June 26, 2025 — During the just-concluded Democratic mayoral primary season, there were several competing and complementary proposals about pre-school (as in 3K and pre-K) and after-school (as in giving kids something to do after 3pm), but there was precious little discussion of what should go on in the classroom, let alone acknowledgment that, as I’ve noted many times before, even leaving aside students who drop out, far too many students find themselves at the end of their K-12 years not ready for college, nor ready for work, and not ready for citizenship.
I had thought more attention would be paid to an issue that is critical to all of us (not to mention the future of our city), but, so far, I’ve been wrong. Perhaps that will change now that general election season is here.
Zohran on K-12
There’s not a lot in his platform. Here’s the whole thing, 171 words (not including the section headings I’ve added).
Section 1
Zohran will ensure our public schools are fully funded with equally distributed resources, strong after-school programs, mental health counselors and nurses, compliant and effective class sizes, and integrated student bodies.Section 2
He will create car-free “School Streets” to prevent traffic fatalities, improve play, and lower pollution for every school, and address student homelessness by expanding the successful Bronx pilot Every Child and Family Is Known.Section 3
Zohran supports an end to mayoral control and envisions a system instead in which parents, students, educators and administrators work together to create the school environments in which students and families will best thrive—strengthening co-governance through the PEP, SLTs, DLTs, and CECs in particular.Section 4
He will also work with the City and State to massively invest in CUNY—whether taxing NYU and Columbia or passing the New Deal for CUNY which he has long championed—to invest in infrastructure, pay staff and faculty a living wage, give free OMNY cards to all students, and make CUNY tuition-free for all students, as it was for 130 years.
There’s some underbrush to clear away. Starting from the bottom, Section 4 does not speak to K-12 policy, but rather to CUNY. As a side note: the alarm about the proposal to make CUNY tuition-free is striking in view of the fact that, until 1975, CUNY was tuition-free. (The platform doesn’t grapple, among other things with whether the extent to which CUNY has been expanded since that time makes sense. Graduation rates at community colleges, for example, are generally abysmal, and, even with the successful Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) program, aren’t great. Shouldn’t non-college options be made more readily available?)
Section 3 has two parts. The first endorses the end of mayoral control, a dubious proposition given the glaring failures of the system of local control that preceded it, and, in any event, not something apt to be positively transformative in the classroom. The second part is the kind of edu-speak that makes one despair.
The only word from the required lingo that is missing is “stakeholders.” Apparently, everyone is going to get together and “create the school environments “in which students and familiies will best thrive.” What those might be are not specified; all we know is “top down” bad; “bottom-up” good. On my scorecard, this section doesn’t count.
Section 2 is more interesting. Personally, I am against traffic fatalities, in favor of improving (and expanding) play, and also in favor of lowering pollution (which has an impact both on student health and cognitive development). Likewise, addressing student homelessness is undeniably important. But nothing in the platform addresses the fact that student homelessness is disproportionately concentrated in some parts of the city, nor the in classroom consequences of that. And this section overall does not focus on what happens in classrooms.
Is this the heart of the in-classroom plan?
Section 1 — 31 words — is worth breaking down still further: Zohran will ensure our public schools
- are fully funded
- with equally distributed resources
- strong after-school programs
- mental health counselors and nurses
- compliant an effective class sizes, and
- integrated student bodies.
Once again, items 3 and 4 don’t grapple with what goes on in the classroom. The efficacy of item 5 (lower class-size) is vigorously debated — though few think the measure is transformative — and raises the question of whether such dollars would be better spent on other interventions, including, for example, intensive tutoring for those who need it most.
What item 1 (full funding) looks like to Mamdani is unclear, but it is now a truism that significant funding has not kept K-12 for many New York City children from being the educational equivalent of a five-alarm fire.
“Equally distributed resources” (item 2) appears to ignore both the fact that the current federal aid formula provides more funds for high-poverty schools, and the fact that, more broadly, different schools may have differing needs.
Item 6 (integrated student bodies) sound good, if vague, but, if he is referring to racial and ethnic integration, the platform is ignoring the key structural driver of the current deeply segregated system (most acutely in elementary schools, but also in middle and districted high schools): extensive residential segregation.
Consistent with now longstanding taboos on the left, the reality of existing and achievement gaps on both a racial and ethnic dimension and on a neighborhood poverty level dimension. Does his vision including pretending that students of wildly differing readiness can all be served in the same classroom? What is to be done for students who are achieving at a very high level?
In short, it simply does not seem like there is a lot of meat on the bones in terms of transforming the in-classroom experience. Nothing about DOE dysfunction. Nothing about the role of poorly performing teachers. Nothing about deconcentrating poverty. Nothing about dealing with attracting experienced teachers to “high need” schools and what that would require. Nothing about the role of parents or students.
Nothing about disparate levels of classroom disruption in different schools and neighborhoods. Nothing about meeting the challenge of the brain-rot that AI tools are already inflicting on adults, college students, and high school students.
Nothing about civic education.
And the above does not even address a variety of hot-button issues: how to translate the desire for “equity” into practice? How much performative woke will there be in schools. Will teachers and administrators be allowed to slant curricular materials in presenting controversial issues or allowed to encourage or organize students to participate in political demonstrations (Israel/Palestine is the best current example of both.) SHSAT?
As I think about that which is missing, among the questions that strike me are: Where’s the socialism? Where’s “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need”?
What about Eric? What about these basic questions?
Four years ago, when Eric Adams was first campaigning for mayor, he was quite outspoken about how many children were being served properly. He is not doing that now. And the current schools chancellor, weirdly, has seemingly escaped all media attention. Adams needs to be pushed to provide an honest scorecard.
But Mamdani needs to acknowledge the full scope and depth of the problems and have a compelling message that includes taking on entrenched interests and other taboo subjects.
Here are some basic questions that should be answered (taken from a broader set of questions I’ve previously published):
1. What is your estimate of the percentage of New York City schoolchildren who either (a) fail to graduate; or (b) if they do graduate, are not ready for college, work, or the responsibilities of citizenship?
2. To what extent are higher performing students getting the enrichment they need? 8. Which of the following best captures your overall evaluation of the New York City public education system? Excellent? Good? Fair? Poor? Fire-alarm fire?
3. If your answer was “fair,” “poor,” or “five-alarm fire,” why has this condition been allowed to persist for so long?
4. What is the role, if any, of neighborhoods of concentrated poverty in contributing to poor outcomes for students? If you believe there is a material role, what should be done?
5. What is the role, if any, of parents who are largely or totally uninvolved in their children’s education in contributing to poor outcomes for students? If you believe there is a material role, what should be done?
6. What is the role, if any, of sub-standard teachers in contributing to poor outcomes for students? If you believe there is a material role, what should be done to change the status quo?
7. There is widespread agreement that quality early childhood education and development is critical for, well, everything. What are the indicia you want to be examined at each level from 3K through third grade to identify children who need — expensive though it is — intensive, individual help and attention?
8. Do you believe it is feasible for an elementary-school teacher to serve the needs of both a child with a first grade reading level and another with a third grade reading level in the same room? What about a child with a first grade reading level and another with a fourth grade reading level? If yes, how do you see that working for the teacher and for each child?
9. How important, if at all, do you believe it is for a child to have a teacher that “looks like” him or her (race/ethnicity matching)?
10. What is your assessment of the performance of the current Chancellor?
We know the results of not grappling with these questions. That disgraceful looking away cannot be allowed to continue.
Note: Adapted from a thread on X.