Mamdani Eases Adams-Era Curriculum Mandate for NYC Early Childhood Education

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

New York City Education Department officials in recent months quietly relaxed a controversial curriculum mandate for early childhood education programs, Chalkbeat has learned.

The 2023 mandate, part of former Mayor Eric Adams’ sweeping NYC Reads curriculum overhaul, required all classrooms in the city’s publicly funded early childhood education system to adopt The Creative Curriculum, a nationally used program created by the Washington, D.C.-based Teaching Strategies. It applied to some 140,000 kids ages 5 and under in the city’s free infant and toddler, 3-K and prekindergarten classrooms, whether in home-based programs, community-run facilities or public schools.

The move drew backlash from some educators and early childhood education experts who argued it burdened teachers with bureaucratic busywork and diminished their ability to tailor lessons to their students’ specific needs and backgrounds.

But in guidance released late this spring, city officials gave providers a new option: They can now apply to use a different curriculum. Applications must include parent and teacher input and select a curriculum from the city’s pre-approved list of eight curricula.

“Every early care and education program serves a unique community that they know best,” said Education Department spokesperson Dominique Ellison. The new approach “gives educators and programs leaders the flexibility to make informed choices, backed by data and quality assurance, rather than a one-size-fits-all mandate.”

Education Department officials didn’t say how many providers applied or were approved to switch curriculums. City officials also left in place what educators have described as the mandate’s most controversial element: Providers must still use a data-heavy assessment system called GOLD, which accompanies The Creative Curriculum, even if they switch curriculums. GOLD asks teachers to regularly evaluate students on dozens of objectives in areas like math, language, and social emotional development.

Still, loosening the early childhood mandate marks perhaps the most significant step so far under Mayor Zohran Mamdani to dial back curriculum mandates imposed under Adams.

“It is a big shift,” said Shael Polakow-Suranksy, president of Bank Street College of Education and a former deputy chancellor in the city Education Department. “And it’s very responsive to what the field has been asking for over the last few years.”

A Sweeping Change Draws Backlash

The early childhood mandate got less public attention than the city’s math and literacy overhauls for K-12 schools, but it was no less sweeping.

Before 2023, many programs used Units of Study, a curriculum developed by city teachers during former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s pre-K expansion. Others used more specialized approaches like Reggio Emilia or Montessori, educators said.

But by spring 2024, roughly 90% of early childhood programs had switched to The Creative Curriculum and its accompanying assessment system, former Deputy Chancellor for Early Childhood Education Kara Ahmed said at the time.

“I can take you to a school in Staten Island, and I can take you to a school in Brooklyn, or Queens on the same day, and all the early childhood kids are all working from the same playbook,” former Chancellor David Banks said in 2024, calling the shift “absolutely amazing.”

The Creative Curriculum has been around for decades, and is structured around broad topics such as balls and trees, with activities that allow kids to explore and investigate.

City officials argued that standardization would make it easier to monitor programs and guarantee quality across the city. The mandate also included training for teachers.

But People’s Early Childhood Education, an advocacy group of providers, Education Department staffers, and others, began organizing opposition to the mandate.

Some educators highlighted the contrast between The Creative Curriculum and Units of Study. The latter was translated into 11 languages and included New York City-specific lessons, such as a transportation unit covering subways and buses and a housing unit that highlighted apartments. The Creative Curriculum, meanwhile, is only available in English and Spanish, and educators said its units often felt generic.

“It doesn’t feel authentic,” said one longtime early childhood educator at a 2024 forum organized by Bank Street. “It just didn’t represent my kids.”

Educators noted that the pre-K Creative Curriculum repeated the same unit topics as the 3-K edition, leaving some kids disengaged.

Assessment System Sparks Ongoing Concerns

Some educators who have used the curriculum for years said it became more regimented and less engaging after a private equity firm purchased Teaching Strategies.

The city Education Department has paid Teaching Strategies nearly $33 million since summer 2023, according to Checkbook NYC.

Particularly concerning for many teachers was the GOLD assessment system designed to accompany the curriculum. GOLD requires teachers to evaluate each child across dozens of different metrics three times a year and include evidence, such as observational notes, photos, or work samples, for each score. That could amount to over 1,000 entries every three months for a single class of 18, pre-K teacher Helen Frazier wrote for Chalkbeat in 2023. The system then automatically generates lesson plans and small-group activities based on those assessment results, several educators said.

“It was the antithesis of everything that is so positive about education,” said Alice Mulligan, the director of Our Saviours Lutheran Preschool in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Mulligan, a longtime contractor with the city Education Department, said she refused to comply with the city’s mandate, even after officials told her that her contract could be terminated.

An Education Department spokesperson said the agency is maintaining the requirement to use GOLD, regardless of which curriculum a program chooses, to keep a standardized way of measuring students’ progress across the city.

The list of other pre-approved curriculum options includes Units of Study, as well as Explorations, Let’s Play and Connections, all created by the Education Department for younger kids, according to a document obtained by Chalkbeat. HighScope and Tools of the Mind, two other nationally used curriculums, are also options, along with more specialized programs for kids learning English and kids with disabilities.

Montessori schools, which were previously required to use The Creative Curriculum, can also apply to switch back to the Montessori curriculum.

The curriculum mandate change moves the early childhood system in a different direction than K-12 schools, where Chancellor Kamar Samuels not only has kept existing literacy and math curriculum mandates in elementary and high schools, but has expanded them to new grades.

While a small number of high-performing elementary and high schools have received waivers from the literacy and math curriculum mandates, there’s no formal process for schools to apply or clear criteria by which the waivers are awarded.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

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