Success Academy, New York City's largest charter school network, has filed a lawsuit accusing the New York State Education Department of rigging its national high school ranking by withholding Advanced Placement exam data from U.S. News & World Report. The network says its statewide ranking collapsed from 11th to 196th in the 2026 rankings, a drop it argues had nothing to do with student performance and everything to do with a data decision made in Albany.
According to the lawsuit, reported by the New York Post, the state education department restricted which test scores New York-funded schools could release to U.S. News, ultimately allowing only International Baccalaureate results while withholding 2026 AP scores entirely. Success Academy operates dozens of schools across New York City, and its students take college-level courses and sit for the nationally administered AP exams that once helped define the network's academic reputation. The lawsuit argues the reduced ranking directly affects students' college prospects, since higher education admissions officials factor school rigor into their decisions.
A Statewide Data Fight Behind the Numbers
AP and IB participation and performance together make up 40% of a school's overall U.S. News score — 30% for College Readiness and 10% for College Curriculum Breadth — according to RTI International, which conducts the independent data analysis behind the rankings. Because New York declined to authorize AP data sharing for the 2026–2027 cycle, U.S. News calculated those categories for New York schools using only IB data, according to Long Island Patch. Schools without IB programs, including Success Academy, received zero credit for 40% of the overall ranking criteria.
The fallout reached well beyond Success Academy's charter schools. Long Island Patch reports that Jericho High School dropped from 9th to 41st in New York, while Syosset High School fell from 36th to 54th statewide, prompting Long Island superintendents to publicly criticize state officials over the data withholding. A Facebook post cited by News 12 Long Island noted that Stuyvesant High School and Brooklyn Latin School — among the city's most selective specialized public schools — also saw sharp ranking shifts despite strong SAT scores and advanced coursework, since those schools lean heavily on AP data to demonstrate college readiness.
What the State and the Charter Network Say
A state education department spokesperson said compliance with New York student privacy laws is mandatory and that the department takes responsibility for protecting student data seriously, adding that AP participation data reflects student achievement rather than school rankings. The department also said extensive educational data, including AP participation information, remains available online, and noted that it had allowed AP test-score release to U.S. News in the previous year.
Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz countered that the resulting rankings do not give the public a complete picture of school performance, saying the state removed an entire category of objective academic information. Assemblyman Lester Chang, who has advocated for transparency around aggregate scores, argued that releasing aggregate scores — as opposed to individual student data — creates no privacy concerns.
The Academic Record Success Academy Points To
Success Academy's lawsuit leans on state test data to make its case. The network says 91% of its students were proficient in reading this year and 96% were proficient in math, with some Success Academy schools reaching 100% proficiency on state tests. By comparison, only 50% of New York City public-school students in grades 3 through 8 were proficient in reading this year — a figure that fell six percentage points from the previous year — while 57% of New York public-school students statewide were proficient in math on this year's state tests.
Success Academy notes that its student body includes mostly low-income, first-generation students, and that charter schools like its own are publicly funded and free to attend, just like traditional district schools. The network's high schools also operate under an admissions policy that does not accept new students after fourth grade, meaning its high school cohorts are made up entirely of students who entered the network in elementary grades, according to data cited on NYC Open Data.
Funding and Growth Limits Add to the Tension
The ranking fight is unfolding against a backdrop of broader disputes over charter school funding and growth. Traditional New York City public schools received $42,168 per student in public funding in 2026, compared with roughly $16,600 per student for New York charter schools, according to the Queens Ledger. New York City has also reached its legal cap of 285 operating charter schools out of 352 authorized statewide, forcing networks like Success Academy to transfer existing charters in order to open new locations, the outlet reports.
Charter schools must follow state education department policies because they receive public funding, even though they are run privately with more independent curricula than traditional public schools. New York State Legislature Republicans have generally sided with charter schools, while Democrats have generally aligned with teachers' unions, which have sought to block charter-school expansion. Chang has also questioned the value of charter schools compared with traditional public schools even as he pushes for AP-data transparency.
A Legislative Fix and a Wider Rollout
In response to the outcry, New York state lawmakers proposed legislation in August called the Our Schools, Our Scores Act, which would require state authorization for aggregate AP score disclosures. Backers of the bill argue that aggregate school-level scores carry no individual student privacy risk, unlike the disaggregated data the state cited in restricting AP disclosures.
Nationally, U.S. News reviewed nearly 27,000 public high schools across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., for its 2026–2027 rankings, with Massachusetts and New Jersey leading the country in the share of schools placed in the top 5%, according to RTI International. Success Academy's ranking fight also comes as the network has been expanding beyond New York City; as Hoodline reported this spring, the network secured a co-location deal to place classrooms inside five Miami-Dade County public high schools, marking its first expansion into another state's public school system.
