In Bronx, New York, Mayor R. Bloomberg has decided to close down large schools due to their "long history of sustained academic failure" and "chronically poor performance and low demand" according to Santiago Taveras, the deputy chancellor. The article attributes the closure to be a result of the Obama administration's "school turnaround"policies in its nationwide competition: Race to the Top. This could get the school system billions of dollars in federal education grants. So far the city has closed over 91 schools and replaced them with smaller or charter schools. The mayor said that his goal is to close down the lowest performing ten percent of city schools to beat the state of Washington's goal of five percent. States get 4 billion dollars for their effective turnaround plans with the additional 3.5 billion to finance school transformations and closures.
Parents are outraged over the mayor's decision to act without their input. Yet the city's Education Department states that the closing the larger schools have been a success. These smaller schools have an "average graduation rate of 75 percent" which is far above the replaced schools' percentages. Apparently, the replaced school's had over 40% of their students get a D on their last report card.
Sure, less kids means more time teachers can spend with students. However, the graduation rates grew significantly not because the staff was replaced but that there are now less students per school. Although I agree with Bloomberg's motives, I can't say I respect him for not asking for his city's input first. I mean where does all this money to replace schools come from? Some small schools are even being forced to share old buildings together. It seems more like hes splitting the larger schools. Even with these statistics, can we really say that smaller schools are potentially better than larger ones? What do you guys think of this? How would you like Aragon to be split into four different schools? Why not just hire more teachers and staff to properly control larger schools than remake them completely? Aren't we just wasting money on closing and then rebuilding schools?
Actually, I am more outraged over how they decided to just close down schools ENTIRELY and opening new schools the next year. This means that the students were held back a year. ;( Well, they get a year off. Who is going to complain? (with the exception of adults who have to deal with their kids) ;)
Monday, January 25, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
closing down whole schools is probably the most dumbest thing they've done now..
Why didn't they just transfer the students to another school so they wouldn't be a whole year behind academically..?
To be honest, the article gave that impression. I'm not exactly sure if there was no school at all; but, from what it said, I am pretty sure they just took all the students out and invited them back the following year.
Well it's the Bronx, so it doesn't really surprise me. All the schools closing down? New schools opening up? Yeah, still not enthusiastic. I'm sure the teachers are optimistic too.
I just wanted to point out that in the city of New York, underperforming schools are phased out; it is only in cities like Chicago where the change has been sudden (it sounds like the students ended school in May/whenever, then returned in August to a new batch of admin and teachers, not that they were kicked out of school for a year as the schools changed). I approve of the way the city is phasing out classes, but I don't approve of the program as a whole.
I feel that Columbus High School is being punished because it is a victim of the Race to the Top program. The article mentioned that some of the first charter or other schools that formed from closed public schools refused to admit certain students, who were then forced to attend Columbus and add to the problem.
After reading that some of the new charter schools were failing, I believe that the problem cannot be fully addressed by the mere rearrangement of schools. More money needs to be spent on improving the quality of education and adequately preparing students, possibly by hiring more teachers (who are also better qualified) and more administrative figures who are able to adddress the pressing problems.
This situation will hopefully improve if NYC gets a lot of money from the Race to the Top program, although it seems a bit... pointless? that schools and students will have to suffer (without any apparent results- the article said nothing about how the majority of new schools are doing) in order to receive monetary support to improve the failing system.
This article made me very thankful to be living in the Bay Area and to be attending Aragon. Although we do have some issues with budget and finances, Aragon is still a fabulous school with (what I think are) exceptional academics.
Oh I see. Thanks for clarifying that Lauren. ;)& Wow you answered all my questions! xD lol.
I also believe that they should be spending the money on better staff and teachers than the entire make up of this program. Well the article did say that they have evidence that the new schools are doing well with higher graduation rates and such. Though I honestly don't believe those are sufficient results to really back up their claim.
Post a Comment