Tag Archives: NYC Public Schools

Why So Many U.S. High School Graduates Can’t Tell the Difference Between Democratic Socialism and Communism

Posted on by

The 2025 NYC mayoral race taught us professional educators, especially those of us who work in high schools, a great deal about the tremendous amount of civic, historical, political science, and economic illiteracy that exists among our graduates. It also revealed how our current curriculum designs for these social science subjects fail to meet the standard of helping future citizen-voters become critical thinkers in the face of polarization and the purposeful misuse of political vocabulary.

The recent widespread invocation of these two very different political ideologies—often conflated in public discourse—suggests that we must examine how well we are doing as public educators in what has become a less-than-stellar, almost “after-thought” approach to civics education.

A visit (and I have) to any high school in Europe, or to any nation with a parliamentary political system of government, reveals that students (and the citizens) possess a far deeper understanding of the critical differences between political ideologies. This is largely because, in those systems, the ideologies present themselves as distinct political parties with formal representation in the national deliberative body of government.

In these parliamentary systems, the Communist Party and the Democratic Socialist Party (along with others such as the Greens, Christian Democrats, Labour, Conservative, and the growing “Far Right” or neo-Fascist parties) hold very different ideas about how government should function. Yet, from time to time, they may align, disentangle, and then realign with one another to form coalitions around specific issues or bills of importance to their members or principles—but they always maintain their own distinct political identities.

I can imagine my professional education colleagues in places like Germany, England, and Italy cringing when they hear Mr. Mamdani being referred to as both a Democratic Socialist and a Communist in the same sentence—as would members of those European parties, who are often bitterly opposed to each other. And if, after observing the European parliamentary systems, one is still unclear that these two political ideologies are profoundly different, then here’s a final lesson: put a Communist and a Democratic Socialist in a room (it sounds like the opening line of a joke) and offer just one word to start the conversation—“Trotsky”—then watch the sparks fly.

The U.S. Two-Party System and the Weaponization of Political Language
In the United States, with its non-parliamentary two-party dominant system, “political affiliation identification” becomes far less clear. Both of the major parties—the Republican (GOP) and the Democratic (DNC)—embrace a capitalist economic framework, and so political labeling becomes extremely murky. This confusion allows language itself to be weaponized. We often hear the GOP accusing someone like Joe Biden of advancing “left-wing” or “Green Party” policies—claims that, of course, couldn’t be further from the truth. Meanwhile, Republicans rarely describe themselves as pro-wealthy, unrestricted-capitalist, right-wing, or (in some policy areas) neo-fascist—which would, in fact, be more accurate descriptors. They have mastered the art of throwing political shade without ever being properly shaded in return by the DNC.

But here lies the deeper problem: both parties are, in essence, pro-capitalist entities primarily serving the interests of the rich—especially their donors. The difference is that the DNC prefers to practice its politics of economic exploitation with a kinder face and softer language, advocating for safety-net-lite measures such as modest consumer protections, less painfully exploitative labor laws, Social Security, food assistance for the working poor, and healthcare programs like the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

Civics Ignorance: The Educational Roots of Political Language Misdirection

Now, in terms of “civics ignorance” I’m not referring here to the Vice-President J.D. Vances or the Congressional Representative Elise Stefaniks of the world. Whether or not one agrees with their political ideologies, they are well-educated individuals—even as they work tirelessly to undermine the very fine university systems that educated them. They were educated intellectually, though not necessarily in the moral or ethical sense of graduating with a compassion-guided compass. Their conflation of these two extremely different political ideologies—Democratic Socialism and Communism—is, in their case, a cynical feigning of ignorance. It is a manipulative, opportunistic strategy designed to exploit the very real and frightening ignorance that is widespread among the American citizenry.

The Vance/Stefanik approach to conflation, then, is deliberately tactical. It differs markedly from that of the low-information or intellectually deficient Americans who genuinely believe that Democratic Socialism and Communism are the same thing. And it is on this latter group that I wish to focus.
Before I proceed, I must (in full disclosure) begin with a professional confession. As a former high school principal, I must ask myself: how did we in the profession—especially high school educators—get this critical history, civics, and political-science learning objectives so profoundly wrong for so many people? We cannot hide behind that tired and useless excuse: “We taught the lesson effectively; the students just didn’t learn it effectively.” Wrong!

As many master teachers know, and as countless school administrators have made clear during post-lesson observation conferences, whenever that excuse appears, openly or subtly, the truth must be stated: there is no space between the successful quality of the lesson’s instructional methods and the successful quality of students learning the conceptual and behavioral objectives of that lesson.
In other words, the students didn’t learn effectively because they weren’t taught effectively. If Americans cannot distinguish between different political systems, the fault lies—at least in large part—with us, the public educators.

The News Media Reports—But Schools Must Teach

The traditional news media has been mildly helpful in obligatorily repeating the “Mr. Mamdani is not a communist” correction phrase in many of its news stories, commentaries, and editorials. But this is not one of those “blame the media” moments. The news media’s primary objective is to report and inform, not to remediate civic illiteracy. The deeper problem lies elsewhere.
The primary work of properly educating Americans to read, interpret, and analytically understand those very news articles is the sole responsibility of K–12 educators. It is a sacred charge that cannot be outsourced, deferred, or delegated to any other institution in the nation.

Who Knew? Stephen A. Smith and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Political Economists!

I knew we were in trouble when Stephen A. Smith and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson became the explaining voices for capitalism. (There are, of course, many distinguished professional Black political economists available.) Yet, instead of drawing from great intellectual resources such as Eric Williams’s Capitalism and Slavery, Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, or Manning Marable’s How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, too many turn to celebrity sound bites for their understanding of complex economic theory and political science power dynamics.

