By Beth Fertig, NY Times
To Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer, the city’s policy of closing schools and replacing them with new ones is akin to the movie “Groundhog Day.”
“We’re going to be back here next month, we’re going to be back here in six months, the kids will not get any smarter, the system will not get any better,” he told a cheering throng of activists on the steps of City Hall Tuesday.
TweetBy Azi Paybarah, Capital NY
For a few moments this afternoon, four of the five leading 2013 mayoral candidates were gathered together on the steps of City Hall.
They were there to protest Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s practice of shutting down failing schools and, according to critics, opening up smaller charter schools in those facilities which cater to more selective student bodies that are, collectively, easier to teach. The result, according to charter-school critics, is a false impression of progress.
TweetBy Philissa Cramer, Gotham Schools
A press conference about the city’s school closure policy looked a lot like a campaign stop for four men eyeing 2013 mayoral runs.
Four leading mayoral candidates — Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Comptroller John Liu, and former comptroller and 2009 mayoral runner-up Bill Thompson — spoke at the event on the steps of City Hall. The press conference was organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice, a nonprofit that has spearheaded protests against many of the 25 closures proposed this year.
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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. Continue reading
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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.
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