New York City's public school students and their families await the choice of a new mayor who will inherit the nation's largest school system.[1] Yet here's the thing: what should be the centerpiece conversation – NYC Dept. of Education, with its $40 billion budget and outsized impact on nearly a million young lives – has often been treated as an afterthought in this mayoral race.

Let's be frank about the stakes. New York City's public schools once served over 1.2 million students. Today, that number has fallen to around 900,000.[2] Families have voted with their feet, moving to private schools, charter networks, or pulling up stakes entirely for suburban districts. If we're serious about education, we need schools so compelling, so excellent, that they draw families back into the city. We have the resources. We have brilliant educators. What we need is a vision bold enough to make high school relevant again – exciting again – honoring what should be the best years of young people's lives.

As votes are cast today, it's worth reflecting on what we know of the three major candidates' education platforms and how each might embrace (or sideline) the kind of assessment and accountability reforms that have gained traction in pockets across the state. From New York's Portrait of a Graduate framework to performance-based assessment schools in the Consortium, from student-centered learning to the broader movement questioning high-stakes testing – the potential directions are many. No matter who prevails tonight – Zohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, or Curtis Sliwa – these conversations about the future of learning will continue. They'll need to.

Zohran Mamdani: A Grassroots Vision for Learning Beyond Tests

Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist and state assemblymember, has energized a progressive coalition with bold ideas for affordability and equity. On education, his platform has been notably light on detailed K-12 policy – something even his supporters acknowledge.[1] Yet what Mamdani lacks in wonky white papers, he makes up for in philosophy: he's focused on the city's "most vulnerable children," from students with disabilities to the record 154,000 public school students who experienced homelessness last year. As a former transfer school educator, that language speaks to me, personally. 

His campaign's signature education idea is actually about relinquishing power – ending the mayor's sole control of schools in favor of "co-governance" with parents, educators, and students. It's a populist stance born of a critique that communities have too little say under the current system of mayoral control. (Both of Mamdani's rivals vehemently oppose this – Cuomo called it a "terrible mistake," invoking memories of the old local board system he labeled "corrupt patronage mills.")

What's notable is Mamdani's apparent willingness to challenge the testing status quo and elevate more holistic measures of student success. He's earned the backing of the city's teachers union and quietly convened dozens of education advocates, parents, and experts to crowdsource ideas for his schools agenda.[1] In those roundtables, topics ranged from funding and community schools to serving English language learners and even the role of artificial intelligence in classrooms. This openness to listening creates space for the kind of performance-based assessment models that have shown promise in New York's Consortium schools and align with the state's Portrait of a Graduate competencies.

The Consortium schools have demonstrated for years that in-depth student projects and oral defenses can serve as viable alternatives to standardized tests while maintaining college readiness. It isn't hard to imagine Mamdani championing an expansion of such models. He's expressed skepticism about programs that sort and silo students at early ages – for example, proposing to phase out gifted-and-talented screening in kindergarten (while still allowing an entry point in third grade).[3] Instead of doubling down on selective programs, his impulse is to invest in all neighborhoods: fully funded schools, smaller class sizes, and wraparound supports like mental health counselors and nurses in every building.[4]

And here's where Mamdani's vision could address the enrollment crisis: imagine if New York City set an explicit goal to reverse that 300,000-student decline. Not through marketing gimmicks, but through genuine educational excellence that makes every neighborhood high school a place where students want to be. Fully resourced community schools with rich project-based learning, where students produce work that matters – documentaries, investigative journalism, research that gets validated by experts beyond their teachers. Schools where the work is so engaging and meaningful that families who decamped to Westchester or Greenwich start reconsidering. That's the kind of audacious goal that could mobilize support across constituencies.

These are the building blocks of an education system that values whole-child development over test prep. Mamdani's youth and background also make him attuned to student voice in a unique way. He's run a TikTok-savvy campaign that has galvanized many young New Yorkers – even high schoolers – to engage with politics. That sensibility could translate into policies that genuinely elevate student agency in schools.

The challenge, of course, will be turning broad values into concrete policies. Skeptics note that Mamdani has yet to offer a clear plan to improve instructional quality citywide.[1] But as he said when pressed about his stance on mayoral control, he "will not shirk accountability." His approach to education may ultimately be less about imposing a grand plan from above and more about unleashing innovation from below – trusting educators, students, and families to help shape a more human-centered school system. Whether that translates into meaningful reform or diffuse efforts will depend largely on execution and the caliber of deputies he recruits for Tweed.