Right Now, American Education Is the Problem, but It Is Also the Solution

There are several cross-curricular corrective actions we as professional educators must take—especially at the high school level, to help our students become discerning civic actors in their future adult voting lives. (In other words: no student should leave high school without knowing these things.)

Moral Foundations:
Students must leave us enriched and ennobled with what I call the Major Moral C’s: Moral Conviction, Moral Consistency, and Moral Courage. This means they must learn not to say, “These are not genocidal acts if my side is inflicting the acts.” Every person on the planet must be fully entitled to enjoy their personhood.

Complexity and Contradiction:
Students must understand that two things—sometimes seemingly contradictory—can be true at the same time. For example, our national immigration system is a mess, but unkind cruelty is neither the best nor the most effective operational policy for fixing bad border policies. The opposite of bad actions is good actions, not more bad actions.

Recognizing Shared Humanity:
Students must understand that there are people beyond our own “tribe” who deserve to live their best lives—those who practice religions different from ours, or hold political, cultural, and social beliefs we may not share. What we all share is our humanity, and that descriptive distinction must always be recognized, honored, and protected.

The Virtue of Learning:
Ignorance must never be proudly proclaimed as a virtue. Learning, and continually wanting to learn more about the world beyond one’s own ideas and convictions, is a virtue every twelfth grader should carry with them as they walk across the graduation stage into their next stage of life.

Critical and Metacognitive Thinking:
We must improve and enhance students’ metacognitive (thinking about their own thinking) and analytical skills, helping them move from the limbic (instinctive, emotional) brain system toward higher-order reasoning when facing societal, political, economic, or social problems. And, more importantly, we must also ask: what should all of us do, as thoughtful and compassionate human beings, when we confront the discomfort that accompanies inevitable change?

For example, importing 7,000 white South Africans into the U.S. won’t solve the so-called “Great White Replacement” anxiety fueling parts of the MAGA movement for two important reasons. First, there’s no guarantee that the younger and future generations of those immigrants won’t become more politically progressive and open-minded on questions of race. Second, demographic trends take on lives of their own; so even if every one of those 7,000 South Africans joined the MAGA movement, that number is far too small to alter the birthrate trajectory that underlies the movement’s existential “white replacement” fear of America’s unstoppable shift toward becoming a majority People of Color nation. No discriminatory immigration restriction, no importation of white populations, and no brutal and cruel mass deportation raids will reverse that trend.

Honest History Education:
We must approach the teaching of history as a historiographical science—beginning with truth and facts as guiding curricular standards and evaluative rubrics, and applying deconstructive, inductive, and deductive reasoning techniques. One of history’s primary objectives is to help students learn from past human mistakes. That critical learning cannot occur if we hide or sugarcoat the egregious human errors of the past.

Honesty in teaching history is essential: slavery happened; Japanese internment camps did exist. Glossing over such atrocities or their long-term effects will not erase them from history—ironically, it will make us more likely to repeat them. Seeing the modern rise of neo-Nazi and far-right movements in Germany, France, and England, one would think that the painful lessons of the 1940s had been learned. Apparently, not.

Early and Intentional Civics Education:
We must begin earlier—well before high school—to take seriously the responsibility of producing a well-informed citizenry through thoughtful, intentional civics curricula.
The reason so many of Mr. Mamdani’s critics (including some college-educated individuals on social media—I’ll spare their alma maters the embarrassment by not naming them) can say things like, “He will turn NYC into a Socialist/Communist city” or “a Muslim city,” is because they don’t understand how government actually works. Some on the right know better, but many others, not politically aligned, sincerely believe these falsehoods.
These misconceptions reveal the deep weakness of our high school civics programs—particularly in explaining the structure, powers, and separation of powers among the U.S., New York State, and New York City governments, as well as the statutory authority of their respective legislative and executive agencies and officeholders. And this doesn’t even touch on the powerful non-governmental centers of influence—labor unions, finance, real estate, and the entertainment industry—that all shape governmental policy in very complex but important ways.

In what warped, make-believe universe can a NYC mayor act independently of these entrenched, well-situated, and powerfully positioned players? One of the first lessons you learn as a principal—and learn again as a superintendent—is that most of the “political power capital” you’re said to possess is actually spent on selling ideas: convincing, encouraging, inspiring, and inviting people to follow your leadership. The myth of the all-powerful civil servant executive is just that—a myth. Anyone who took a good NYC high school civics class (and stayed awake) should know better.

Truth Over Propaganda:
Finally, while every nation’s educational system contains some propagandistic elements, teaching inaccuracies—or outright falsehoods—does not prepare students to build a nation or engage intelligently with a globally interdependent world. There must be intellectual space for pedagogical honesty—a space that does not mirror the North Korean model of indoctrination.

We must teach students to ask: What is capitalism as an economic, political, and social system? What is its real relationship to democracy—and what exactly is democracy? How do we explain the “socialist” quality-of-life programs in some Scandinavian countries that seem to work well for their citizens? How many socialized programs must exist before a democracy becomes “socialist”?

If Nicolás Maduro (President of Venezuela) is a “socialist,” in what ways is he or his government practicing socialism? How is Cuba different from the People’s Republic of China, and how are both different from Russia or Vietnam? High school students shouldn’t have to take (and most won’t) an Advanced Placement history, political science, or economics course to wrestle with these essential questions.

The reason a U.S. senator from Alabama—or any prominent figure—can claim that a NYC mayor could somehow turn the city into a “one-religion” place is that such claims only work as put-downs when a large audience shares that same bigoted ignorance.

