By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2026-08-08 17:02:49 | Updated at 2026-08-08 19:01:29
2 hours ago
New York spends more per student than any state in the nation.
Yet fewer than half off of its third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students scored proficiently on the English Language Arts exam, according to the preliminary data released this week.
Just 43% of third-graders, 48% of fourth-graders and 43% of fifth-graders scored proficient in ELA. The biggest drop was seen in fifth grade, a 14-point decrease from the 2024-25 school year. Third-graders showed an 11-point drop.
This is what happens when teacher unions get their way. Standards are lowered. No consequences for bad schools or bad instructors.
And our children? Failed by a system that doesn’t care.
As of 2019, state test scores would no longer play a role in teacher evaluations. By 2024, nor would any measure of whether students learned at all.
The state’s education department promised these changes would bring “reflection and goal-setting,” “collaboration among educators” and “personalized professional learning opportunities.”
Nowhere was there mention of students learning.
And of course, both were union victories.
‘Cut scores’ lowered
It gets worse. After student performance dropped in 2023, the Board of Regents lowered the “cut scores,” making it easier for students to achieve proficiency in grades 3-8 in math and ELA.
And this made the learning loss from the pandemic look smaller — to cover up the teacher’s union utter failure during COVID, including the terrible legacy of “remote learning.”
This follows a pattern of incompetence by the New York State Department of Education in supporting improvement in instruction, and the outsourcing of most of that work to the New York State United Teachers.
None of this is complicated to fix.
Most states now screen every child in reading, starting in kindergarten. New York still does not require it, even after the state’s own task force recommended it in 2024.
So, the third-grade test becomes the first time that Albany learns a child can’t read.
New York also has a law allowing the state to intervene in failing schools, but it barely uses it.
A school in NYS must be among the state’s lowest performers for three consecutive years before Albany can act. In practice, it waits longer. The 17 schools the state identified this year had been failing since 2017.
Failure rewared
And the punishment for years of failing children? A chance at additional funding from the state.
Consider what all of this adds up to.
A teacher’s evaluation no longer reflects whether students learned. A school that fails for three consecutive years gets more money.
And the Regents, who lowered the standards, are shielded from accountability since they are elected by the Legislature — where the unions rarely lose.
Everyone is protected — except the children.
In 2025, 85% of high school students in New York “graduated.” But we know many of them did not learn; they were given an empty diploma. And now, the Board of Regents has gone even further, moving to phase out the state regents as graduation requirements starting in 2027-28.
New Yorkers are tired of being No. 1 only on education funding — but never in academic results for our kids.
The bigger problem is that the education department has been arranged in a way that nobody has to answer whether a child can read. There is no accountability, and no shame.
And it will continue until someone in Albany is forced to answer for it.
Jennifer Weber and Danyela Souza Egorov are folllows at the Manhattan Institute.
