Recent report shows closing schools are packed with high-needs students, but City hasn’t released data showing where those kids ended up
Elected officials ask: What happened to the kids who didn’t make it into the new schools? Is “warehousing” of high-needs students at other schools dooming them to fail?
By Anna M. Phillips, NY Times
The latest statistic bedeviling Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s efforts to show progress in the city’s public schools during his tenure is a startling, but well-known one: one out of every four students who entered high school in 2007, and graduated four years later, was not ready for college-level work.
Concern about the validity of the city’s increasing graduation rate, which the mayor often points to as one of his greatest accomplishments, grew last year after state education officials revealed that most students were graduating unprepared for college. (more…)
by Rachel Cromida, Gotham Schools
By 2016, the proportion of students who graduate from city high schools ready for college-level work will double, Department of Education officials told skeptical City Council members today.
The ambitious projection, made during a hearing on college and career readiness, would require growth that far outstrips even the most liberal assessments of the Department of Education’s recent record of improvement.
By Melinda Martinez, Daily News
Over the past few months, parents in my corner of Brooklyn have felt suddenly under assault. Despite having what we consider excellent public schools — and a successful community-based approach to educating our young people — we are fending off an unwanted charter school in Cobble Hill. So far, our concerns seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
Wednesday night, the citywide Panel for Educational Policy is expected to vote to allow the charter school to share the K293 building where my four daughters go to school.
I’m not against parents having options, but I’m against giving valuable space to charter schools in a way that makes life harder for traditional district schools. I fear that is what’s happening here. (more…)
By Lindsey Christ, NY1
The Department of Education says dozens of schools are failing, but on Tuesday, outside the DOE headquarters in Downtown Manhattan, protesting parents said education officials have failed the struggling schools.
Chanting “Go get your F! Go get your F,” the parents said the 47 schools named in late September for being in danger of closing for poor performance deserve a second chance.
“We’re devastated that our school’s on the list of at-risk for closing,” said one parent.
“We’re asking the DOE as parents to give our school a chance,” said another.
Since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took control of the schools, 117 have been closed for poor performance and 528 new schools have replaced them. (more…)
By Erin E. Evans, NY Times
Holding up an oversize report card on the steps of the Tweed Courthouse on Chambers Street, parents and elected officials on Tuesday gave an F to the city’s Department of Education in a protest to prevent the possible closing of several schools.
“This F represents the failure of this administration,” said City Councilwoman Letitia James of Brooklyn. “We have come here to the streets to say, ‘Mr. Mayor, you get an F on education.’ ”
Students and parents from the city’s most underserved communities have been holding weekly protests, accusing the Education Department of abandoning their schools by cutting budgets. The parents also object to the city’s policy of merging charter schools into their buildings. (more…)
By Philissa Cramer, Gotham Schools
Parents from schools the city has deemed failing issued their own grade to the Department of Education today: an F.
About three dozen parents from schools the department might close gathered on the steps of Tweed Courthouse to decry the department’s policy of shuttering schools instead of offering them additional aid. They said the department has failed at everything from providing resources to struggling schools to engaging parents — even to showing compassion to schools and families working under difficult conditions to help children. (more…)
by Inside City Hall
NY1 VIDEO: A special panel joined Inside City Hall to discuss “Parent Power: Education Organizing in NYC,” a new film which documents a 15-year journey by a group of parents and advocates who built a citywide coalition to improve the public.
By Mary Ann Giordano, NY Times
If it seems that the protests to prevent the closing of struggling schools are becoming a regular thing — that is because they are, GothamSchools reported on Tuesday.
Julian Vinocur of the Alliance for Quality Education told Gotham that more school protests are planned for this fall, as part of a strategy to prevent any school closings.
As Gotham reports, the Alliance for Quality Education and the Coalition of Educational Justice, two advocacy groups, have been saying for years that “struggling schools would be better served by additional resources,” rather than the city’s policy of closing ones that are deemed too flawed to prop up. (more…)
By Erin E. Evans, NY Times
Students, parents and staff from Public School 256 Benjamin Banneker in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, on Tuesday protested the Department of Education’s recent failing grade for their elementary school.
Jerry Jones, a school aide, gave a speech to approximately 80 protesters just before they marched around the block chanting: “Fix our school! Do not close it!” Students on nearby basketball courts joined the protest; onlookers honked their horns in support. (more…)