If Democracy Is to Survive, Public Education Must Be Its Defender

The essential work of democracy has always begun, and will always begin, in the classroom. Whether that classroom sits in a modest rural schoolhouse or a massive urban high school, it is where a nation teaches its young how to think—not what to think, but how to discern, question, and reason morally.

If we as educators fail to equip our students with the intellectual tools to distinguish truth from falsehood, ideology from principle, and propaganda from evidence, then we should not be surprised when demagogues, entertainment celebrities, and political opportunists step in to do our job for us. Civic ignorance is not a natural condition—it is a curriculum outcome.

It is not the media’s responsibility, nor Hollywood’s, nor the politicians’. It is ours. A core principle of the American public education system is the understanding that democracy cannot defend itself; it must be defended by citizens who are educated enough to recognize when democracy is under attack, and moral enough to act when it is.

If the next generation of American students leaves our classrooms unable to tell the difference between Democratic Socialism and Communism, between populism and proto-fascist demagoguery, between patriotism and ethnonationalism, then the republic itself is at grave risk—not because our students are ignorant, but because we, the professional educators, failed to teach them otherwise.

So yes, right now American education is the problem. But it is also, if we are bold and honest enough to face it, the only solution.

Michael A. Johnson is a former New York City public school teacher, principal, and superintendent (Community School District 29, Queens), a district STEM education program director, and a former adjunct college professor of science education. He is the author of two books on school leadership, designed to prepare the next generation of Assistant Principals and Principals. Johnson writes frequently on educational equity, leadership ethics, and real systemic reform in public education.

Mr. Mamdani Must Wage a Two-Front Battle for New York City’s Forgotten Students

Posted on by

Both CNN and MSNBC owe Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) a guest-appearance fee for her excellent, instant post-election analysis of New York City’s mayoral campaign. She said something essential that none of the “in-house” regular commentators would—or perhaps could—say. Paraphrasing her point: Mr. Mamdani’s win, unlike any other Democratic candidate’s victory that evening, was achieved even as he was forced to fight on two fronts throughout his entire campaign.

There’s a very good reason military strategists have long advised against waging a two-front war, and the history of global conflicts supports their caution. The new mayor, Mr. Mamdani, indeed faced fierce opposition from right-wing Republican forces who barely concealed their anti-Islamic and racial animus toward him. But the other front—the one more adept at disguising its Islamophobia and bigotry—was made up of the familiar figures every organizational leader recognizes: the passive-aggressive insiders. In this case, they were Democratic Party leaders, politicians, and candidates who refused to endorse Mr. Mamdani, even though he had won the primary fair and square.

Some offered slow, tepid, and perfunctory endorsements—what can only be described as “wimpy support.” This double-standard hypocrisy, the idea that “voting blue is good for you, but not always for me,” is a betrayal all too familiar to African Americans, including Brother Kwame Mamdani himself.

Now, I am convinced that those two anti-Zohran antagonistic forces—though severely wounded on November 4—are far from dead. In fact, I believe they are already regrouping and developing plans to ensure that Mr. Mamdani’s tenure as mayor ends in failure.

I know what you’re thinking: “But many of those oppositional people are ‘liberal,’ professional Democrats, and people of color.” It doesn’t matter. I learned that lesson painfully during my tenure as superintendent of Community School District 29 in Queens (CSD29Q) from 2000 to 2003.

It didn’t matter that we sought only to do what was right and good for our citizens—in our case, to dramatically and sustainably raise academic achievement in every school, for every student cohort across the district. It didn’t matter that our intentions were noble or our goals equitable. An alliance quickly formed among those wounded by my appointment. They were injured, yes—but not dead. And soon, I found myself fighting on two fronts: one against white racist indifference, and the other against Black leaders, many of them elected officials, who wanted to restore the corrupted status quo that had necessitated my assignment to the district in the first place.

One of the NYCDOE administrators assigned to brief me on the district compassionately went off script, warning me—something I would later hear echoed by several senior officials—that Community School District 29 in Queens (CSD29Q) was “pound for pound, the most underachieving district in the city, given its large Black middle-class homeownership and strong, often two-parent working families.”

When I moved to Southeast Queens, I quickly understood that assertion. On my block in Cambria Heights, every Black family lived in a well-kept home, with both parents often holding solid city, state, or federal civil service jobs. So, the natural and haunting question emerged: Why aren’t these children doing better academically?

Over the next three years, I learned that my block was no exception. The pattern repeated itself across the district. Complaining about socio-economic obstacles—accurate as such complaints may be—has unfortunately risen to an art form in my profession. But as I often reminded the CSD29Q staff: “If we can’t get these Southeast Queens children to succeed academically, then what are we doing as public educators?”

So, like me, Mr. Mamdani will need to continue waging a two-front war if he truly intends to serve and protect our most disinherited and disenfranchised New York City citizens. But unlike me, I hope he remains in office long enough to enact irreversible positive change.

We will soon know whether the new mayor truly plans to fight for our most educationally vulnerable children—those condemned by their zip codes to live in a learning-rich city that too often provides them with an inferior, second-class education.

Much will depend on whom Mr. Mamdani appoints as Schools Chancellor. Will it be someone from the “go-along-to-get-along” leadership side of the table—a professional educator fluent in bold rhetorical flourishes and the latest slogan-filled pedagogical sound bites, yet firmly committed to maintaining the educational status quo?