Andrew Cuomo: Old Playbooks, New Promises – and the Tension Between Them

If Mamdani represents a departure from the old orthodoxy, Andrew Cuomo in many ways embodies that orthodoxy's return. The former New York governor, running as an independent, has positioned himself as the "champion of selective admissions" and higher standards.[1] Unlike Mamdani, Cuomo has been very specific about certain education policies – and they largely double down on competitive, data-driven models of the past.

He's vowed to double the number of specialized high schools that admit students based on a single exam, expand gifted and talented programs to more kindergarteners, and even reintroduce academic screens (like tests and attendance records) for middle and high school admissions that had moved to more holistic criteria during the pandemic. To Cuomo, this is about not "holding back the extraordinary" students who excel on traditional metrics.

His pitch resonates with certain parents and groups like PLACE NYC, who worry that efforts to soften competitive edges have watered down opportunities for high-achievers. Indeed, PLACE – an influential parent coalition favoring accelerated learning – has endorsed Cuomo, and he's openly aligned himself with their agenda.

Cuomo's education platform reads as a deliberate contrast to Mamdani's. Where Mamdani talks about shared governance, Cuomo staunchly defends mayoral control, calling it one of the most significant reforms of the last 40 years. Where Mamdani questions early gifted tracking, Cuomo insists on expanding it. He's also championed charter schools – promising to push Albany to lift the state cap – and even floated replacing the city's lowest-performing public schools with charters or other new models.

(The notion of mass school closures is eye-opening, not least because it revives memories of Michael Bloomberg's controversial closure strategy. Those battles left deep scars in communities, and the research on whether closures improved outcomes for displaced students remains mixed at best.)

In short, Cuomo is staking his claim on the idea that more competition and higher standards will jolt the system out of its doldrums. "Deciding our education policy – the future of 1 million students – is perhaps the most important job of a Mayor," he posted on social media as a pointed challenge to Mamdani. His implication is clear: he has a plan, and his opponent doesn't.

But will Cuomo's old playbook address the actual challenges facing NYC schools in 2025? Many educators and policy analysts are skeptical. Cuomo's track record as governor cuts both ways. He championed tougher teacher evaluations tied to student test scores – a move that was meant to raise the bar but instead led to a massive parent opt-out movement and eventual policy retreat.[1] That history suggests a complicated relationship with the very high-stakes testing regime he once boosted.

In this campaign, Cuomo's focus on selective schools and charters signals a continued faith in test-based sorting and structural interventions. Yet much of the cutting-edge work in education policy has moved elsewhere – toward competency-based learning, performance assessments, and credentialing systems that capture the full range of student capabilities. These are areas Cuomo rarely mentions.

While he talks about expanding early college credit programs and advanced STEM schools (which have their place), he hasn't said much about the broader shift toward performance assessments or alternative pathways that don't depend primarily on exam scores. It's telling that Cuomo seized on Mamdani's lack of a detailed education plan, but the plan he offers is largely a return to competition-as-motivation.

There is, of course, an argument for some of Cuomo's positions. Many families value specialized high schools, and some targeted interventions in chronically underperforming schools can be justified. His promise to support class size reduction – at least in principle – and to expand pre-K suggests awareness of the need for foundational investments.[1] However, he's also called the class size mandate "detached from reality" without full state funding, aligning with those who see it as an unfunded burden on the city.

This technocratic, budget-conscious streak runs through Cuomo's vision: big promises, but always tethered to questions of cost, efficiency, and measurable results as defined through traditional metrics. In a Cuomo administration, we'd likely see more frequent testing and data collection to identify underperformance, coupled with aggressive interventions. It's a vision of education reform from the top down.

The question is whether such an approach leaves room for the kind of grassroots innovation we're seeing gain traction – projects where students develop portfolios over years, where their work is validated by external experts, where college admissions increasingly look beyond test scores. Cuomo's alliance with groups focused on traditional acceleration suggests he might view these alternative assessment models with skepticism unless they can demonstrate rigorous predictive validity for college success. That's not an unreasonable stance, but it does suggest the burden of proof would fall heavily on innovators to justify departures from established metrics.

Curtis Sliwa: Cutting Bureaucracy While Clinging to the Familiar

The third major contender, Curtis Sliwa, offers yet another angle. Sliwa is best known as the founder of the Guardian Angels and a brash radio personality – hardly a typical education wonk. He ran on a platform heavy on public safety and anti-incumbent sentiment. Yet Sliwa has made news by how bluntly he talks about DOE inefficiencies.

