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Former New York City schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos has accepted a senior role at HMH, a major education company at the center of the city’s reading curriculum overhaul.
Aviles-Ramos started at the company on Monday as a senior advisor with the title “executive in residence for innovation and analytics,” company officials said.
“In my new role at HMH, I will spend time engaging with leaders in large districts across the country, listening to their experiences and learning from their challenges to inform how HMH supports districts at scale,” Aviles-Ramos wrote in a statement. “My role will be advisory, forward-looking, and focused on developing insights on best practices for impact and implementation.” Her new job was first reported by the Daily News.
The former schools chief’s decision to work for a firm with millions of dollars in business with the city’s public school system swiftly drew strong reactions from parents, teachers, and experts.
“They’re a provider for one of the most widely used reading curricula in the City of New York,” said Jonathan Collins, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University Teachers College. “At the very least, I think it should raise eyebrows.”
HMH, formerly known as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, gained traction in New York City under former Mayor Eric Adams’ signature initiative to standardize elementary school reading curriculums. Although city officials approved three reading programs, HMH is required in 22 of the city’s 32 local districts — owing in part to a savvy marketing strategy that allowed schools to use some materials at no charge during the pandemic, giving the company a strong foothold.
Aviles-Ramos was not chancellor when that program launched, but she became responsible for supervising the effort when she took the helm in October 2024. The school’s chief hoped to stay on the job, but was passed over by Mayor Zohran Mamdani in favor of Kamar Samuels.
HMH, which is organized as an anthology-style textbook packed with passages specifically designed to teach reading skills, has drawn mixed reactions from parents and educators. Some contend that it relies too heavily on excerpts rather than full books and is not culturally responsive. The company disputes both claims. As the city has expanded the curriculum mandate to middle schools while Aviles-Ramos was chancellor, local superintendents largely steered clear of HMH.
The company did more than $40 million in business with the Education Department last year, according to records maintained by the comptroller’s office, and the city has paid HMH over $28 million so far this fiscal year.
Under city law, Aviles-Ramos may not work with the city’s Education Department on behalf of HMH for two years. The law also prohibits her from seeking or negotiating the terms of the job while she was working for the Education Department.
Aviles-Ramos, who declined an interview request through an HMH spokesperson, said in a statement that she will not work with the city’s public schools “in any capacity” and sought out guidance from the Education Department’s ethics office as well as the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board.
“I value this guidance and will continue to abide by all ethical requirements,” she wrote.
Aviles-Ramos is not the first chancellor to decamp to the private sector. Former Chancellor Joel Klein accepted a job running Amplify, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, and later served on the board of Juul, an e-cigarette company. And Richard Carranza, who served as schools chief under Mayor Bill de Blasio, joined IXL, an education technology company.
Other schools chiefs have stayed in the public or not-for-profit realms. Dennis Walcott, who was chancellor under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, leads the Queens Public Library system.
“That kind of movement to the private sector is really not unusual,” said Tom Liam Lynch, a former Education Department administrator during the Bloomberg administration who now runs an organization focused on teacher training in New York City.
Lynch said Aviles-Ramos’ experience at all levels of the system — as a parent, teacher, principal, and school system leader — could be an asset in improving their curriculum offerings and help strengthen implementation in big school systems.
“She’s a razor sharp educator,” he said. “I would trust her to navigate the ethics involved.”
Others accused Aviles-Ramos of profiting from her position leading the nation’s largest school system.
“This, to me, is evidence and an example of the corruption that we all expect is there,” said Alina Lewis, a parent at the Brooklyn School of Inquiry who has criticized HMH and pushed the city to give the school an exemption from using the curriculum.
“They’re paying her for the contacts and influence she has at DOE,” she said.
Some teachers took to social media to vent. “We are so tired of this,” one educator wrote on X. “HMH took away the READING OF WHOLE BOOKS.”
Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.
