The UFT’s disregard for students is evident in class-size cap decisions.

Sticking firmly to its principles, the Urban Institute has exposed the state’s Big Apple-only class-size mandate as reducing “equity” for the city’s neediest students.

The law will force the city to add teachers more to already high-performing schools than to low-performing ones — which means the class-size mandate isn’t about improving education, but about adding more union members.

That outs the “progressives” who rammed the law through as nothing but teacher-union shills.

Public schools serving low-income black and Hispanic kids largely already meet the teachers-per-student mandates, the UI notes — so the money spent on extra teachers will mainly go to schools serving better-off families.

Slice it another way: More than 80% of white and Asian students would see their class sizes shrunk, compared with 56% of black students and 66% of Hispanic ones.

Heck, the law will require more teachers at the city’s elite specialized high schools — which all by itself tells you that these ratios have nothing to do with improving education.

Indeed, studies show that hiring new, inexperienced teachers does little if anything to boost student achievement.

Your child is better off in a crowded class with an expert teacher than a half-empty room with a newbie.

No, it’s all about adding dues-paying members for Mike Mulgrew’s United Federation of Teachers.

At the public expense: The unfunded state mandate will force the already-strapped city to spend another $2 billion a year on hiring at least 17,700 more teachers by the time it kicks in fully in late 2027.

Of course, the UFT and its lawmaking pawns pretend it’s “for the children.”

Respect to the Urban Institute for pointing out that the reverse is true.