Don’t Expect Zohran Mamdani — or Any Other Mayoral Candidate — to Fix NYC’s Troubled Schools

Our city’s school system is in deep trouble: Enrollment is down, and chronic absenteeism is at record highs.

One-party rule in Albany and City Hall has caused much of this, with legislators throwing money at the system with no guardrails in place to hold schools accountable for student performance.

It’s hard to see any meaningful change coming from this year’s mayoral election.

Zohran Mamdani has the simplest education platform of the remaining candidates.

The Democrat intends to push “an end to mayoral control,” envisioning “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.”

This lacks understanding of the complexity of the nation’s largest school system and any grasp of what has and hasn’t worked over the last 50 years.

Albany lawmakers have tried and failed to create a system in which families, educators and administrators could work together for children’s betterment since the onset of so-called decentralization in 1969.

Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post

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Ray Domanico is a senior fellow and director of education policy at the Manhattan Institute.

Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images