Nearly half of New York City’s public schools are missing the mark on state math and reading tests, according to a new analysis that paints a grim picture of classroom performance despite sky high spending.
The study flags 906 schools, roughly half the district, enrolling 409,379 students, about 43 percent of NYC’s public school population, where fewer than half of students passed math, reading, or both. In 503 of those schools, a majority of students fell short in both subjects, a pattern the authors say has dragged on for years despite redesigns, new programs, and more money.
The findings appear in a 36-page analysis titled "By Any Honest Measure: New York City's Long Record of School Failure, and the Price We Keep Paying," released this week by Success Academy. According to Success Academy, researchers pulled together state and city accountability records and attached a full list of schools the analysis labels as failing.
The scale and the price
"The cost is enormous," the report states, and it backs that up with spending figures. New York City shelled out roughly $40 billion on public education in 2024, about $36,300 per student by the report’s math. By comparison, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that average current public school spending nationwide was $17,619 per pupil in fiscal 2024, highlighting just how far city costs have climbed without matching gains on test scores.
Attendance and testing gaps
The analysis singles out chronic absenteeism and testing workarounds as key reasons the numbers look so bleak. Roughly 35 percent of students were chronically absent in 2023–24, the report finds, and high opt out rates on state exams can make proficiency look better on paper than it is in classrooms. Those conclusions, drawn from public datasets the authors compiled, and the broader accounting of long running failure are laid out in coverage of the study by the Washington Free Beacon.
Recommendations and politics
The report wraps up with a wish list of policy changes. It calls on the city to end social promotion and grade inflation, make state assessments mandatory, link teacher and school evaluations more tightly to student results, and "incentivize excellence." It also presses officials to revisit limits on new charter schools, arguing charters serve similar student populations at lower cost, a point squarely in the middle of ongoing fights over school choice, union contracts, and how City Hall allocates education dollars.
Legal and policy frame
The regulatory backdrop looms large. In 2015, New York state rewrote its accountability rules and moved away from the term "failing school," swapping in "struggling school" under the regulations published by the Legal Information Institute. The report argues that the softer language, along with periodic resets of accountability systems, has helped blur long records of poor performance and made tough interventions less common.
Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz called the analysis "profoundly shocking" and described it as the most complete tally of school failure in the city. The study notes that many of the 906 schools have cycled through failure labels for more than a decade while receiving extra funding and fresh rebranding. Early coverage of the study reported that neither the city Department of Education nor the New York State Education Department commented by the reporting deadline, according to the Washington Free Beacon, which summarized both the report and the initial reaction.
The report drops just as New York’s education leaders and advocates gear up for budget talks and contract showdowns, and it is likely to crank up pressure on City Hall and Albany to explain how tens of thousands of dollars per student are translating into actual learning. Whether city leaders answer with tougher accountability, a pivot to different strategies, or a full throated defense of the status quo will shape the fight over public schools for months to come.
