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The New York City school system is big. Really big. The city has more public school students — over 875,000 — than in each of more than 20 states.
So when Troy Closson began covering students, families and schools in and around New York City for The New York Times in 2022, the first time he’d covered education anywhere, there was quite a learning curve.
“Coming to education from the criminal justice beat, I thought there were going to be fewer people following the stories I wrote,” said Mr. Closson, 27, who grew up in Laurel, Md., a suburb of Washington, D.C. “But what has surprised me is how closely parents and families in New York follow stories about their schools.”
Over the past four years, Mr. Closson, who joined The Times as a reporting fellow on the Metro desk in 2020, has written about the debate over “gifted” student education programs; a group of Bronx high school students who created a streetwear line; and the obstacles facing New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, as he attempts to improve the city’s schools.
In an interview, Mr. Closson talked about how he finds his stories and Mr. Mamdani’s plans for the nation’s largest school system. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Tell me about your journey to The Times.
I was always interested in sports reporting. So when I got to Northwestern University, I joined the student newspaper to cover sports. I was writing about men’s and women’s swimming, and then I realized I kind of hated writing daily stories about sports. But I loved talking to people and writing, so I stuck around, writing stories and opinion columns. I interned at a couple of different outlets in the Chicago area, and then also at The Texas Tribune in Austin. And then I came to The Times.
What were some of your initial challenges in acclimating to the education beat?
I was raised in Maryland, and everything about education is so much more complicated — and bigger — in New York. I spent my first year on the beat trying to talk to as many parents, families and teachers as possible. The Department of Education, which is its own agency with 140,000 staff members, is just a behemoth to understand.
How much time do you get to spend in classrooms?
Not as much as I want. Any time I can go inside a school for a story is my favorite part of the job. It can be tough sometimes to get permission to get inside schools, but stories become so much more interesting when you can show what it’s like to talk about a Black history lesson in a classroom, for instance, or curriculum on Muslim leaders. Just being able to show the types of questions students are asking makes a story come alive.
Where do you find your story ideas?
Many of the stories I write come from talking to teachers, parents — especially parent leaders — and principals across the city, about the biggest challenges they’re currently facing. So many of the issues and struggles that students are dealing with are citywide. For instance, the homelessness crisis is something that schools in every borough are struggling with.
You’re one of the few Black male reporters covering education. Does that help you connect with students in a system where a majority are Black or Latino?
Students have said in different ways that they feel more comfortable seeing someone like me in the role. With that Bronx high school streetwear story, I think it helped me blend in more when I was trying to fade into the back of a class and just observe the students.
What was your own K-12 education like?
I largely went to religious schools, including a private Catholic high school where I was in an International Baccalaureate program. That experience has stayed with me on this beat, as I think about how important it is for all kids to be able to have access to strong schools.
Mayor Mamdani has said he’ll reduce class sizes, strengthen support for students with disabilities and increase equity in schools. How do you plan to track his progress?
Test scores — including for students with disabilities — are one metric. But there’s also so much they don’t capture, and I often talk to parents, advocates and folks inside schools about whether children are getting enough support and the ways the school system is falling short. We’ve written, for example, about the city’s challenges in helping middle and high school students who struggle to read. That story came from conversations I’d had with teachers who felt unequipped to work with them.
There are also some promises that Mamdani has made that are easier to track. He promised to reduce class sizes, and the city releases regular data on that. He said he’d phase out the gifted and talented program for kindergartners in the coming years. Will he follow through?
What are some of the biggest issues in education right now?
The school system in New York has lost so many students. Enrollments have declined significantly in the past five to 10 years. Getting kids to be able to read and do math also continues to be an issue, especially for disadvantaged kids from low-income families and for Black and Latino kids.
And there’s a huge crisis of homeless students. The idea that the number of homeless students in New York is so large that it could make up its own school district is just unbelievable.
Sarah Bahr writes about culture and style for The Times.
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