Najya, a middle school student navigating the public education system in New York City, experienced firsthand the challenges of attending schools marked by deep-seated educational inequalities. After struggling with algebra and developing anxiety around tests, Najya was enrolled in intensive tutoring. An assessment at the tutoring center revealed significant gaps in foundational math skills, such as long division and fractions—concepts she should have mastered in elementary school. Despite these hurdles, with sustained academic support from her teachers and tutors, Najya successfully improved her performance, earning mostly A’s and B’s by the end of the year and passing the state algebra exam.

Najya’s experience highlights the broader difficulties faced by schools serving students from under-resourced backgrounds. Her middle school principal, Emily Paige, acknowledged the systemic obstacles confronting schools like Unison, which enroll many students who arrive with academic deficiencies after attending segregated and underfunded elementary schools. Paige, who grew up in a working-class family and overcame her own educational struggles, described Unison’s role as working to “hold all of these truths, these complex truths, all at once” amid a system that frequently fails its most vulnerable students.

The New York City public school system is characterized by significant segregation along racial, socioeconomic, and ability lines. Most elementary students attend schools zoned to their neighborhoods, often mirroring the economic and racial makeup of those communities. Affluent families in gentrifying neighborhoods may choose to send their children elsewhere, a practice that widens the divide. In some neighborhoods, up to 75 percent of kindergarteners do not attend their zoned schools. By middle and high school, the majority operate within the school-choice system, but competitive, selective schools admit only a subset, while many children attend non-selective schools with greater concentrations of low-income students and those diagnosed with learning disabilities.

At Unison, over one-third of students have learning disabilities, compared to 17 percent at Najya's high school, illustrating the disparities in student populations across schools. These schools face difficult instructional decisions; for example, Unison eliminated homework based on research indicating it often undermines students who lack adequate foundational knowledge and support at home. Instead, class time is devoted to assignments that teachers can actively support. However, this approach did not meet the academic expectations of students like Najya, who expressed frustration that the curriculum was too easy and not sufficiently challenging.

Paige described this dynamic as a painful dilemma, noting that removing homework—intended as an antiracist step—risked lowering academic expectations and inadvertently perpetuating inequality. At the same time, initiatives such as “Algebra for All,” designed to give all eighth graders access to advanced coursework formerly reserved for more privileged students, posed their own challenges. Teachers at schools like Unison often rotate frequently and lack mastery-level experience, making it difficult to address the wide range of student needs, particularly when many are years behind grade level.

Faced with these challenges, Unison has made incremental adjustments, including reinstating homework and focusing on student growth rather than mastery, grading on a curve to acknowledge diverse starting points. Yet, these measures address only symptoms of a deeper, systemic issue characterized by inequitable access and persistent segregation in New York City’s education system.

Paige underscored the complexity of these realities, emphasizing that while educators remain committed to serving all children, the entrenched disparities and school-choice policies continue to undermine efforts to provide truly equitable education. “There’s no model out there” for reconciling these overlapping challenges, she said, as schools strive to educate students who have been educationally underserved for years.