If so, thousands of Black and Latino children, and their families, will remain trapped—denied the beauty of generational-leap improvement, which is one of the true moral missions of public education. And if that happens, the new mayor may as well keep Rikers Island open, because he will surely need the space.

In the end, every leader who dares to confront entrenched systems of inequity must learn to fight on two fronts: against the obvious adversaries outside the gates and the quieter, more insidious forces within.

Mr. Mamdani’s true test will not be in his campaign slogans or early policy speeches, but in his willingness to stand firm when the comfortable, the connected, and the complicit push back. If he can hold that line—fighting both battles with integrity, courage, and love for those children whom this city too easily forgets—then perhaps New York will finally live up to its promise of being not just a great city, but an educationally just one.

Michael A. Johnson is a former New York City public school teacher, principal, and superintendent (Community School District 29, Queens), a district STEM education program director, and a former adjunct college professor of science education. He is the author of two books on school leadership, designed to prepare the next generation of Assistant Principals and Principals. Johnson writes frequently on educational equity, leadership ethics, and real systemic reform in public education.

“Should the Mayor Control N.Y.C. Schools? Mamdani and Cuomo Don’t Agree.” Oddly, They’re Both Wrong.

Posted on by

“Should the Mayor Control N.Y.C. Schools? Mamdani and Cuomo Don’t Agree.” Oddly, They’re Both Wrong.

By Michael A. Johnson

As much as I appreciate The New York Times covering an important public education topic (“Should the Mayor Control N.Y.C. Schools? Mamdani and Cuomo Don’t Agree,” NYT, 10/28/25), this is one of those moments when I fall back on the warnings of my great high school geometry teacher, Mr. Weinberger, who used to remind us: “If you start off with the wrong algorithmic premise, you will absolutely end up with the wrong answer.”

In this case, the see-sawing governance performance show starring centralization vs. decentralization actors has never significantly shifted the academic performance gap calculus in a New York City public school system made up of a majority of Black and Latino students. And when you look at the most intellectually vibrant, inspiring, and empowering schools and programs in the city, those same “majority” students remain a chronically underrepresented minority.

So many years after the passing of our nation’s signature civil rights laws, the condition of Black and Latino students’ access to intellectually enriching programs is still dismal. Specialized high school admission numbers (even with an expanded number of schools) have dramatically dropped in comparison to my 1960s high school days. Those higher numbers from the ’60s are even more startling when you consider that many students didn’t apply to specialized high schools because you could actually receive a quality education at your neighborhood high school—so taking the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) wasn’t such a big deal.

We need to talk about why the pedagogically and strategically deficient governance question is always asked, and answered, in the same narrow and ineffective ways. Part of the problem is deciding whether public education exists to serve its true purpose as a generational progress multiplier, or as an adult jobs-and-consultants payday system. In some schools, districts, and zip codes, the latter clearly prevails. In others, fewer in number, providing a quality education to secure the next generation’s future success remains the real mission.

And lest anyone think this corruption of purpose is solely the work of “evil, powerful White New Yorkers,” let me assure you—there are plenty of us former NYC Black and Latino superintendents (with the scars to prove it) who can share community school board corruption stories you’d swear could only come from the pen of a fiction writer.

But the system’s terrible response to this dysfunction—“removing politics” from education by concentrating political control in the hands of the city’s chief political officer (the mayor)—was doomed from the start. Again, channeling my high school geometry teacher: why did anyone think that would work? Beyond a few incremental “gains,” statistically lifted by the performance of the system’s most advantaged students, mayoral control has never produced sustained, equitable academic excellence.

Now we’re entertaining decentralization 2.0 (or is it 3.0, 4.0, or 5.0?). Yet in this latest iteration, there’s still no mention of—or respect for—the highly impactful activists in any school’s success: the educational supervisors, assistant principals, and principals. As a former superintendent, I learned firsthand the incredible power of school building leadership to drive rapid, significant, and sustained academic improvement.

Black and Latino parents: don’t be hoodwinked, bamboozled, or led astray by voices that sound progressive but will lead your children down the same regressive, underachieving path—regardless of the governance structure. If “teachers and parents” are allegedly given more policymaking power, then no elected or appointed official is responsible for student learning. The teachers will keep their jobs; the consultants will keep their contracts; and the only losers will be Black and Latino families—whose children will continue to feed our criminal justice system.

At some point, the ignored and disenfranchised parents of New York City must demand a first-loyalty-to-children pledge from every elected official who receives their votes. That pledge must compel those officials to do—statutorily and structurally—“whatever is necessary,” including revisiting labor and governance laws, to ensure that every child receives a quality education every year of their school life.
A good place to start is by ending the governance merry-go-round that always leaves the same children on the bottom rung. We need an accountable system that looks nothing like “mayoral control,” powerless educational panels, or faux “parent-teacher” governance models.

Michael A. Johnson is a former NYC teacher, principal, superintendent, and adjunct professor of education. He is the author of two books on school-building leadership: Report to the Principal’s Office: Tools for Building Successful High School Administrative Leadership and Report from the Principal’s Office: A 200-Day Inspirational and Aspirational School Leadership Journal.

Ending Kindergarten Gifted & Talented Screenings Is Right—But It’s a Superficial Political Fix for a Complicated Pedagogical Problem

Posted on by

Ending Kindergarten Gifted & Talented Screenings Is Right—But It’s a Superficial Political Fix for a Complicated Pedagogical Problem

Over the last few weeks, I’ve received numerous emails and calls from across the country asking for my professional opinion on one of New York City’s mayoral candidates’ promises to eliminate the NYCDOE’s Gifted & Talented (G&T) program—starting with kindergarten.

