Applying to High School in New York City Is a Soul-Destroying Nightmare
Until recently, I thought my worst New York City experience was the time I was waiting to cross Houston Street and a cackling vagrant punched me in the face. That, however, was before I started the process of getting my oldest kid into a public high school.
New York has an almost purely school choice system; most families don’t have a default high school that they’re zoned for. The admissions process, a mix of meritocratic culling and sheer chance, is time-consuming, psychologically taxing and so byzantine that it’s hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t endured it.
“I was somehow holding it together with all the balls in the air until this high school process,” Eva Pinkley, a single mother in Brooklyn, told me last week, as her neurodivergent son worked on an application essay with a coach she could barely afford. Now, she said, “I’m completely falling apart.” An education reporter I know contemplated moving out of the city after seeing high school applications up close. Friends of mine who’ve endured the process say the only consolation is that it makes applying to college seem easy.
I’d heard how miserable it was before it was my turn, but was still shocked by it, in part because of a stroke of particularly bad luck. My kid will, I think, be fine — I will go to great lengths to assure it — but I’m not sure how people with fewer resources cope. And the whole nightmare made me curious about how it got this way, and who all this punishing complexity serves.
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Teacher Content Knowledge Test Results: Early Literacy Foundations of Reading.
Notes and links on the taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI and Jill Underly.
“Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?” she asked.
Madison’s district, despite an elite university pipeline, hypereducated leadership, and a shiny, new strategic plan, suffers the same frailties as Milwaukee’s: basement performance, backbreaking spending. But while Milwaukee is pulling out of its tailspin due to courageouschoices from the top, Madison is ponderously ambling to nowhere. Just ask the locals. “You need the marketing, and you need the product,” as a parent told a reporter. “I’m missing the product.”
2025-2026 Madison 4k-3rd grade Early Literacy Screener report: The bar moves faster than the kids.
Joe Gothard, Becky Kundert and Sonia Spencer Remarks on Madison’s K-12 Literacy Crisis.
2026-2027 Madison K-12 $pending continues to grow, fueled by a 9.7% (!) property tax increase. Total spending will be at least $706,000,000 for 25,003 students, or $28,236 per student.
May 2026 Madison School District Presentation: 7,095 adults for 25,003 students (3.52 students per adult!)
2024-2025 Early Literacy Screener Map.
Map: Foundations of Reading Results: 2015–2024
Where have all the students gone?
3,887 Madison 4 year old to third grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group.
Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average k-12 tax & $pending. This despite our long term, disastrous reading results. May, 2026: 7,095 Staff for 25,003 students; $pending > $26k per student!
Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability
The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
China’s PhD Glut Drives Top Graduates to High School Teaching Jobs
