Next week, New York City Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels will appear at a public forum on school integration. Integration advocates recently told the New York Times that they are “gravely concerned” that Zohran Mamdani’s administration has yet to produce a plan on what Samuels has called his “top priority.” Meantime, pressed for specifics on his integration plan on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, Mayor Mamdani said only that “every school should be the right school,” and that his administration is “exploring every single tool.”
Samuels, Mamdani, and the press are all focused on the wrong thing. They could do much more for New York City’s minority students by prioritizing academic rigor. A child behind in reading or math needs evidence-based instruction, chances to respond, and feedback on his work; Mamdani has the power to make sure every struggling school provides all three. Academic rigor, more than anything else, would ensure that the city’s public schools are the engines of opportunity New York parents need them to be.
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Samuels, who has called himself “the first chancellor to come in and speak directly to school integration,” has not publicly defined what he means by the term. But his decisions as a former superintendent offer some clues.
As a Brooklyn superintendent, he merged an affluent, mostly white school with an underenrolled majority-black one in the 2020–2021 school year, helped guide a plan that set aside a share of middle school seats in his district for low-income students, and replaced gifted programs with International Baccalaureate courses open to all students.
Samuels called the merged school “a model and an example for the rest of the city.” But the only real evaluation of it was a 2024 report by then-Comptroller Brad Lander and New York Appleseed, the group hosting this month’s forum, which judged the school according to the “5 Rs of Real Integration”: race and enrollment, restorative justice, resources, representation, and relationships. Academics were not mentioned.
Any integration plan Samuels pursues as chancellor will face limitations inherent in the demographics of New York City. Of the nearly 900,000 students in its district schools last year, 42 percent were Hispanic, 19 percent were black, 19 percent were Asian, and 16 percent were white. Nearly three-quarters were classified as living in poverty. That means that even if the city spread every demographic group evenly across its schools, the typical school would be about three-quarters low-income and roughly three-fifths black or Hispanic.
Moreover, segregation simply is not the primary driver of dysfunction in district schools. New York City’s charter schools are not “integrated,” either—nearly nine in ten students are black or Hispanic, and more than 80 percent are low-income. Yet on last spring’s state math tests, 69 percent of black charter students and 66 percent of Hispanic charter students were proficient, compared with 43 percent of black and Hispanic students in district schools.
What’s the difference? A 2013 study of 39 city charter schools chalked up their superior performance to five practices: “frequent teacher feedback, data-driven instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and a relentless focus on academic achievement.” The things the city tends to spend money on, like smaller classes and teachers with advanced certifications, weren’t associated with students learning more.
Several of these practices have been shown to benefit non-charter public school students, too. In 2011, Massachusetts took over the failing, unionized school district in Lawrence. The state’s receiver replaced more than a third of its principals and cut the central office by a third, putting the money saved back into the schools. He also lengthened the school day. Changes included implementing two of the five practices found in the New York City charter study: more instructional time and intensive small-group tutoring. Math scores improved significantly. New York’s own receivership law would allow Chancellor Samuels to lengthen the school day and change parts of the union contract, but only in schools that fail three years in a row.
Mamdani has an even bigger opportunity for reform. The New York City teachers’ contract expires in November 2027. In negotiating the next one, the mayor can demand that district schools adopt the practices that have been demonstrated to help all students.
Mayoral control gives Mamdani broad authority over schools. Since 2021, the city has screened every student in kindergarten through fifth grade in reading and math three times a year, though the state doesn’t require it. Mamdani could require the lowest-performing schools to use that data to change instruction for every child who isn’t on track and report on whether those children make progress. He could use the data to set clear targets for each of these schools and hold their principals and superintendents accountable for meeting them.
Superintendents serve at the chancellor’s pleasure and can be replaced. Samuels has already created two new supervising superintendents to oversee them, saying he wanted to get “closer to superintendents as we think about their support and their evaluation.” Whether children in struggling schools are learning should be the most important factor in that evaluation.
New York Appleseed describes its goal as “an equal, just, and integrated society.” As I argued in a 2024 paper, the most just school system is the one that removes barriers to learning, measures what students know, and adjusts teaching methods until they learn.
Mamdani wants every school to be the “right” school. By holding schools to an accountable standard, he has the power to give that designation real meaning.