I can’t think of another question I’ve been asked in recent years that has produced more shocked reactions to my answer. I suppose people assumed, based on what they believe about my educational philosophy—or perhaps what they’ve read in media coverage like The New York Times’ “Scores Count” article or the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) journal piece on how my elementary and middle school students passed New York State high school math and science Regents exams. Folks can’t imagine that I would strongly oppose eliminating early G&T screenings.

It’s true that I’ve always advocated for the good educational purposes of standardized exams—as tools to strengthen students’ conceptual, competitive, and performance skills based on learning standards, and as instruments to inform instruction. But I’ve also been a consistent opponent of bad, and sometimes downright deleterious, assessment tools, especially those that confirm and perpetuate unfair advantages.

And this is the place where I usually get into trouble: I will always call out the hypocrisy of public education systems and elected officials. NYC’s Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT), is just as educationally and morally problematic as the kindergarten G&T screening test, largely because it measures the quality of a student’s exposure to consistent, high-quality instruction year after year, something over which a child has absolutely no control.

When I earned my Master’s in Supervision and Administration from Bank Street College, I occasionally observed classes at the Bank Street School (the alma mater of one of the mayoral candidates). I spoke with administrators, teachers, and students. The Bank Street School’s entire educational program could, in many ways, be considered a G&T-based pedagogy. Its methodologies, rooted in Deweyan progressive education, emphasized critical thinking, problem-posing, and problem-solving skills. And yes, the staff also helped students build strong conceptual and technical test-taking skills. Their approach was designed to draw out each child’s inherent gifts and talents while preparing them to perform well on standardized assessments like the SHSAT.

My position, as some have miscategorized, is not about loving standardized exams, but as the old Brooklyn saying goes, my position is simple: “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.” And if these are the “gate-keeping” rules of the game, then let’s help the children of disenfranchisement master them.

“Change the joke and slip the yoke.” —Ralph Ellison

I have spent my professional life warning Black and Latino parents, while actively empowering their children educationally, about the twin dangers of liberal paternalism and conservative degradation. They sound and act differently, yet both lead us through endless cycles of centralization and decentralization, one failed and very expensive “closing-the-gap” initiative after another, and still these public-school systems continue to fail the same majority cohort of Black and Brown students.

This current gifted-and-talented debate (one of many over the years) will be no different, because elected officials either lack the knowledge or the will to create public schools where every child, regardless of the school they attend, receives the high-quality education they deserve. Anything less is campaign-commercial talk.

Even if a mayor and their chancellor abolished every K–8 G&T program in the city, the political elephant in the room remains: learning quality inequity would simply reorganize itself by zip code and schools. Some children would still receive G&T-level experiences, while others—trapped in the wrong zip codes and schools—would continue receiving an inferior education.

So let’s explore the educational, developmental, psychological, and social variables that distort or invalidate any attempt to administer or interpret a kindergarten G&T admissions exam accurately. And let’s also examine where both the “ban it” and “keep it” camps fall pedagogically and courageously short; for neither addresses how to effectively support children entering kindergarten who arrive at vastly different points along the pre-kindergarten learning spectrum—regardless of race or ethnicity.

The real question is: how do we design ethical early childhood education screenings, not for exclusionary labeling, but to guide instructional models that embraces “multiple intelligences” and adopts a more male-child-friendly, sound-developmental approach to early childhood teaching and learning?

High-Stakes Admission Testing for Four- and Five-Year-Olds—What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Well, everything.

The Ethical Flaws: Human Developmental and Racially Prejudicial Problems

Applying a high-stakes admissions exam to 4- or 5-year-olds presumes that “giftedness” is fixed at birth—and therefore measurable at that very early stage of human development. Worse, it assumes that giftedness is not equally distributed among the “being born” population. This idea, even if put forward by an atheist assumes that God is favoring some children to be giftedly great in this world and others to be something less-than-great. Or, that nature (for those atheistically inclined), in a random casino-gambling way, somehow placed “giftedness” in the heads of a select group of babies whose parents just happen to be mostly white, wealthy, and well-educated.

Both positions are morally and scientifically indefensible. Children at this age are in a state of rapid and constant neurodevelopmental fluctuation—their attention spans vary widely depending on external stimuli, the language of adults, emotional responses, and their willingness to please authority figures. Their test performance can swing unpredictably based on comfort with the examiner, prior exposure to testing, or even what they ate that morning. These variables are profoundly shaped by home environment, nutrition, access to enrichment, and socio-economic conditions—not by innate “giftedness.”

And let’s be honest: if high school principals like me have trouble convincing some teenagers, especially boys, to treat high-stakes exams as life-changing events, what hope do we have of convincing 4- or 5-year-olds? (Full-disclosure) When my own daughter took the G&T test, we didn’t even tell her what it was. We made up a story about why a friendly stranger wanted to ask her questions. Fortunately, she was a confident graduate of Brooklyn’s Little Sun People preschool, where she had spent years engaging with adults who weren’t her parents and learning in a rich, kindergarten-like environment. On test day, she went into full “please-the-adults” performance mode.

The truth, which educators know but rarely tell the public (perhaps out of fear of further lowering public confidence), is that despite the great work of developmental psychologists like Bruner, Vygotsky, and Piaget, there is still much about the brain and mind we do not know—certainly not enough to justify excluding children from future opportunities at such an early formative age.

What if the G&T exam is not measuring giftedness at all—but rather, a child’s unearned access to “parent-pushing power,” privileged affluence, early literacy exposure, and parental educational attainment? If so, this exam is not assessing brilliance—it’s auditing privilege, parental personalities and family priorities.

