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Two additional elementary schools have quietly won exemptions to Mayor Eric Adams’ sweeping reading curriculum mandate, bringing the total number to three.
Brooklyn’s P.S. 11 and Leaders of Excellence, Advocacy, and Discovery in the Bronx — which both use self-designed literacy programs and boast high reading scores — are not required to use one of the three city-approved curriculums, officials confirmed. The Brooklyn School of Inquiry, a gifted and talented program, was the first campus granted an exemption.
The decision to allow additional schools to sidestep the curriculum mandate, known as NYC Reads, is likely to raise eyebrows because Education Department officials have not explained what criteria they are using to grant waivers, nor have they laid out an official process for requesting an exemption. The move could prompt campuses with strong track records or that have spent years honing their own curriculums to push harder to be released from the mandate, which expanded to all elementary schools this past fall.
Top Education Department officials previously indicated that schools with reading proficiency of 85% or above would be considered for an exemption, a threshold that 36 schools meet, though a spokesperson declined to say if the city is using that standard.
P.S. 11 and Leaders of Excellence, Advocacy, and Discovery, also known as LEAD 359, have posted some of the highest reading scores on state tests in the city. Both have also won Blue Ribbon honors from the federal government.
“We created our curriculum in-house looking at research-based practices,” said LEAD 359 Principal Alexa Sorden, who founded the school in 2013. “We basically have a well-oiled machine and didn’t want to disrupt it.”
LEAD 359, known previously as Concourse Village Academy, has won high-profile recognition for its focus on rigorous reading instruction and has served as a model for other campuses. All of the school’s students who took the state reading test last year were considered proficient, a notable achievement given that 83% of the school’s students come from low-income families. About 94% of the school’s students are Black or Latino.
At P.S. 11 in Clinton Hill — a diverse campus where just over half of students are Black and one-third come from low-income families — 91% of students were considered proficient on the state reading test.
Citywide, about 43% of students from low-income families in grades 3-8 are considered proficient readers. Across the system, 49% of children are considered proficient.
Adams has repeatedly pointed to the citywide reading scores as evidence that the city’s approach to literacy instruction is flawed. Schools previously had wide discretion to choose their own curriculums, and hundreds of principals had chosen a program created by Teachers College Professor Lucy Calkins that became increasingly discredited for not focusing enough on basic reading skills.
Now, elementary schools must use one of three programs that city officials say line up with the “science of reading,” a longstanding body of evidence about how children learn to read, alongside a separate phonics program that teaches the relationships between letters and sounds. The curriculum overhaul has won support from the city teachers union, though educators have expressed mixed reactions to the rollout, with some raising concerns about the quality of materials and training.
How did schools win waivers?
City officials have said little about how campuses can qualify for exemptions, leading school communities to take different approaches to securing them.
Families at the Brooklyn School of Inquiry mounted a monthslong campaign for an exemption last year, even after the local superintendent indicated that there was no process for granting one. Students from the school repeatedly showed up to public meetings attended by top education officials to critique the mandated curriculum, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Into Reading, arguing that it sapped their classes of rich discussions about full books because it focuses more heavily on shorter excerpts.
At P.S. 11, families pressed elected officials through a letter writing campaign, according to meeting minutes from the school’s parent association. They, too, were told no exemptions would be granted, according to meeting records. (Leaders of the parent association and the principal did not respond to interview requests.)
On a recent afternoon after dismissal, several P.S. 11 parents said they were grateful the school won a waiver in part because they trusted the principal’s leadership and were impressed with their children’s reading skills.
At the public library around the corner, second grader Zoe Watkins was busy working on an assignment about Shirley Chisholm’s run for president, part of a Black History Month lesson.
“I think our school has been pretty amazing,” she said of the reading instruction before launching into a reaction to the Chisholm article. “What really stood out to me is her resilience and her braveness. … She could have gotten shut down by the government, but she still persisted.”
Meanwhile, at LEAD 359, there was no public pressure campaign for a waiver. Instead, the school leadership team, including educators, the principal, and parents, was able to persuade the superintendent’s office that the school’s curriculum was already following the science of reading.
The principal said district officials were “very open” to considering an exemption for the school. “They visited every literacy classroom,” said Sorden, who is also a trained reading specialist.
An Education Department spokesperson said the decision to issue exemptions to P.S. 11 and LEAD 359 came after conversations with their local superintendents and a review of their test scores. Both schools would have been required to use EL Education from Imagine Learning.
Although city officials would not say if the 85% proficiency threshold is being used to grant waivers, schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos echoed that figure recently while noting officials would also consider disparities in proficiency rates.
“If we see that the overall pass rate … is 85% but we disaggregate and we see that 39% of [multilingual learners] were not performing at grade level … we are going to be a lot more rigid about the curriculum,” Aviles-Ramos said during a recent town hall in Manhattan’s District 1.
Susan Neuman, a literacy expert at New York University who supports the curriculum changes, said ensuring that 85% of students are proficient across a range of demographic categories could be a reasonable method for awarding exemptions. Still, she argued that offering waivers to just three schools seemed arbitrary and called on the Education Department to publicly explain the process.
“There are plenty of schools that are doing just fine,” Neuman said. “Why exempt these?”
Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.
