The NYC school year ending today is the first in which Mayor Eric Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks were in charge from start to finish. It was also the first since the 2018-2019 year that wasn’t significantly shaped by COVID.
Banks gets credit for focusing more than his predecessors on the basic mechanics of learning, delivering plans — yet to be executed — to overhaul how reading is taught at schools citywide. If the transition from the hodge-podge of methodologies to a phonics-based curriculum is smooth, it could deliver the biggest boost to low-income and disadvantaged youngsters in decades. The recent experience of many southern states makes clear that trading bad old pedagogical approaches for science-based reading instruction can pay huge dividends for kids.
Also, Banks and his team earn praise for working to connect pupils and teachers to the skills of the future; for removing many but not all middle-school admissions screens post-pandemic; for arguing, albeit unsuccessfully, against a dumb state bill to reduce class sizes across-the-board; and for trying to make the DOE much more responsive day-to-date to the needs of parents and families, too many of whom fled the system during recent tumultuous years. Banks & Co. get demerits for buckling rather than fighting hard to secure space in public schools for high-quality charters.
And unfortunately, despite teachers landing big raises in their new five-year contract, kids won’t get more instructional time. Next year, they’re getting just 178 days in class; that’s despite the fact that as a candidate, Adams said he wanted to keep kids in school year-round. The regression is especially unfortunate in the wake of the pandemic, when remote learning was a bust and kids slid backward academically.
The literacy curriculum transformation begins in earnest in the fall, as it rolls out to 15 community school districts, on the way to full implementation the following year. That’ll be the biggest test yet for this chancellor and his team. For the youngsters to pass future tests, the adults must not fail at this one.
