This is a blatant \u201cnot our fault\u201d offensive by the union boss, after kids in grades 3-8 saw a 6% drop in their English scores from last year, with more than half in grades 3 to 5 rating not at all proficient.<\/p>\n
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the Garden School in Jackson Heights, Queens, on Tuesday, May 19, 2026. Stephen Yang for NY Post<\/p>\n
OK, we don\u2019t think much<\/a> of Mamdani\u2019s plans for the public schools, but a significant part of that is his refusal to confront the mess the UFT has made<\/a> of the system by protecting outright incompetents and opposing any form of teacher accountability.<\/p>\n Notice Mulgrew\u2019s gripe about \u201cunnecessary assessments\u201d: Teachers unions (and the State Education Department bureaucracy they now effectively control) despise objective exams that reveal how little the kids have learned. <\/p>\n And the DOE bureaucracy plays along, too: In particular, it\u2019s delaying the release of the data on how students at the city\u2019s public charter schools did on those same exams.<\/p>\n The Success Academy network has revealed that 91% of its scholars rated proficient in English, 96% in math; few other charters will do that well, but it\u2019s an extremely safe bet that they\u2019ll put the DOE schools to shame. <\/p>\n This is why city charter enrollment rises year after year, while the DOE\u2019s rolls shrink: The charter sector, with over 150,000 students, now accounts for 16% of the city public-school K-12 population. <\/p>\n But Mulgrew\u2019s blame game requires him to pretend that DOE administrators are what stop his members from matching the charters\u2019 results, so he says of the literacy curriculum, \u201cWe\u2019re not going to support it if they want to implement it the way they did this past school year.\u201d <\/p>\n First, the Mamdani DOE denies making any changes or adding new requirements on teachers.<\/p>\n Second, what does it even mean to say the UFT won\u2019t \u201csupport\u201d teaching children to read?<\/p>\n Actually, those test scores suggest the union\u2019s already anti-literacy.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"United](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/811-upper-west-side-opens-19871305.jpg\")
United Teachers Federation president Mike Mulgrew speaks outside of the Mickey Mantle School PS 811 on the Upper West Side in New York on Monday, Sept. 21, 2020. Stephen Yang<\/p>\n