The UFT is demanding the city Department of Education reform its reading intervention programs after a 6-point drop in English Language Arts proficiency rates in grades 3 to 8 overall and a marginal 0.1 percentage point gain in math on the 2026 state exams.
The decline in ELA scores practically erased the 7.2-point gain made on the 2025 state exams after the DOE’s launch of NYC Reads and the UFT Teacher Center’s implementation support by having Teacher Center coaches in nearly every district. NYC Reads is a research-centered, phonics-based approach to literacy instruction grounded in the science of reading.
But with the 2025–26 school year, the DOE introduced new intervention programs for struggling readers, which were poorly implemented and wiped out the gains seen last year. The 2026 overall literacy proficiency rate of 50.3% now approaches the 49.1% proficiency rate of 2024.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew blasted the DOE’s “incompetent and irresponsible implementation” of its intervention programs. The interventions often failed to align with related curriculum materials, and Mulgrew pointed to excessive student assessments, with at least three per school year now required. He threatened to withdraw the union’s support for NYC Reads if the DOE doesn’t make needed changes.
Members echoed the union president’s criticism.
Megan Basoa, a 3rd-grade teacher at PS 216 in Brooklyn’s Gravesend, said that when NYC Reads was first implemented in 2023, she and her colleagues were able to identify which students needed specific support and then give them the appropriate support. With the 2025–26 school year, the district mandated that students be placed based on city-approved screening tests that students took on the computer. Per district mandates, the school then allocated small-group time only to those students the screeners flagged.
“It was like being handcuffed,” said Basoa, “because there were kids I knew were going to fall behind for the mid-year assessment and I couldn’t help them.”
Basoa pointed out that the new highly-regimented policy took less time for her to prep, given that she didn’t have the freedom to individualize as much as she’d prefer. However, it took away from her “autonomy and freedom” and harmed student outcomes.
The reading test results for New York City public school students did outpace scores statewide, which also dropped. The overall proficiency rate in reading for New York City students in grades 3 to 8 was 50.3%, compared with 48% statewide. In math, New York City students had an overall proficiency rate of 57%, the same as statewide.
New York City students of all races and ethnicities declined in reading proficiency in 2026, but Black students, who made the greatest gains in 2025, experienced the smallest loss in 2026, with an overall reading proficiency rate of 41.9%, down 5.1 points from the previous year.
Students with disabilities also showed a smaller loss in reading proficiency rate, down 5 percentage points, to 21.7%, from 26.7% the year before. English language learners’ reading proficiency rate dropped by almost half to 6.3%, down from 12.5% in 2025.
“The scores went down because the district literally took away the teacher’s job of knowing what the students need and supporting it,” Basoa said. “They reduced every child to a number.”
UFT Vice President for Education Mary Vaccaro said the DOE made the mistake of “piling on additional programs, assessments, consultants’ recommendations and curriculum in the hopes that ‘more’ would equal better, and we lost ground.”
However, Vaccaro noted that with an evidence-based, citywide program like NYC Reads, there’s still reason for hope.
“We have to refocus on what we know works in literacy — a clear plan, a tailored curriculum and educator autonomy,” she said.