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Education

Education in New York

The largest school system in the country: admissions fights, budget cuts, the chancellor, CUNY, and what actually reaches kids and teachers. The decisions that follow a family for years, explained plainly.

Desks we analyze here: Chalkbeat New York, The 74.

The coverage, newest first

21 stories
  1. October 6, 2026 The childcare voucher waitlist starts moving The city will start issuing childcare vouchers to 10,000 low-income children this fall, the first offers off the waitlist in 15 months. Citywide
  2. September 24, 2026 Passing grades may be all it takes to graduate If the state drops the Regents requirement in June 2027, city students in the Class of 2028 would graduate by earning their 44 credits, with no... Citywide
  3. September 17, 2026 The shrinking-school reckoning City data shows 219 public schools with fewer than 200 students, and Chancellor Kamar Samuels says mergers and closures are coming. Citywide
  4. September 11, 2026 Free 2-K opens, and the checks are still late About 2,000 two-year-olds started free, year-round 2-K on Thursday, while some providers opened on credit lines because the city has not paid them. Citywide
  5. September 10, 2026 School starts today under a citywide AI ban New York City's public schools open Thursday under a one-year ban on student-facing generative AI through eighth grade, with the city disabling the... Citywide
  6. September 9, 2026 Student OMNY cards stopped working before school started Students found last year's OMNY cards dead on Aug. 31, ten days before Thursday's first day, and the Education Department and the MTA publish... Citywide
  7. September 7, 2026 The school bus routes that don't exist yet School starts Thursday and the city cannot promise your kid a bus; the fallback is a prepaid car and a phone call from the principal. Citywide
  8. September 6, 2026 The basement classrooms at PS 372 Two and a half years of filtration, and the fix was moving the five-year-olds upstairs. Citywide
  9. September 3, 2026 NYC schools ban generative AI through eighth grade Your third grader will do the hard part themselves this year, because the city just turned the machines off. Citywide
  10. September 1, 2026 The 2-K payment crunch Nine days before school starts, the city owes its daycare providers money, and some are covering payroll out of their own pockets. Citywide
  11. August 29, 2026 The 3-K and pre-K providers still waiting to be paid School starts Sept. 10. Directors are covering payroll with credit lines, retirement savings and their own checking accounts. Citywide
  12. August 28, 2026 The city cancels Adams' $200 million school internet contract Eric Adams bought 350,000 laptops with free T-Mobile service. Two weeks before school starts, principals have to figure out which kids actually need... Citywide
  13. August 22, 2026 Mamdani Sues the City Council Over Paraprofessionals' $10,000 Bonus Two sides of City Hall are now suing each other over who gets to give 26,000 of the city's lowest-paid workers a raise. Citywide
  14. August 20, 2026 The paraprofessionals' $10,000 raise becomes law, and City Hall sues, citing union bargaining "Respect Check" passed the Council 49-0. Mamdani campaigned on paying school aides more; City Hall says it still wants them paid but that legislating... Citywide
  15. August 14, 2026 NYC's Reading Score Crash A citywide reading surge evaporated in a single year, and nobody in charge can say why. Citywide
  16. August 13, 2026 Reading scores crash, and the UFT threatens to walk Three years into the city's phonics overhaul, the union that helped sell it is threatening to take its name off the door. Citywide
  17. August 12, 2026 Reading scores erase a year of gains Half the city's kids can't read at grade level, and even the people who ran the test aren't sure why the numbers swung so hard. Citywide
  18. August 11, 2026 NYC Reading Scores Crater Half the city's kids are reading proficiently, down 6 points in a single year, and even the testing experts say the swing looks wrong. Citywide
  19. August 5, 2026 2-K's first 2,000 seats, three applicants deep The city just proved the demand is real. It hasn't proved it can pay for it. Citywide
  20. August 3, 2026 The 2-K childcare chief leaves as the first seats go out The woman who built Mamdani's signature childcare promise from scratch is walking away two days before the first families find out if they got in. Citywide
  21. Saturday, June 20, 2026 City Council passes a $112 billion budget, restoring library cuts The Council clawed back the cuts the Mayor proposed, and the branch libraries stay open six days.

Start here

Explainer How NYC public school admissions actually work Every five-year-old resident is guaranteed a kindergarten seat, and high school is one application, 12 or more choices, more than 700 programs at over 400 schools, and a random number as the tie-breaker. The country's biggest school system, from its own enrollment pages.

Education, explained

The questions New Yorkers actually ask.

Who runs New York City’s public schools?

The city does, through the Department of Education and a Mayor-appointed Chancellor, making it the largest school district in the country at more than a million students. But Albany controls a big share of the funding and sets major rules, so a classroom fight is often really a state budget fight.

What’s the deal with NYC’s specialized high school test?

A handful of elite public high schools, Stuyvesant and Bronx Science among them, admit students by a single exam, the SHSAT, which state law protects. Most other schools use a different mix of criteria. Whether that one test is fair is one of the oldest and angriest fights in the city’s schools.

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