Zohran Mamdani's education agenda would set New York City up for failure

The Hill

3 days ago

Zohran Mamdani's recent victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary has drawn widespread attention for his affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America and what some see as antisemitic rhetoric. But beyond the headlines, it's the education platform Mamdani champions that could pose the greatest threat to New York City families — especially those striving to access better schools and brighter futures for their children.
At the core of Mamdani's approach is an unambiguous rejection of school choice. He opposes vouchers, charter school expansion, and even co-location policies that allow high-performing charters to operate in underutilized public school buildings. His platform calls for a funding overhaul that could severely reduce resources for charter schools, even though they serve 15 percent of city students.
Mamdani opposes charter schools and vouchers based on the claim that they divert public resources, lack accountability and mainly benefit wealthier families at the expense of low-income students. He argues that voucher programs, despite being marketed as tools to help struggling students, are often used by affluent families already in private schools. As President Trump pushes for a national voucher initiative, Mamdani insists that New York must instead invest in a fully funded public school system to ensure true educational equity.
But the evidence paints a sharply different picture. Success Academy, New York City's largest and most scrutinized charter network, enrolls a student population that is 98 percent made up of minority students, with the vast majority coming from low-income households.
Despite these demographics, its academic results are nothing short of exceptional: 96 percent of its students passed the state math exam, and 83 percent passed the English Language Arts exam. By contrast, the citywide public school proficiency rate hovers around just 49 percent, underscoring the extent to which charter schools like Success Academy are not undermining public education but outperforming it.
By restricting charter expansion and threatening funding, Mamdani's platform effectively removes one of the few viable paths to academic success for students in underserved neighborhoods. The families who rely on charters are not opting out of public education — they are opting out of failure.
As a co-author of the 'People's Budget' proposed by the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, Mamdani supports targeted spending initiatives that prioritize political messaging over tangible educational outcomes. The 2025 budget included an initiative aimed at increasing teacher diversity, with the caucus demanding an $8 million investment in recruitment, training and retention programs to make the teaching workforce more diverse. This initiative is particularly ironic given that New York City's public school system — the largest in both the state and nation — already has a teaching staff that is approximately 42 percent Black, despite African Americans comprising only 22 percent of the city's population.
In the same budget, Mamdani's caucus allocated $250,000 to promote 'racial and cultural inclusivity' in K–12 classrooms and dedicated $351,500 for statewide conventions aimed at supporting 'underrepresented' educators, supposedly to address barriers faced by educators of color.
But the problem isn't with diversity — it's with Mamdani's misaligned priorities. New York City already boasts one of the most diverse populations in the country. Meanwhile, student performance in core subjects continues to falter, and chronic absenteeism nears 40 percent. Despite spending more per student than any other state — over $36,000 annually — New York continues to fall short on basic benchmarks. Mamdani's answer is more spending, with little accountability and no meaningful strategy to improve outcomes.
School choice, in contrast, offers a proven mechanism to elevate student achievement without pulling funding from traditional public schools.
Programs in states like Florida and North Carolina show that scholarship and charter models can coexist with public education. In many cases, they drive improvement system-wide. A 2019 study even found modest academic gains in public schools that must compete with nearby choice-based alternatives.
Mamdani dismisses these successes, framing school choice as an ideological threat rather than a practical solution. But for many families, school choice lets parents select the best educational environment for their children, whether that's a high-performing charter, a faith-based school, or specialized instruction that better fits a student's needs.
Mamdani's plan offers the opposite. It preserves a rigid system that too often fails the students most in need, while redirecting resources toward symbolic programs that do little to improve reading, math, or attendance. His vision elevates bureaucracy over results and ideology over opportunity.
New York City doesn't lack funding, it lacks alignment between spending and outcomes. What the city needs are policies that empower families, reward effective schools and confront failure with urgency — not just slogans. Mamdani is not the kind of leader New York City students can afford to have in office.
Gregory Lyakhov is a high school student from Great Neck, N.Y.