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Thursday, January 26, 2012

NYC Public School Parents: Concerns with the MRDC study on small schools released today

NYC Public School Parents: Concerns with the MRDC study on small schools released today:

Concerns with the MRDC study on small schools released today

MDRC released a study today, which the NY Times writes “appeared to validate the Bloomberg administration’s decade-long push to create small schools to replace larger, failing high schools.” The report mentions the current controversy over the massive number of school closings, here in NYC and across the country, and thus there may be a political element in the timing of its release:

MDRC’s findings about SSCs are relevant to current federal policy on high school reform, particularly the U. S. Department of Education’s School Improvement Grants (SIGs) for failing schools. Reforms funded by SIGs include school transformation, school restart, school closing, and school turnaround. SSCs straddle several of these categories since they are typically replacements for schools that have closed and they operate as regular public schools.

This is the second MDRC study to conclude that students who attended the new small schools had significantly improved outcomes. The first MDRC study, released in 2010, looked at students who entered these schools in