I’ve read both of NHJ’s essays: the one that came out two weeks ago and the one from ten years ago.
A little background: I’m married to a New York City public school teacher. I'm married to a New York City school teacher for 26 years. I'm close friends with the principal. They both work at a low-income school. Because the school has Russian and Spanish language programs, about 30% of the kids live in shelters, and maybe another 65% live in public housing.
Before this, my wife taught at a school on the Upper West Side where all the kids came from two-income or two-parent homes.
The school she teaches at now is very rough. A parent physically attacked the PTA president.
Back to the NHJ article. She spent 8,500 words and left out the fact that the school is funded at $52,000 per pupil a year. Any reader with a heart and common sense would immediately assume the school is underfunded and “under-resourced.” That’s not the case.
I left a simple, good-faith comment on her Instagram about the missing funding figure, and a similar one on the New York Times Facebook page. I wasn’t trying to stir anything up.
About 30 people immediately piled on me and called me every name in the book for asking NHJ a question, so I had to delete the comments. It was awful.
My main question is: why don’t people in education policy listen to people like John McWhorter or Glenn Loury? I’ve watched their show on YouTube for years, and it’s been very insightful. John McWhorter wants schools to teach phonics.
It seems like everyone in progressive education policy is all about equity, which in practice has meant removing tests: dropping the SAT and graduate admissions tests. New York is phasing out the Regents as a graduation requirement. I have friends in San Francisco, where the district got rid of algebra in eighth grade, but parents fought to bring it back.
It just seems like we’re going to have this problem with schools forever. We’re always told the same thing: segregation and school funding. And we act like Title I doesn’t exist. New York City truly cares about its students. It spends so much per pupil, and it still feels almost futile.
Submitted October 12, 2026 at 08:56AM by Hank-Chinaski80 https://ift.tt/PQdRI50