New York City's teachers union is publicly turning on Mayor Zohran Mamdani just eight months into his term, blasting his flagship literacy program after more than half of young students failed their reading exams.
United Federation of Teachers President Mike Mulgrew took aim at Mamdani's NYC Reads program in an interview with the Daily News, calling supplemental literacy efforts a flop and warning the union would withdraw its support if the administration did not change course. The broadside came days after state English Language Arts results showed citywide reading scores for students in grades 3 through 8 dropped 6 percent from the prior year, and that more than half of students in grades 3 through 5 could not pass their reading proficiency exams, the New York Post reported.
Just about half of all students in grades 3 through 8 rated proficient on the ELA exams overall. For younger students, the ones most directly affected by the city's mandated reading curriculum, the picture was worse.
Mulgrew did not hold back about the program's implementation or the administration's responsibility for the results.
"We're not going to support it if they want to implement it the way they did this past school year."
He went further in remarks cited by Breitbart, saying the administration was wasting everyone's time: "If this administration wants to continue to waste everyone's time and not get the better results that we know we need, then we're not going to support it."
NYC Reads was not Mamdani's creation. Former Mayor Eric Adams started the mandated literacy program during his tenure. But Mamdani and his Schools Chancellor, Kamar Samuels, chose to extend it. That decision made the program, and its results, theirs.
At a press event last week, Mamdani defended the initiative:
"I continue to be confident in NYC Reads. And it is developed with the real findings of what's been effective across the country in mind."
He added that the administration looked "forward to being in conversation with the UFT as we look to not only build upon the successes of the last few years, but to go beyond that." The city's Department of Education disputed Mulgrew's characterization that supplemental programs had flopped, though the DOE did not offer specific counterarguments in the reporting.
Confidence is easy to express. But the numbers tell a different story. A 6 percent drop in reading scores across grades 3 through 8 and a majority of younger students failing proficiency is not a success to build on. It is a collapse that demands an explanation, and the union that helped put Mamdani in office is now demanding one publicly.
The reading score decline is not the only Mamdani policy under fire. The democratic socialist mayor has faced pushback on multiple fronts since taking office.
Mulgrew's criticism of NYC Reads did not happen in a vacuum. Education insiders told the Post that the union president might not have spoken out so forcefully if not for a separate, festering dispute over paraprofessional pay.
Paraprofessionals, the classroom aides who work directly with students, including special-needs children, earn a base salary of $32,000 a year in New York City. The City Council passed Intro Bill 1261 last month, which would raise that base pay by $10,000. Mamdani has neither signed nor vetoed it.
That silence is notable because of what Mamdani said when he needed the UFT's endorsement. During the campaign, with Mulgrew standing behind him at a press conference, Mamdani made his position clear:
"I will be proud to continue to support the passage of [Intro Bill 1261].... that addresses the fact that there are too many open positions right now for paraprofessionals across the city because that job simply doesn't pay enough."
After winning office with the union's backing, the administration changed its tune. A City Hall spokesperson said Mamdani now believes pay raises should be resolved through collective bargaining, not legislation. The spokesperson went further, contending the council's bill "directly violated the state's collective bargaining law."
So Mamdani stood at a podium, accepted the union's endorsement, and pledged to support a specific bill. Eight months later, his own spokesperson argues that same bill is illegal. That is not a policy evolution. It is a broken promise, and the union knows it.
This kind of reversal has become a pattern. Mamdani's fare-free bus push drew criticism from the MTA chief, who said it was driving riders to stop paying fares altogether, another initiative where the mayor's ideological ambitions collided with practical consequences.
Mulgrew pressed the paraprofessional issue on grounds that go beyond union politics. He argued the city cannot hire enough aides at $32,000 a year, and that the shortage has real victims.
"The school system can't hire enough paraprofessionals; so our special needs students are not getting the services they are legally entitled to."
He put a price tag on the problem: "This is costing city taxpayers more than a billion dollars a year in lawsuits. We need to fix this, and we can."
If Mulgrew's figure is accurate, the city is spending more than a billion dollars annually in legal liability because it will not raise a $32,000 salary by $10,000. The math alone should embarrass any administration. Special-needs students who are legally entitled to services are going without them, not because of budget constraints, but because the mayor who promised to fix the problem now hides behind a collective bargaining argument his own campaign contradicted.
Mulgrew previously rallied on the City Hall steps to support the paraprofessional pay bill. He stood behind Mamdani when the endorsement was announced. The union delivered its support. The mayor has not delivered on his end.
Mamdani's administration has faced scrutiny on other fronts as well. His pied-à-terre tax rollout hit thousands of New Yorkers with notices and a burden-of-proof nightmare, adding to a growing list of policy stumbles.
Not everyone reads Mulgrew's public offensive as pure principle. Sources told the Post that the UFT president's criticism of NYC Reads is partly an effort to deflect blame from unionized teachers for the poor test scores. Government watchdogs have also raised questions about the union's own accountability in the classroom.
That critique has some weight. Unions rarely volunteer to share blame for failing outcomes. And Mulgrew's demands, streamline instructional plans, eliminate unnecessary paperwork and assessments, align programs, sound more like a wish list than a reform agenda.
"The DOE needs to make sure each school has a clear instructional plan. That means streamlining what schools are doing, making sure programs align, and eliminating unnecessary paperwork and assessments."
But whatever Mulgrew's motives, the underlying facts remain. More than half of young students cannot read at grade level. Scores dropped 6 percent in a single year. The administration extended a program that is not working and is now defending it with platitudes about confidence and national best practices. And a mayor who ran on a specific promise to raise paraprofessional pay is now arguing the bill he endorsed is legally improper.
Questions about Mamdani's priorities have surfaced before. When suspected antisemitic stabbings occurred in the city, the mayor stayed silent for hours while posting about housing taxes, a moment that raised doubts about his ability to respond to crises with the urgency they demand.
Mamdani won office as a democratic socialist with the backing of one of the most influential unions in New York. The UFT's endorsement gave him credibility with working-class voters and institutional muscle in a crowded race. In return, he made specific, public commitments, on paraprofessional pay, on education, on supporting the people who keep classrooms running.
Eight months later, reading scores are falling, the pay bill sits unsigned on his desk, and the union that helped elect him is going to the press. The DOE says Mulgrew is wrong about the literacy programs. City Hall says the pay bill violates state law. And Mamdani says he is confident in a program that just produced its worst results yet.
Mulgrew may have his own reasons for picking this fight now. But the facts he is citing, failing students, a paraprofessional shortage, a billion dollars in lawsuits, and a broken campaign promise, are not union spin. They are the record of an administration that talked big, got the endorsement, and then walked away from the deal.
Promises made to unions at campaign press conferences do not evaporate because a spokesperson discovers collective bargaining law. New York City's kids cannot read, the aides who help them cannot afford to stay, and the mayor who pledged to fix it is hiding behind process. That is not governance. That is evasion, and the people paying the price are the students and taxpayers who had no seat at the podium.
