Teachers union threatens to pull support of NYC Reads after poor reading scores

The head of New York City’s teachers’ union threatened to yank his support from a major literacy initiative in public schools, blaming this year’s dismal reading scores on the Mamdani administration prioritizing paperwork over progress.

The United Federation of Teachers has supported the initiative, known as NYC Reads, since it was announced in 2023. The loss of the union’s buy-in would mark a radical shift following last week’s troubling state test results — which nearly wiped out gains in reading proficiency only a year prior.

“We’re not going to support it if they want to implement it the way they did this year,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in an interview Wednesday. “If this administration wants to continue to waste everyone’s time and not get the better results that we know we need, then we’re not going to support it.”

“We like the idea. We’ve been supporting it from the beginning, but somebody’s got to put them in check.”

The UFT’s explanation for what went wrong with this year’s reading scores is just one of several theories about the dramatic decline. Some experts have said the fluctuations, which were observed statewide, could be a sign of inconsistencies in the standardized tests between school years. The Mamdani administration has pointed to data from short, regular assessments known as “screeners,” which have continued to suggest that students are becoming better readers.

The city’s Department of Education disputed the UFT’s characterization of the changes under the Mamdani administration, which they said were limited to the introduction of new interventions aimed at struggling learners.

Mayor Mamdani and his schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels, have so far pledged to stay the course with NYC Reads. As part of the initiative, the school system has been phasing in mandated curriculum over the last few school years at all elementary schools and slowly expanding it to middle schools. NYC Reads is set to launch in some high schools for the first time next school year.

The UFT said it continues to support literacy curriculum rooted in the “science of reading,” a research-backed approach to reading instruction focused on phonics and reading comprehension, and professional development for teachers.

However, Mulgrew took issue with supplemental programs that he said were recently added to the main literacy curriculum, which the union boss said were “contradictory” and “not designed to be used with each other.” The DOE disputed the programs are new or required by NYC Reads.

The UFT said the Mamdani administration also reinstated an “old way” and “paperwork” that had been relaxed under former Mayor Adams’ second chancellor, Melissa Aviles-Ramos. That gave teachers more flexibility in the classroom to personalize instruction to students’ current skills and abilities, he said, while the DOE maintains there have been no changes to regular assessments or the pace of the curriculum.

“What happened was this year, the new administration came in, and even though we were doing really well, we saw it went right back to the old way, which is: How do we produce more paperwork?” Mulgrew said.

“That’s why a couple months ago I started telling everybody in the administration (and) DOE that we would not get the same test scores — which turned out to be true.”

Dominique Ellison, a spokeswoman for the DOE, disputed the union’s assessment

“Mr. Mulgrew is wrong,” she said. “There are no new pacing or reporting requirements for NYC Reads. This evidence-based approach has been lauded by education experts across the country, and our screener data is showing it works, which is exactly why our administration expanded it.”

“We remain focused on teaching our kids to read,” Ellison added.

Data released Friday showed that just half — 50.3% — of all students in grades 3 through 8 scored as proficient in reading — a drop from about 56% the school year before. Alarmingly, results for the youngest students, third graders, in particular, plunged 14 points, with only 44% scoring proficient in the subject. This year’s results marked the first time that third graders were required to take the test on a computer.

The six-percentage-point tumble practically erased a seven-percentage-point jump the prior year, which the Adams administration at the time said was proof that NYC Reads was delivering results for children.

The dramatic swings in literacy proficiency have sent shockwaves through the education community. Both the city and state education departments have promised to study the results.

“These results raise important questions and deserve careful, rigorous analysis so we can ensure we’re measuring what students are learning,” Samuels said in a statement Friday.

“The (New York State Education) Department takes this decline seriously and will conduct a detailed analysis to better understand where students are experiencing challenges, which student groups and communities have been most affected, and where additional support and resources are needed,” spokesman J.P. O’Hare said in a statement last Wednesday.

Independent auditors conduct two reviews of state exams each year; none have found issues with past tests, according to the state education agency.