New Yorkers can’t agree on anything — except for their disgust with the city’s high-spending, dismal-performing public school system.
A staggering 95 percent of Gothamites say city schools need to shape up their math and reading scores and/or spend less money, according to a damning new poll by good government nonprofit think tank The Empire Center .
Only 3 percent of Big Apple residents approved of the job New York Public Schools is doing and said it should continue as is, according to the survey.
New Yorkers are giving city schools a failing grade. Matthew Benoit – stock.adobe.com
“I have never seen such a broad condemnation of business as usual,” Empire Center President Zilvinas Silenas told The Post.
A whopping 91 percent of respondents said that the DOE needs to improve reading and math scores as the city struggles with an illiteracy and innumeracy crisis.
Less than half of all New York elementary students, 48% are proficient in reading, which dropped from 53% the year before, shocking state Education Department stats on the 2025-26 English Language Arts test revealed this week.
In NYC, about 56% made the grade on the reading test, a 7% jump from the year before, the data show.
The poll — which surveyed 600 likely 2026 general election voters in New York over July 6-8 — also found widespread dissatisfaction with the DOE’s spending, with 35 percent of respondents saying the school system needs to tighten its purse strings
The budget for city schools has ballooned to $45 billion in the 2026 school year — a monumental $53,000 per pupil, more than anywhere else in the country.
The percentages are taken from total results combined from different categories surveyed in the poll: 60% of respondents said that NYC schools needed to improve test scores, 31% said they needed to improve and spend less money, and 4% of respondents said that the DOE just needs to reduce spending.
An overwhelming majority of respondents say that city schools need to increase math and reading scores. kamaz007 – stock.adobe.com
The near universal condemnation comes as city schools are grappling with an enrollment crisis that threatens to eat the education system from within.
DOE enrollment has precipitously plunged since COVID, with 12.2 percent fewer students inside public school classrooms today than five years ago.
Over 40 percent of NYC students failed state reading and math tests in the 2024-2025 school year, representing a slight improvement over the year before.
The city results mirror broader discontent with public school education across the state.
Only 4 percent of respondents in the Empire State approved of the state’s public school system, and 47 percent said that state public schools need to improve reading and math scores.
New Yorkers across the state also felt that the public education system cost too much, with 47 percent of those surveyed saying that schools need to focus on spending less money — with 41% saying schools need to cost less and improve test scores and 6% answering that they just need to cost less.
