NYC public schools launching new division aimed at migrants, students with disabilities

NEW YORK — New York City public schools will launch a division to better serve the city’s growing populations of English learners and students with disabilities, and push for more standardization how math is taught, education officials announced Monday.

The Division of Inclusive and Accessible Learning will repurpose $750 million in existing dollars from the Education Department budget, including 1,300 staffers under a new deputy chancellor, Christina Foti — who has overseen special education since the start of the Adams administration.

The reshuffle is the latest in a broader reorganization under Chancellor David Banks, who this spring dissolved the 2,000-person teaching and learning division that oversaw both the multilingual and special education offices, and curriculum policy.

“This leadership is not going to allow another Eric Adams to sit in the classroom and pray to be overlooked,” Mayor Adams, who struggled with dyslexia in high school, said at a press conference at Samara Community School in the Bronx.

The Education Department has not had a deputy chancellor of students with disabilities and English language learners for several years.

Alongside the division, the city will launch a new multilingual learners advisory council of researchers, advocates, union leaders, teachers and parents to guide them on issues related to immigrant students and their families. An existing special education advisory council will continue.

The former division of teaching and learning, under former deputy chancellor Carolyne Quintana, also led Banks’ signature literacy initiative in preschool and elementary schools. By this fall, each of the city’s 32 community school districts has to offer one of three curricula focused on letter sounds and combinations. The program, known as NYC Reads, was moved under the school leadership division.

Building off the literacy initiative, Adams and Banks also launched a $32-million math push Monday called NYC Solves, focused on curriculum and intensive teacher coaching.

This fall, 93 middle schools in eight school districts and 420 high schools citywide will use the Illustrative Math curriculum, which focuses on solving problems in both math and real-world contexts. It was not immediately clear how many of the schools were already using the curriculum.

Over the next three years, all high schools will have to adopt Illustrative Math. For middle schools, district superintendents will choose from a list of pre-approved math curriculum, which currently includes three options: Illustrative Math, i-Ready and Amplify.

The eight districts whose middle schools will participate in the first phase this school year are: 2, 7, 11, 12, 14, 15, 26, and 32. All had already widely adopted Illustrative Math.

“Students must learn the fundamentals and understand the concepts behind them,” Banks said. “And importantly, they need a clear grasp of how math operates beyond the classroom — in the supermarket, at the bank, in careers.”

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