Zohran Mamdani can, & must, fix our classrooms

Education barely made it into this year’s mayoral race, but the nation’s largest school system will now be the crucible of Zohran Mamdani’s progressive ideals. He inherits a vast bureaucracy, but his real challenge is not managing the status quo. It’s about reinventing a system that is failing too many of its children.

The public debate will attempt to drag him into political minefields such as mayoral control and gifted and talented programs. They are distractions from what matters most: Can it improve the quality of what happens every day in the city’s 78,000 classrooms?

To do this, the new mayor must focus on a single, powerful strategy: hands-on learning. This principle must apply not only to students, but first and foremost to our teachers.

The new mayor arrives at a time when the state is imposing classes with smaller numbers of students, forcing the city to hire thousands of new teachers. This is either a crippling expense or a generational opportunity. The current rush in the city is trending toward crisis, with the risk of a wave of underprepared teachers from fast-track certification programs.

There is a better way: paid one-year co-teaching residencies.

This is not a brief teaching assignment for students. It’s a real learning experience. Prospective teachers are paid as teaching assistants, fully integrated alongside an accomplished mentor. They study child development, but they also live it: they learn how to manage a classroom, develop deep relationships with students, and receive structured feedback.

Walk into one of these classrooms and the power of the model is evident. A teacher leads a small math group while his colleague circulates, providing individual help to a struggling child. A difficult concept is patiently explained without blocking the entire class.

The residences offer an elegant solution to the classy mandate. This immediately reduces the student-to-adult ratio while creating a pipeline of high-quality educators. Fee-based residence halls are already the norm at the city’s elite private schools and charter networks. States as diverse as California and Texas are investing heavily in this model because the results are clear: better academic achievement and teachers who don’t give up.

This learning approach can also help achieve Mamdani’s goal of universal child care. New York needs thousands of new early childhood educators. We know that socioeconomic achievement gaps are evident before age 2; high-quality care is a moral and economic necessity.

But this vision will fail if it is based on poverty wages. The city must finance true salary parity for its first educators. This, combined with a learning model that provides a solid foundation for child development, will end the revolving door that plagues preschool centers and finally treat the work of educating our youngest citizens with the dignity it demands.

With this foundation, children will enter kindergarten ready to learn. While the previous administration focused on literacy, the city’s math curriculum remains a glaring weakness. It is often developmentally inappropriate, stifling interest in a subject that functions as a ruthless gatekeeper to high school and college.

Effective early math isn’t just about worksheets; it is game-based, hands-on and requires small groups. This is precisely what the two-teacher residency model is designed to do.

This engaging, hands-on learning cannot evaporate in high school, where much of the curriculum is a joyless march toward standardized testing.

Albany’s recent decision to redesign the Regents exams allows the city to replace rigid “seat time” rules with innovation. The city’s Future Ready initiative, which connects 15,000 students across 135 schools to career-focused courses, certifications and college credits, is a model.

Look at Design Works High School in Brooklyn. Ninth grade students, in collaboration with Pratt teachers, received the “Ice Cream Box Challenge.” Their task: to design a super insulated box from recycled materials to store frozen ice cream without energy. Students not only read about thermodynamics; they used miter saws and drill presses. They applied the principles of passive house design and then presented their findings to a United Nations-affiliated forum.

This is not a vocational track for students who cannot succeed academically. It’s deep, engaging learning that connects school to global issues and real careers.

Education may not have defined his campaign, but how Mamdani runs schools will define his administration. Its success depends on change occurring in classrooms, without satisfying all interest groups.

The real signals of progress will be a stable and well-prepared teaching force, a strong early care system, and high school graduates who know how to do things. This is the path to a more just future for New York.

Polakow-Suransky is president of the Bank Street College of Education and previously served as senior vice chancellor of the New York City Department of Education.