Zohran Mamdani’s incoherent education policies will destroy NYC’s fragile progress

For more than 20 years, New York City schools have operated under a simple idea: If one person is in charge, one person is accountable. 

Now mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani wants to break that link.

Mayoral control works the same way any strong organization works, with clear leadership.

When one person is ultimately responsible for a sprawling entity like the city Department of Education, with its 815,000 students and 1,600 schools, decisions move faster, reforms can be evaluated and voters know who to blame when things fail.

In 2002, when Mayor Mike Bloomberg first convinced the state Legislature to move city schools under mayoral control, the goal was simple: end the chaos of 32 local school boards and give one leader the authority, responsibility and accountability to run the nation’s largest school system.

It’s the same model used by the world’s highest-performing school systems, like Singapore’s.

Mayoral control has made it possible to move reforms quickly, such as the citywide literacy overhaul under Mayor Eric Adams.

In 2023, he launched NYC Reads, requiring every elementary school to adopt one of three science-of-reading curricula.

By this school year, the plan reached nearly all 500,000 elementary-school students, with full implementation in just two years.

Compare that to Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest district, which is not under mayoral control.

LA began encouraging the same shift to science-based reading in 2022, but after three years, only about half its schools have adopted it.

Under mayoral control, NYC’s graduation rate rose from 53% in 2003 to 83% in 2024, one of the largest increases in the nation. 

Two decades ago, only about one in five New York City students scored proficient in reading, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Today it’s closer to one in three, a steady increase that narrowed the gap with the national average.

Before mayoral control, NYC eighth graders lagged 12 points behind the New York state average in reading. By 2015, that gap had narrowed, and by 2019 the city pulled ahead, where it remains today. 

The gains were strongest for black and Hispanic students, who now outperform their statewide peers for the first time.

New York City now outperforms other large districts such as Houston, where years of mismanagement led the state to replace the elected school board with a state-appointed board in 2023.

This is the record that Zohran Mamdani wants to undo. 

Mamdani said he supports “mayoral accountability” at Wednesday’s debate, but that’s absurd; no one can be held accountable for failure if no one is in charge.

He says he believes in accountability but rejects the very system that creates it. 

Instead, he proposes school “co-governance,” a vaguely defined power-sharing arrangement among the mayor, parents and community groups.

In practice, that means the buck stops with no one — and that the political heavyweight United Federation of Teachers will hold sway.

NYC has tried that model before, and it failed.

Beyond that, Mamdani’s education vision is sketchy and sparse.

The few ideas he’s stated — expanding restorative justice, cutting gifted-and-talented programs and rejecting charter-school growth — all move in the wrong direction.

These aren’t plans to raise achievement or close gaps; they are built on ideology, not evidence.

Enrollment in the city’s schools has already dropped by more than 100,000 students since 2019, a sign that families are losing faith in the system.

The problem isn’t mayoral control itself, but how it’s used — and the solution isn’t to abandon it, but to use it more wisely.

We’ve already seen what happens when leadership uses its authority to follow ideology instead of evidence.

In the name of restorative justice, Mayor Bill de Blasio spent close to $100 million on initiatives to make schools safer and more inclusive.

Instead, it made classrooms chaotic, removing the boundaries that kids need in order to learn, and the disciplinary measures that allow teachers to teach.

When no one enforces expectations, disorder fills the gap.

We know New York has a very long way to go.

After two decades of measurable progress — higher graduation rates, stronger reading outcomes and encouraging test scores — the city can’t afford to go backward. 

NYC’s schools don’t need to be part of another experiment.

They need someone willing to take charge, accept responsibility and deliver results.

Accountability built New York’s educational progress. Mamdani would throw it away.

Jennifer Weber is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.