{"id":288989,"date":"2026-07-07T11:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/288989\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T11:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T11:00:07","slug":"906-the-damning-figure-that-tells-the-tragic-story-of-nycs-public-school-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/288989\/","title":{"rendered":"906: The damning figure that tells the tragic story of NYC\u2019s public school failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Success Academy charter-school network\u2019s just-released report on New York City public-school failure is so shocking and troubling that even anti-charter-school teachers unions should be shaking in horror.<\/p>\n

The report crunches the numbers on school accountability,\u00a0quality, expenditures and\u00a0standardized test results.<\/p>\n

Its finding? Widespread, pervasive, tragic dysfunction. <\/p>\n

A system rife with grade inflation, under-enrolled schools, no accountability and assorted tricks meant to obscure failure.<\/p>\n

Remember this number: 906. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s how many perennial failure factories, out of 1,600 city schools, are allowed to fester year after year.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

They enroll 409,379 kids, or 43% of all NYC public\u00a0school children.<\/p>\n

Just how bad are they? In 503 of them, the majority of students failed both math\u00a0and reading last year, some for a whole decade.<\/p>\n

Despite massive amounts of extra resources and attempts at reform, these schools have never successfully turned around.<\/p>\n

And bizarrely, the more a school fails, the more categorical federal aid it qualifies for \u2014 which gets siphoned into more money for adults before reaching any students.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The criteria used to identify failing schools \u201cdoes not create accountability,\u201d instead the system \u201ccreates eligibility,\u201d\u00a0charge the authors.<\/p>\n

They flag \u201cthe profound harm done to hundreds\u00a0of thousands of children\u201d and \u201cthe high societal cost of this failure\u201d to properly educate children in poor neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, education funding forever ratchets upward: Mayor Mamdani is handing the Department of Education <\/a>$38.6 billion this year \u2014 an increase of almost $4 billion from last year, despite plummeting enrollment \u2014 with no strings attached.<\/p>\n

Today, the per-student cost has soared to roughly $49,500 per pupil, among this highest in the nation.<\/p>\n

Anyone who cares about education in the city needs to digest every word of this Success Academy analysis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is missing is not money . . . [but] honesty \u2014 honest\u00a0 measurement, honest reporting, and honest consequences when schools\u00a0consistently fail,\u201d conclude the authors.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the takeaway: The New York bureaucracy that runs the system \u2014 officials at DOE, in Albany and in the unions that control them \u2014 intentionally mislead and obscure failures, mostly to protect the adults. And to hell with the kids. <\/p>\n

We can, we must do better: Privately run (but publicly funded) charter schools see far superior results for the same student demographics, and for far less money. <\/p>\n

They\u2019re open with their data, and it\u2019s not just their teachers who face real accountability: Failing charters can, and do, get shut down.<\/p>\n

The solutions are simple: Hold those 906 schools accountable, at long last, and give more parents better options by growing the public charter-school community. <\/p>\n

Start by scrapping the charter cap meant to limit competition for the union-run schools.<\/p>\n

Success Academy has done the city a great service by documenting these schools\u2019 eternal failures. Now it\u2019s time for the city and state to act \u2014 and save the kids of the future before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Success Academy charter-school network\u2019s just-released report on New York City public-school failure is so shocking and troubling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14927,4337,304,16551,9,24,55,54,56,299,209,5271,6926,2585,9955,6927,82],"class_list":["post-288989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-city-budget","tag-department-of-education","tag-editorial","tag-eva-moskowitz","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-opinion","tag-public-schools","tag-schools","tag-state-education-department","tag-students","tag-success-academy","tag-test-scores","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}