As a 40+ year public educator, I’ve quietly observed how veteran teachers, often unconsciously, change their tone and demeanor when two well-educated, well-spoken Black or Latino parents walk into the room. Professional educators, including test administrators, are human. My daughter’s charm, vocabulary, and background won the day—but the truth is her environment gave her enormous advantages: nightly reading, exposure to museums, modern ballet classes, a home library, and an academically rich preschool experience. Meanwhile, countless other children—whose parents, for reasons of work, awareness, or distrust, did not even bring them for G&T testing—were automatically excluded from consideration.

How About This: Let Professional Educators Make Educational Decisions

And finally, the primary reason this critical early childhood decision should be taken out of the hands of all politicians, regardless of party or ideology, and placed in the not-seeking-votes hands of dedicated professional educators. Public education fails large segments of families not because parents don’t care or because children lack ability, but because a high-quality educational product is not equally distributed across the system.

In schools like Bank Street, Stuyvesant, and Bronx Science, there is zero tolerance for instructional incompetence. The open secret of public education is that in too many schools, often those serving our poorest students, there is too much teacher turnover, too many inexperienced teachers for school administrators to coach effectively, and not enough of a critical mass of veteran, very-good to mastery-level teachers capable of sustaining high levels of instructional excellence, that matches high expectations of student capabilities.

And those “very good to mastery-level” teachers, and their school leaders, must operate from what I call, a place of Essential Efficacy: the conviction that educators bear full responsibility for a child’s success, independent of the student’s socio-economic status, language background, or parental influence.

Many of us who led high-performing Title I schools achieved this by becoming Entrepreneurial Principals (see Report from the Principal’s Office, pp. 556–564), closing the resource gap by raising huge amounts of additional funds and building high-efficacy instructional cultures. But more importantly, we succeeded because we, and our staff, believed—deeply—that all children arrive in this world with a unique set of skills and talents, and that it is the sacred duty of professional educators to find and draw out those gifts.

So yes, ending kindergarten G&T testing is the right decision—but for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way. It’s an easy political-rhetorical win, but a meaningless gesture that doesn’t address the deeper disease of educational quality inequity.

And, until we build a system that cultivates every child’s potential with the same fervor, we now reserve for labeling a few as “gifted,” we will keep playing the same mis/under educated rigged game.

The goal isn’t to find the gifted, it’s to bravely grow the gifts inherently existing in all of our students.


From Barely Struggling to Seriously Soaring: A First-Year Mayoral Plan for Immediate, Significant, and Sustainable Improvement in the NYC School System

Posted on by

One of the first lessons you learn as a school superintendent is that real change takes time—you can’t accomplish everything in year one. It’s a bit like turning around an aircraft carrier: it takes focus, steady hands, and a clear course of action. So the question becomes—what can a mayor do in public education, in their first year, that would make a profound and meaningful difference for children? And in New York City’s case, if that mayor were re-elected and wanted to make a bold, renewing statement about public education, what could that look like?

So, drawing on over 50 years of observations and experience, here is my collection of “greatest schools’ greatest hits.” Every high-performing school district or school I’ve encountered around the world implemented most—if not all—of the below numbered basic practices. If the NYCDOE adopted them, the positive academic achievement results would be city-wide, radical, immediate, and lasting.

What’s notably absent here are the usual “sexy-sounding” (and always very expensive) “school improvement” or “closing the gap” initiatives, as well as the recurring governance merry-go-round (“You run the schools—no, you run the schools…”) that serve more as political throw-away lines than educational solutions. Beyond the built-in lack of accountability, worst of all, these popular rhetorical approaches fail to authentically educate students—especially our most disenfranchised and too-often discarded NYC children.

What I’m proposing here is not everything, but it would be a phenomenal first year (or any year) start for any mayoral administration. Most importantly, it would dramatically reduce (my apologies to those employed in that sector) our city’s reliance on the criminal justice system as an employment driver, while greatly expanding the dream-driven aspirations and life opportunities of countless New York City children.

For deeper discussion of these strategies and others, see my books:

• Report to the Principal’s Office: Tools for Building Successful High School Administrative Leadership

• Report from the Principal’s Office: A 200-Day Inspirational and Aspirational School Leadership Journal

1. Empower Superintendents, Principals, and Assistant Principals to be able to do their best work.

• Stop forcing school administrators to spend a lot of time and energy on “out-thinking,” “out-flanking,” and “out-maneuvering” the huge amount of anti-student policies within their own NYCDOE system. The most successful leaders in Title I schools often must quietly bend or break rules daily to ensure students can learn. Any school system fighting hard to defeat its own wonderfully noble mission, will win that fight!

• Every elementary school in the city, regardless of student population size—needs a full-time Assistant Principal.

• Middle Schools (MS) are tough child psychological development places, and I don’t think I ever saw a MS with an adequate number of APs to do all of the student “handholding,” administrative work and staff support that was needed.

• School supervision licensing and certification alone aren’t enough; we must rethink how we develop, appoint, and continue to professionally grow school-building administrators.

• Any hoping to be effective School-Building Leader (SBL) must master their role as a Chief Instructional Coach, including conducting high-quality classroom lesson observations and having impactful post-observation conferences.

• Principals and APs must be empowered to make classrooms safe, focused, and productive for teaching and learning. SBLs who, for any reason, cannot achieve this goal risk getting caught in a painful school-underperformance cycle: poor-quality instructional time and space leads to off-task student behaviors, which in turn further degrade instructional time and space quality.

