The poor academic performance of students in city schools has been a long-standing concern. When students struggle to acquire essential skills, it can significantly hinder their ability to compete successfully in the job market as adults.
Large city schools tend to have high concentrations of economically disadvantaged students. In fact, over three-quarters of students in New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany come from underprivileged backgrounds. There is a substantial body of literature highlighting the adverse effects of low family incomes on student achievement, starting with the 1966 report by James Coleman and his associates titled “Equality of Educational Opportunity.”
In New York State, as elsewhere, the poor performance of disadvantaged students has been a focus of reform efforts, primarily through the creation of charter schools aimed at enhancing students’ academic competence. In some cases, these independently operated schools have been successful. In New York City, for example, students in the Success Academies network consistently outperform their peers. Outside the City, fewer charter schools have shown high levels of student outperformance compared to those operated by school districts.
However, a more critical performance gap is often overlooked. When students at schools with high percentages of disadvantaged students were compared, those outside New York City typically had much lower proficiency rates on state tests than students within the City.
In the English Language Arts exam, after accounting for the percentage of disadvantaged students, New York City had a proficiency rate that was 18% higher than that of other areas, regardless of whether the schools had high or low percentages of disadvantaged students. For the mathematics assessments taken by students in grades three through eight, in districts where 75% or more of the students were economically disadvantaged, New York City schools outperformed those elsewhere by a gap of 23%.
New York’s Student Performance Assessments
New York’s student assessments are designed to determine whether students meet the State’s minimum proficiency standards. According to the State Education Department, “The tests are designed to measure how well students are mastering the learning standards that guide classroom instruction and are a valuable tool used to help ensure students have the support needed to succeed. The tests can also help identify any learning needs a student may have.“ Proficient students “demonstrate knowledge, skills, and practices embodied by the Learning Standards that are considered sufficient for the expectations at this grade.“
Despite a high rate of student failures on the State’s assessments, New York students perform similarly to their peers nationwide. The most recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) indicated that New York’s performance did not show a statistically significant difference from the national average in 2024. NAEP analyses reveal that student performance in New York City is lower than that of the State as a whole. However, these analyses do not account for the relatively high percentage of disadvantaged students in New York City schools. 77% of students in New York City public schools come from underprivileged backgrounds, compared to 47% of students in schools outside the City.
English Language Arts
The state assessment data includes information about students’ backgrounds, such as economic disadvantage, race, and ethnicity. The percentage of Black or Hispanic students does not show a statistically significant correlation with the percentage of students who passed the exam; however, the rate of students who identify as Asian is an essential predictor of success. For instance, in a hypothetical school district where 50% of the students are economically disadvantaged, if the student body consisted entirely of Asian students, we would expect approximately 86% of them to pass the exam based on the data. Conversely, in a scenario where none of the students are Asian, we would anticipate a passing rate of 59%.
Poor student performance on the English language exam is strongly associated with the percentage of disadvantaged students; however, students in New York City public schools with high percentages of disadvantaged students consistently outperform those outside the City. Based on an analysis of data controlled for the percentages of students with Asian backgrounds and disadvantaged students:
- In Rochester, 17% of students in grades three through eight attained proficiency in English Language Arts. At comparable schools in New York City, 37% passed.
- In Syracuse, 20% passed. At similar schools in New York City, 41% passed.
- In Schenectady, the gap was 26%, with 22% passing, compared with 48% in comparable New York City Schools.
- In the Patchogue-Medford school district, the gap was 25%, with 32% of students passing, compared to 57% in comparable New York City schools.
Mathematics
On the State’s mathematics proficiency exams, average student performance in New York City surpassed that of schools outside the City by over 20%. In areas outside New York City, only 27% of students in schools where 80% of the student population was disadvantaged passed the exam. In contrast, the pass rate in New York City for similar students was 50%.
- In Rochester, 13% of students passed the grades 3-8 math assessments, compared to 40% of their counterparts in comparable New York City schools.
- In Syracuse, 16% passed, compared with 44% in New York City.
- In Schenectady, 20% passed, compared with 53% of comparable New York City students—a 33% gap.
- In Buffalo, 24% passed, compared with 46% in New York City.
Disadvantaged Students Performed Particularly Poorly Outside New York City
An analysis of the data reveals that economically disadvantaged students do not perform as well as their more affluent peers on the State’s proficiency tests. However, the performance of underprivileged students outside New York City, on average, is about 20% worse on state tests than that of New York City public school students with the same percentage of needy students.
- Brooklyn and Rochester tie for the highest percentage of students in need, but 33% of students in the Bronx attained proficiency in English Language Arts, while 13% in Rochester did. In Syracuse, which had a smaller percentage of needy students, only 16% passed.
- Schenectady and Brooklyn had similar percentages of disadvantaged students—81% and 78%, respectively—but 45% of students in Brooklyn passed, while only 19% were proficient in Schenectady.
More than four out of five disadvantaged students in the large upstate cities of Rochester, Syracuse, and Schenectady fail to attain proficiency on state tests. This poor performance creates barriers to social mobility. Students who lack basic skills will find good jobs and economic opportunities foreclosed to them.
New York City’s Improved Student Performance
Between 2000 and 2018, the performance of New York City students on State assessments improved substantially. Although the total amount of improvement cannot be measured due to changes in test baselines during the period, the trend shows significantly better performance by 2018 compared to 2000.
