after her eldest son was denied admission to Stuyvesant High School, despite scoring in the top five percent on the admissions exam, which he took in November. Graduates Reset Ambitions in Pursuit of First Jobs NY Times, 4/28/2026 New Report Looks to Move Beyond ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers’ in the Math Wars The 74, 4/28/2026 Biased AI AI gives more praise, less criticism to Black students Hechinger Report, 4/27/2026 …Researchers from Stanford University fed 600 middle school essays into four different AI models and asked the models to give writing feedback. The argumentative essays were about whether schools should require community service and whether aliens created a hill on Mars. (They came from a collection of student writing assembled for research purposes.) Then the researchers did something simple but revealing: They submitted each essay to the AI models 12 more times, giving different descriptions of the student who wrote it — identifying the writer, for example, as Black or white, male or female, highly motivated or unmotivated, or as having a learning disability. The feedback shifted. NYC spikes proposals to open AI-focused high school, close Manhattan middle schools Chalkbeat, 4/27/2026 PEP Chair Anti-Screen Bias NYC nixes plan for AI-themed high school after woke backlash to merit-based admissions NY Post, 4/27/2026 The city’s AI school has been terminated. Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels pulled the plug on a Manhattan high school focused on artificial intelligence after backlash from woke activists who claimed its merit-based admissions policy would exacerbate racial inequality. Fierce opposition to the the proposed Next Generation Technology High School included concerns over its focus on AI, but the head of the Panel for Educational Policy said he opposed the school because of its planned “screened” admissions policy. …He claimed screened schools do not promote “equity and equitable access” and that the admission structure will “further exacerbate existing disparities” among students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. NYC moves to ease health department background checks for child care expansion Chalkbeat, 4/24/2026 |