NY test scores plummet, kids flee yet empty schools stay open, wasting billions

Troubling news keeps piling up for New York’s public schools.Kids keep performing poorly on standardized tests, fueling a race to the exits by parents seeking better opportunities.That’s led to school enrollments well below capacity.

Yet these schools remain open, draining dollars — without boosting achievement. For taxpayers — and parents seeking better schools — it’s pure madness.Take the just-released National Assessment of Educational Progress (a k a, the “nation’s report card”): It finds just 23% of eighth-graders in the city are proficient in math, and 29% in reading.Only a third of fourth-graders are proficient in math, and even fewer, 28%, in reading.Statewide, the best result was just 37% of fourth-graders proficient in math. With such dismal results, it’s not surprising that New York public schools are also losing students at some of the fastest rates in the nation. Data released by the National Center for Education Statistics show the state lost 5.9% of its students between the fall of 2019 and 2023, more than all but four other states.It lost 3.6 percentage points more students than did neighboring Pennsylvania, for instance, and even 0.7 points more than California. Over 80% of New York school districts are still below their pre-pandemic enrollment levels.Given New York’s demographic trends, including fewer kindergarten enrollments and lower birth rates, student counts are unlikely to rebound in the years to come.As such, lawmakers and taxpayers must closely monitor whether school districts are closing under-capacity schools when necessary.  New Reason Foundation research shows New York’s public school districts closed fewer schools after the pandemic and only returned to their pre-COVID closure levels last school year.Despite a loss of 215,000 students, only 104 traditional public schools were closed between the 2017-2018 and 2023-2024 school years. In 2024, New York closed just 16 public schools statewide.

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