The primary force behind New York’s improved school performance was Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who implemented a series of reforms aimed at enhancing the City’s education system. See: Elwick, A. (2017). Education reform in New York City (2002–2013). Oxford Review of Education, 43(6), 677–694. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2017.1296421. Also see: https://www.mikebloomberg.com/mayoral-record/education/school-improvement/
New York City public schools today are remarkably different from what they were when Bloomberg was first sworn in as Mayor in 2002. According to the Brookings study, “Before his administration, 32 community school boards and a Board of Education were responsible for the schools. Early in the first Bloomberg administration, authority was centralized in the office of the chancellor, reporting directly to the Mayor. Mayoral control allowed for a significant number of changes in the organization and delivery of public education that might not otherwise have occurred or that might have occurred more slowly under the previous system of dispersed authority.” Key elements of his strategy included:
- Consolidating control over the City’s school system in the Mayor’s office, reducing the power of community school boards to reduce barriers from local fiefdoms.
- Dismantling large, failing high schools and creating smaller schools to create more intimate learning environments.
- Expansion of school choice by increasing the number of Charter schools. Available space in existing public schools was made available to the new Charters.
- Creating practical data-driven performance assessments for use in school and district decision-making.
- Giving school principals more autonomy, which came with an emphasis on accountability, as schools were graded on a scale from A to F.
- Reforming teacher pay, recruitment, and hiring strategies.
- Adopting a new curriculum aligned with the Common Core learning standards.
A 2013 study by the Brookings Institution, School Choice and School Performance in the New York City Public Schools- Will the Past be Prologue? points to the significant changes in the way students are assigned to high schools in the City. Before the Bloomberg administration, nearly all students were given “a default assignment to the school within their community school district that was geographically closest to their place of residence. The principal exceptions to these so-called zip code assignments were for specialized schools that were city-wide and had competitive entrance requirements, such as the Bronx High School of Science. In 2004, a universal high school choice process was implemented. Under the new system, which prevails to the present, all incoming high school freshmen are required to rank up to 12 programs they would like to attend. There is no default school assignment, i.e., everyone has to choose. A centralized computer-based algorithm designed to produce the smallest overall discrepancy between choices and outcomes assigns students to schools.“
Bloomberg’s strong leadership led to improvements in student test performance and substantially higher high school graduation rates. A study by Ray Domanico of the Manhattan Institute, “NYC Student Achievement: What State and National Test Scores reveal,” found that in 2019, “New York City’s system has more than 1 million students, far more than any other district in the State. However, four out of the five counties in the City are in the top 10 of the State’s 62 counties. Manhattan scores right near the top.”
Charter Schools
In New York City, charter schools have been a significant element of the City’s student performance improvement strategy—the City’s 281 charter schools enroll about 146,000 (15%) of its students. Two-thirds are in schools where student achievement on average exceeds that of district-operated schools by 10% or more, controlling for the percentage of students who are Asian or disadvantaged. Only 20% are in schools that do not perform better than similar district-operated schools.
Although over 60% of students in New York State reside outside of New York City, there are fewer than 60 charter schools in that region, which collectively enroll 32,000 students out of a total of 1,140,000 students statewide. One significant reason for the relatively low percentage of charter school students outside New York City is the much smaller size of the school districts in those areas. For example, the largest school district is Buffalo, which has 31,000 students, while New York City’s school district serves 912,000 students.
Charter school performance outside New York City was weaker than in the City itself. At 39% of charter schools outside the City, student performance exceeded that of comparable district-operated schools, while at 37%, student performance was not better than that of comparable district schools.
Upstate School Reform Efforts Have Failed
In 2019, Kent Gardner, then head of Rochester’s Center for Governmental Research, wrote that structural problems inhibited change in the City’s school system. In “Breaking the Cycle of Failure in Rochester’s Schools,”
- Short Superintendent Tenures – Superintendents rarely stayed in their positions for more than two years, resulting in unfinished initiatives and political infighting.
- Lack of Unified Action – Every stakeholder has enough power to delay or derail new policies, making long-term change nearly impossible.
- State Intervention as a Solution – The article argues that New York State has a constitutional obligation to step in and enforce reforms that local governance has failed to implement.
Gardner called for changes in the Rochester school system to strengthen school leadership. He points out, “In the Rochester schools nothing ever gets fully or faithfully implemented because every interest group has the power to delay, derail or simply dismiss new initiatives. The Board of Education, the superintendent, the union leadership, individual union members—particularly teachers and administrators—and parents all have interests and concerns that can conflict with one another and often conflict with the best interest of our children, who hold no power at all. And all have sufficient power to block meaningful change.”
Nothing changed after Gardner’s plea.
Mayor Bloomberg was able to implement change in the City’s schools by consolidating power in executive-led positions, increasing school choice, and implementing performance measures. To do so, he had to fight entrenched, powerful interests, such as community boards and teachers’ unions. Bloomberg’s commitment to the cause was shown by his willingness to contribute a portion of his personal fortune to the effort.
The poor academic performance of students in large cities outside New York City is a significant issue. Many residents in cities such as Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Yonkers, and Albany face substantial challenges, including limited economic opportunities, public safety concerns, and substandard housing conditions. To ensure that young residents have a better chance of achieving higher incomes and improving their lives compared to their parents, students need to acquire the necessary skills to succeed in the job market.
Unfortunately, elected leaders in these other New York cities have not taken the necessary actions to implement the reforms needed to help more students succeed. Nor has the state legislature provided local elected officials with the tools required to implement effective strategies.