• Principals need a trusted critical friend, coach, and mentor. Strengthening the principal–superintendent supervisory relationship is essential to reduce mission-harming—and financially costly—leadership mistakes. For this to happen, superintendents must have genuine, accountable budgetary and policy-making authority. NYC has long maintained a confusing, overlapping, and often conflicting series of concurrent school governing systems. In recent years, additional costly supervisory layers have emerged between the Chancellor and superintendents, many of which add little productive value. The real work of effectively educating students is done by those closest to the school buildings. The accountability system should be simple, straightforward—clear enough for parents and other stakeholders to understand—and measurable: the Chancellor (and deputy chancellors) supervise the superintendents, and the superintendent (and deputy superintendents) supervises the principals in their districts.

• Stop letting uninformed commentators or the media drive performance evaluations. We should compare schools to similar schools and to their own past performance—not specialized admissions schools, to more open-admission schools. This approach is not pedagogically sound or helpful, and serves to hide the serious underperformance elements in so-called “good schools.”

• If you want CEO-level results, give the Principal CEO-level power and authority.

2. Strengthen the Quality of Instructional Practices in all Schools.

• In politics, “it’s the economy, stupid!” In public schools “it’s the quality of Instruction!”

• The “class size” chant is an easy way to dodge accountability. While smaller classes can help, the far bigger issue is a school’s collective level of instructional quality. And how this quality instructional factor is tragically unevenly distributed across districts, schools, and even different classrooms inside of school buildings. Furthermore, some of our most struggling schools will suffer from chronic teacher turnover and a bad ‘tipping-point’ of having too many1-3 year teachers to effectively professionally develop.

• Identify a cohort of Master Teachers and incentivize them with higher pay, housing vouchers, free transit passes, for working in our most underperforming schools. Along with extra pay for teaching after-school, weekend, school breaks and summer tutorial classes.

• Provide weekly subject-specific collaborative planning and professional development time for teachers, aligned with state and national standards.

• In each school deploy top-performing teachers as in-house instructional coaching-colleagues for new and struggling staff. Reward them with grants, gift cards, for professional and classroom supplies of their choice.

• Place Teacher Instructional Improvement Centers in every Title I school, led by a full-time Instructional Coach selected by the principal and approved by the superintendent.

• There must be a heavy financial, material, time, and personnel ‘front-end’ investment in helping students to master the K-5 English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics standards, any deficiencies in these areas simply becomes harder and more expensive to fix as the child moves up in grades.

3. Use Data the Right Way

• Conduct regular diagnostic assessments (aligned with state standards) to identify learning gaps in real time and adjust instructional methods accordingly.

• Maintain a visible school data wall—physical or digital—tracking in-school weekly testing progress toward identified academic targets.

• Hold weekly, monthly, and by semester, student progress reports meetings to address those at risk of failing.

• Ask qualitative questions about excellence: “What makes a highly effective student, teacher, or school administrator—and how can we reproduce those groups common characteristics qualities?”

4. Expand Student Learning Opportunities

• Shift the focus from racial integration alone to integrating high expectations and world-class learning environments—starting with PreK–8 schools. Don’t burn precious political capital on trying to dismantle the Specialized High School admissions policy. Instead, move quickly and decisively to reconstitute the High School Division with a singular mission: make neighborhood high schools “Great Again” by transforming them into exciting, high-performing learning hubs. These schools should offer robustly supported CTE, STEM, and Performing & Creative Arts programs, giving students—whether below, slightly below, on, or above grade-level—empowering, non-specialized “ed-options” schools that set them up for post-high school success.

• Fully fund, especially on the elementary and middle school level, creative and performing arts programs, including band and orchestra musical instruments, so principals aren’t “forced” to cut them to balance budgets. Every school should have a fully funded library and Librarian.

• Establish after-school, weekend, and summer programs in elementary and middle schools focused on museum, cultural institution, and the theater visits; STEM, robotics, chess, AI, and coding; performing and creative arts; and non-traditional sports such as gymnastics, tennis, fencing, and archery. These programs will provide many students with enriching opportunities and help level the playing field with peers from more affluent families who already benefit from such powerful informal educational experiences. Additionally, these activities will break down stereotypes about who can excel academically and participate in various athletic pursuits.

• Offer extended learning time—after school, weekends, summers, and holidays—staffed by specially trained teachers, assigned by performance mastery and not seniority.

• In middle and high schools, implement 2 to 4 pilot-model team-taught math classes in every school district, with a composition of approximately 30% special education students and 70% regular education students. Each class should be staffed by a special education teacher, a regular education math content-certified teacher, and an educational and behavioral paraprofessional to provide comprehensive support. Expand the model each year as student performance data demonstrates positive outcomes and as personnel and financial resources become available.

• Design a K-12 (very popular in 2000-2003 CSD 29) “Readers-to-Leaders” to strengthen literacy city-wide but to also encourage student to engage in reading for fun and enjoyment.

• Expand reading support by hiring and placing certified Elementary Reading Specialists in struggling Title 1 middle schools. A CSD 29 initiative; 2000–2003, that produced great reading scores improvement results.

• Create dedicated science/technology labs in elementary schools, modeled after the successful CSD 29 initiative (2000–2003). Staff these labs with strong, specially trained teachers—not as a throwaway “cluster” position—who can teach to and beyond the 4th-grade science exam standards. As demonstrated in CSD 29, this approach will boost 4th-grade science exam scores across all student performance levels and strengthens STEM conceptual understanding and practical skills as students transition to middle school.

• To better prepare students for STEM college majors, increase the number of NYC students ready to enter and successfully pass 8th-grade Algebra.

