In failing school districts across the country, administrators are engaged in the clearest sign of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again.
Nowhere is that more true than in New York City.
The state of Gotham’s public schools is so dire that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos recently took aim.
“If we ran Amazon the way New York City runs their school system,” he declared, “packages would take six weeks to arrive, we’d charge you a $100 delivery fee and when the package did finally arrive, it would have the wrong item.”
For liberals, the solution is the same one they offer for every other societal problem: throwing more taxpayer money into a bottomless pit.
And yet no matter how much is spent, the problems don’t just linger; they grow like a cancer.
NYC spends roughly $43 billion a year to educate about 850,000 students, putting the rest of the country’s spending to shame: That’s over $44,000 per child per year.
The result of that astronomical figure?
Two-thirds of fourth graders can’t do math properly, and nearly three-quarters can’t read at grade level.
Along with poor academic outcomes, those billions are buying increasingly unsafe schools: Student assaults are rising even as city schools suspend fewer students.
Worse yet, the US Department of Education recently opened a civil-rights investigation following reports of in-school discrimination against Jewish students.
It’s a deeply troubled system at every level.
But while New York City schools remain trapped in a cycle of apathy and excuses, administrators in another big-city school district are demonstrating another path is possible.
In Houston, Texas, just two years into a dramatic state-led intervention, student gains in the Houston Independent School District are the envy of urban districts across the country.
The turnaround began in 2023, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s administration took over HISD after years of chronic academic failure, including a persistently underperforming high school that failed to meet state standards.
Predictably, the move was met with outrage: The state’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter claimed the “hostile takeover” was motivated by racial bias.
“The state takeover of HISD is not about public education — it’s about political control of a 90% black and brown student body in one of the country’s most diverse cities,” the legal group seethed.
Where were their voices of outrage when minority students were stuck in failing schools?
Two years later, the results are impossible to ignore.
According to HISD’s latest academic report, the number of A- and B-rated campuses has more than doubled, rising from 93 schools before the takeover to 197 schools today.
Meanwhile, D- and F-rated campuses collapsed from 121 schools to just 18, and the district no longer has a single F-rated campus remaining.
Reading scores on the state’s STAAR standardized test increased by nearly 14% districtwide.
And for minority students, the numbers are just as impressive: Black and Hispanic students posted reading gains of more than 15%.
Economically disadvantaged students and emergent bilingual students also posted double-digit STAAR gains.
Math achievement has climbed as well, with Hispanic students, black students and low-income students all showing meaningful improvement.
Even more impressive, Houston students are now closing achievement gaps with the rest of Texas that had once been so entrenched as to seem permanent.
So what changed?
The answer is refreshingly simple: Adults started acting like adults again.
Rather than chasing educational fads or lowering standards, HISD focused relentlessly on instruction, accountability and execution.
The district emphasized the basics and introduced a curriculum reform plan, the New Education System, in underperforming schools.
The NES model adds more direct instruction, longer reading and math blocks, daily quizzes and an extended school day.
The program started in 85 low-performing campuses, but it’s proven so popular that more than half of the system’s 274 principals have voluntarily opted in.
Teachers were no longer left to develop their own skills, but were trained on how to use standards-aligned instructional materials more effectively, freeing educators to focus on teaching.
Most controversially of all, the district embraced accountability.
Teacher performance is being measured, and hiring became more rigorous.
Teacher pay is now tied more to effectiveness than to simple longevity.
And Houston’s leadership did something almost unheard-of in modern education bureaucracy: It reduced administrative bloat.
The district eliminated roughly 1,300 central office positions, cutting approximately $500 million from its budget.
Notice what’s missing from this story: There was no huge funding increase, no high-priced new curriculum based on the fashionable educational theory of the week.
Just adults willing to acknowledge failure and refuse to accept it.
The lesson from Houston is not complicated.
Children can learn, teachers can succeed and schools can improve.
But it’s only possible when the adults in charge stop making excuses — and start demanding results.
Bethany Mandel writes and podcasts at The Mom Wars.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