He's pledged to slash $10 billion from the education budget – roughly 42% of what the city spends on schools.[1] No serious budget analyst thinks this figure is remotely feasible without massive service cuts, but it underscores Sliwa's outsider appeal: he promises to "chop from the top" and redirect resources to classrooms. In his telling, despite record-high spending per pupil, NYC schools are "failing too many kids," so only radical restructuring will do.[4] He wants an "entirely new model" with "clear goals and measurable outcomes" – the kind of accountability rhetoric that resonates with frustrated parents.

What would this look like in practice? Sliwa's platform mixes back-to-basics traditionalism with populist efficiency promises. He emphasizes safety and discipline, vowing to return school safety agents to NYPD command and address truancy through counseling programs.[4] He advocates phonics-based reading instruction and structured math teaching, signaling belief that we need to refocus on proven fundamentals rather than chase pedagogical trends.

At the same time, Sliwa wants to expand Gifted and Talented programs citywide and increase vocational education options for students who might benefit from career pathways.[4] Notably, he mentions his personal story: both his sons failed to test into G&T programs, yet "they've done quite well" in public schools without it, which for him suggests the system can work if run properly.[3] Still, he supports growing gifted programs as a way to retain middle-class families and challenge high performers.

If a Sliwa administration implemented his vision, NYC schools might see austere belt-tightening at central office levels, combined with targeted investments in frontline services – more counselors, more sports and extracurricular opportunities, perhaps new vocational high schools. These moves would find support in many quarters. Indeed, strengthening career and technical education pathways is arguably an important reform, recognizing that college-for-all has never been a realistic or desirable universal goal.

But Sliwa's academic instincts aren't particularly innovative. He speaks to nostalgia for basics – phonics, multiplication tables, classroom order. It's hard to imagine him championing project-based learning or portfolio defenses before first ensuring traditional metrics are solid. There's a paradox here: Sliwa's focus on outcomes suggests reliance on testing, but his anti-bureaucracy stance could reduce top-down prescriptiveness.

Whether innovation flourishes would depend on his definition of accountability. If success equals test scores and attendance, schools will feel pressure to drill basics. If there's flexibility for multiple measures of success, including demonstrated student work, then space opens up. Given Sliwa's rhetoric, he likely won't be an early champion of competency frameworks or social-emotional learning – not because he opposes those capabilities, but because his focus is on what he sees as urgent practical fixes: safety, literacy, numeracy, discipline.

The Assessment Reform Landscape: Where Things Actually Stand

While candidates debate governance structures and budget allocations, it's worth stepping back to assess where New York actually stands on the kinds of assessment reforms that could meaningfully improve student outcomes and family satisfaction.

The state's Portrait of a Graduate initiative represents a significant policy shift, acknowledging that college and career readiness requires more than content knowledge – it requires critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and other competencies that standardized tests struggle to measure. The Performance Standards Consortium has demonstrated for decades that schools can use performance-based assessments as their primary accountability measure while maintaining strong college acceptance and completion rates.

What's been missing is the infrastructure to scale these approaches while maintaining quality and credibility. The challenge isn't whether performance assessments can work – we know they can. The challenge is whether they can work at scale, with consistent quality, portable credentials that colleges and employers trust, and without becoming another unfunded mandate on already-stretched schools.

This is where technology and thoughtful design can play a role. Platforms that support multi-evaluator scoring, maintain evidence of student work, and create portable digital credentials can help address the scalability challenge. When students' projects are evaluated by subject experts beyond their classroom teacher, validated through structured rubrics, and documented with actual artifacts of their thinking, you create a credibility that's been hard to achieve with purely school-based assessments.

The question isn't whether such systems should exist – the Portrait of a Graduate framework and the Consortium schools have already made that policy case. The question is how to build them so they genuinely serve students and educators rather than becoming another compliance exercise. That requires humility about implementation challenges, serious attention to quality assurance (including the kind of security and data protection standards that any credential system demands), and patience to get it right rather than rushing to scale.

Some of us have spent our time working on exactly these challenges – building validation systems, establishing university partnerships for expert review, working toward SOC 2 certification to ensure data security meets industry standards. It's not glamorous work, but it's necessary if alternative assessment is going to be more than a boutique option for well-resourced schools.

The infrastructure for assessment innovation exists and is being refined. Whether any new administration has the vision to leverage it, or the wisdom to support grassroots innovation rather than impose one-size-fits-all solutions, remains to be seen.