5. Build a Culture of High Expectations for all students.

• Raise, not lower, academic, promotion and graduation standards.

• Provide school administrators and teachers—especially in Title I schools—with professional development focused on using empowering language and practical methodologies that enhance student achievement through compassionate and committed efficacy strategies.

• If the Sate or a school uses a “portfolio assessment model,” make sure that the standards and rubrics for evaluating that portfolio assessment is rigorous and meets State learning standards.

• Eliminate social promotion and replace it with flexible, supportive gateway/pathway schools, that will allow them to legitimately meet (at least get close to) grade level standards. Sending students to middle or high school, who we know are totally unprepared to do the minimally required work at those levels is setting these students up for failure.

• Expand Advance Placement (AP) course taking by high school students attending “neighborhood schools,” but this won’t work authentically (beyond the usual for show symbolism) if students in the K-8 world are not provided with strong ready-to-do high school work skills.

6. Support Parents in Their Most Important Role

• Stop misleading parents into thinking their main duty is to run the school; their top priority is managing and supporting their child’s educational progress.

• Offer monthly workshops on homework routines, home studying techniques, good student punctuality and attendance skills, interpreting progress reports, and, for high school parents, “how to read and understand a student’s academic transcript.”

• Use text and a secure school website to immediately provide parents with academic/assignments updates, their child’s daily punctuality and attendance report, not just event announcements.

• Get Title 1 parents out of the fundraising business, not only does it cause huge resource gaps between schools, in some schools it creates terrible distracting, and often safety issues. Further, principals can raise more funds—without the accompanying human drama—by establishing a “Friends of [School Name]” 501(c)(3) foundation. This nonprofit can solicit gifts, secure donations, and serve as a formal conduit for grant writing funds. Don’t attempt to end parent fundraising at affluent schools—that’s a political ‘third rail’ issue for a Chancellor. Instead, match the dollar amounts they raise with equal-value grants for the city’s poorest schools. Every school district should have a Director of Fundraising, who along with a grant writing team can help all schools raise much needed supplementary funds.

• School-Building Administrators must hold weekly meetings with parents of underperforming students (I often included their teachers in quick stand-up meetings), especially those who are capable but underachieving—often young Black and Latino boys.

7. Optimize the First 10 Days of School (and Each Semester)

• Conduct baseline ELA and math assessments immediately to guide instruction and student class/course scheduling.

• Build community and positive school culture from day one.

• Host parent orientations to set clear academic, behavioral, and attendance expectations.

8. Improve Attendance and Punctuality

• Reinstitute and reinvigorate the School Attendance Teachers/Officers Program, you can’t teach a child who is not in school, and for the chronically absent when they do occasionally come to school the classroom does not work for them or the other students.

• Make schools especially middle and high, interesting places where students would actually want to go. Partner with community organizations to address barriers like transportation or any family need that is causing a student to not come to school.

9. Prioritize Social, Emotional, and Physical Health

• Provide Title I schools with an additional guidance counselor whose role extends beyond IEP mandated counseling services.

• Share a school psychologist across 2–3 schools as needed.

• Offer rotating health, vision, and dental clinic services, including providing eyeglasses.

• (I’m sure some will take this the wrong way) For large numbers of students in the system we need to practically, not theoretically embrace “In loco parentis.” We need to put programs and people in position to provide these students with maximum high effective parental-like support.

10. Create a Rapid Response System/School for Underperformance

• Allocate funds for the appointment of a Director of School Improvement (DOSI) in every school district.

• The DOSI will in cooperation with school-based administrators, identify struggling new and veteran teachers within 1- 2 weeks of the new school year, and launch targeted PD and support immediately.

• The DOSI will require academic recovery plans for any student cohort, specific courses, grade, subject areas, or schools falling below benchmarks once the first semester data arrives.

• The DOSI coordinates the collaboration of district-level content supervisors, instructional coaches, Teacher Center staff developers, and Master Teachers in framing all PD efforts.

• The DOSI organizes the twice-yearly district “Best Practices Fairs” to share and standardize high-quality instructional practices.

• Empower superintendents to transform two of their lowest-performing schools into “District Charter Schools” (DCS)—schools with charter-like flexibility in staff selection, scheduling, school calendar, and operations, staffed exclusively by voluntary transferees who are master practitioners in every job category. Each DCS would be fully reconstituted, exempt from many labor contract restrictions and NYCDOE bureaucratic regulations, and offer higher salaries, enabling a rapid, high-quality turnaround in student academic performance.

A Final Word on Mayoral School System Options – Year One

Again, drawing on my superintendent experience—and still carrying the scars that came with it! I’ve learned that even the most positive, student-centered initiatives must be introduced in carefully timed, manageable phases. While this approach won’t eliminate resistance, it helps prevent the “no-go” forces, both inside and outside the school system; those who are invested in maintaining a system that underperforms for most children, especially children of color, from quickly uniting and undermining your efforts to raise student academic achievement for all.

Further, if you truly want to “fight”—or, more amicably, compete with charter schools, do it on the educational battlefield, not the political one. Outperform them with proven practices, hold uncompromising expectations for both staff and students, and foster a no excuses operational culture. Adopt a “whatever it takes” mindset, put children before adults, and make “failure is not an option” more than a slogan. Above all, raise the academic learning standards for every student—not just the fortunate or well-connected few.

As a NYC Title I public high school principal, I saw firsthand that many parents who had previously sent their children to private or parochial K–8 schools chose, for the first time, to ‘go public’ by enrolling them in my high school. That’s one way to make NYC more affordable! And proof that when traditional public schools deliver the highest quality education product, parents will choose them every time.


.