The Department of Education recently announced the closing of 21 schools - most of them large high schools - in a stated attempt to provide better services to students. The truth is that the students in these schools are poised to become the latest victims of a failed educational strategy - one that ignores the possibility of strengthening schools, closes them on the basis of mysterious and ever-changing criteria and shuffles thousands of our neediest students from one struggling institution to another.
The first problem is how the schools were chosen. According to Mayor Bloomberg, the aim of the latest round of closings is to shut down the system's lowest-performing schools. While it is true that some of the high schools identified for closure have problems that require drastic action, the list also includes schools that have made progress on every measure. It includes schools where teachers and administrators have gotten bonuses for improving scores. And it includes schools that have never received a progress grade lower than C.
Meanwhile, schools with worse records are permitted to remain open.
What's more, some of the schools identified for closure are institutions that were functioning well until the DOE accelerated the process of closing large high schools. The plan was to replace the large high schools with smaller ones - but the DOE never created enough seats in the small schools to accommodate all the students who were displaced.
Columbus High School in the Bronx is a perfect example. For years, Columbus was a successful school with a widely diverse student body in terms of student ability and success. Then, DOE policy created a group of small academies that siphoned off many of the highest-achieving pupils - and closed nearby high schools likeAdlai Stevenson and Evander Childs. The result was an influx to Columbus of non-English speaking recent immigrants, disabled and special needs students, along with students
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