The loops, coming back.
By Mara Quinn | November 13, 2026
Cursive handwriting disappeared from New York classrooms in 2011 when the state adopted Common Core standards, but it never actually left. Teachers kept teaching it anyway, their students kept practicing the loops and swirls, and now, according to reporting from Hudson Valley Country and 943 Lite FM, cursive is creeping back. A decade after Common Core, the script that was supposed to be obsolete is visibly returning to schools across the country, and in the Hudson Valley, kids are learning to sign their names again.
The shift began when New York State adopted Common Core English Language Arts standards in 2011, with implementation starting in 2012-13. The standards made no requirement for cursive instruction. Crucially, schools were never prohibited from teaching it; districts and teachers could decide for themselves. Many continued anyway. "Plenty of local teachers kept teaching cursive even without a statewide requirement," according to the Hudson Valley Country reporting, because they believed it mattered.
What was supposed to be a quieter fade turned into a floor. A 2017 bill in the New York State Legislature would have mandated cursive instruction and required students to demonstrate proficiency by the end of fifth grade. It never became law. Around the same time, though, New York City began actively encouraging schools to bring cursive back and provided resources for teaching it.
The momentum is national. According to the National Education Association, 27 states now have laws either requiring or encouraging cursive instruction, roughly double the number a decade ago. That surge suggests the pendulum has swung: after cursive was dropped in the name of digital-age efficiency, states are betting that handwriting matters.
New York has still not mandated it statewide. Here in the Hudson Valley, whether a child learns cursive comes down to the district, and sometimes the individual teacher. It is not universal, but it is no longer dead.
