Obama's P-Tech Visit Highlights New York School Closure Fights
Posted: 10/25/2013 6:01 am EDT
NEW YORK -- President Barack Obama's visit on Friday to a Brooklyn public school operated in partnership with IBM puts him, perhaps unwittingly, in the thick of a charged battle over education policy in the nation's largest school system.
The school, Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or P-Tech, was touted by Obama in his 2013 State of the Union address. "Now at schools like P-Tech in Brooklyn, collaboration between New York public schools and City University of New York and IBM, students will graduate with a high school diploma and an associate's degree," he said. "We need to give every American student opportunities like this."
But inside the building that houses P-Tech is what's left of Paul Robeson High School -- as many as 50 students, three teachers and a couple of administrators who also work in the classroom. Robeson is being phased out. It stopped admitting ninth graders in 2011-2012, when P-Tech moved in, along with another school.
The presidential visit awkwardly highlights questions that have roiled New York