Expanding Access: The Equity Imperative

Of course, any assessment reform only matters if it serves all students, not just those with advantages. The HS Cred platform, for example, charges students the $100 required to coordinate independent evaluation of each student project. Had we designed the platform to receive money from anyone else, incentives would have focused on that constituency’s needs over student needs. HS Cred is a platform designed to serve students and thus they must remain in control of the incentive structures driving the platform. 

Given the hard limit of 20 published credits on HS Cred, the total cost per student is $2000 for their entire K-12 journey (20 approved credits, $100 per credit). For those who cannot afford this validation fee, it is crucial that we stand up funding mechanisms specifically designed to ensure access regardless of family means. In particular, nonprofit structures that can provide fee waivers – letting schools or individual sponsors underwrite costs for students in need. These pathways for 11th or 12th graders who need financial assistance to participate in performance-based assessment opportunities, is crucial. That’s why HS Cred is backed by a research foundation, ACF, whose purpose is to offer such fee waivers. 

These funding models matter because they acknowledge a basic truth: academic credentials shouldn't be commodities only the privileged can afford. When donors contribute to support students completing rigorous projects – $100 can cover the expert review and processing for a full credit-bearing project – they're investing in actual learning experiences, not test prep. A school in the Bronx with budget constraints can access the same opportunities as a school in Westchester through the work of HS Cred and ACF. 

This kind of infrastructure – combining technological platforms with equitable funding mechanisms – creates conditions where reform can scale without leaving under-resourced communities behind. It's the piece that's often missing when we talk about "innovation": not just the good idea, but the economic model and access strategy that makes it viable for the students who need it most. This is the only way we can expand opportunity to match academic talent, wherever it is hiding. 

Looking Ahead: The Work Continues, Regardless

On this Election Day, as New York City chooses its next leader and analysts parse the implications, those of us working on educational transformation stay focused on the long game. Elections matter – they create contexts and opportunities, open doors or close them. But the fundamental work of improving learning experiences, creating credible alternatives to over-testing, and building infrastructure for authentic assessment continues regardless of who sits in City Hall.

The next mayor will face enormous pressures: budget constraints, demands from competing constituencies, urgent needs around safety and literacy, political calculations about what's popular versus what's effective. Whether Mamdani, Cuomo, or Sliwa, they'll need partners willing to do the hard work of implementation, not just offer critique.

The encouraging news is that the momentum toward more authentic, student-centered learning isn't dependent on any one leader or administration. It's happening in classrooms where teachers design meaningful projects. It's happening in the Consortium schools that have pioneered performance assessment. It's happening in technology platforms being built to support validation at scale. It's happening in funding structures being established to ensure equity. It's happening in the gradual shift of college admissions toward test-optional policies and holistic review.

Those of us working in this space – building platforms, convening stakeholders, refining validation processes, establishing funding mechanisms – see our role as supporting this broader movement, not driving it through top-down mandates. We design for adaptability, ready to support schools whether they need portfolio assessment solutions, ways to offer credit for independent research, or systems connecting classroom learning with external validation.

The arc of education policy is long, but there's reason for optimism. The old system of seat-time credits and high-stakes standardized tests is showing its age. Families are demanding something better – evidenced by that 300,000-student enrollment decline. Educators know there are better ways to engage learners and measure growth. The policy frameworks (like Portrait of a Graduate) are being established. The Consortium schools have proven the concept. Technology and funding structures are making scalable implementation possible.

What's needed now is the political will to support experimentation, the humility to learn from what works, and the patience to build systems that prioritize credibility over speed. Whichever candidate prevails tonight, there will be opportunities to advance this agenda – if we approach it with evidence, rigor, and genuine commitment to serving all students.

The conversation continues tomorrow, and the day after, and the years after that. Those of us committed to educational transformation aren't waiting for perfect political conditions. We're building, testing, refining, and preparing for the moment when leadership is ready to embrace alternatives to the status quo. That moment may come sooner than we think – or it may take longer than we hope. Either way, the work continues.

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FOOTNOTES

[1] Chalkbeat New York, "Where the NYC mayoral candidates stand on education" and related coverage of the 2025 mayoral race, https://chalkbeat.org

[2] NYC Department of Education enrollment data; various Chalkbeat New York reports on enrollment trends

[3] Spectrum News NY1, "A look at education issues in the mayoral race," https://ny1.com

[4] FOX 5 NY News, "Mamdani, Cuomo and Sliwa's stances on education in NYC," https://fox5ny.com