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What’s the point of a law that identifies failure-factory schools but almost never closes them?
The state Education Department just announced that nine of the 10 schools on New York’s “persistently struggling” list can continue their turnaround efforts for another year.
As for the tenth: The city Department of Education has 60 days to come up with a plan for an independent receiver to take over JHS 162 in the South Bronx.
The other nine are still terrible, but they showed some gains in attendance and/or safety, test scores or dropout rates. Under the law, that’s enough.
(One school in Rochester, East Upper HS, scored even lower than JHS 162 on the “demonstrable improvement index” — but it’s already been put in the hands of the University of Rochester.)
Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña can avoid the embarrassment of receivership for JHS 162 by closing it, merging it into another school or turning it into a charter. Bet that she’ll merge it with the (nearly as dismal) Hostos-Lincoln Academy for Science, which already shares the same building.
In total, the state list of “struggling” and “persistently struggling” schools is down to 72 — pared from 145 not by miracle-working, but by the feds’ relaxing of standards.
Yep: The authorities that once talked tough about demanding progress instead blinked.
In short, the bureaucratic drive to bring quality education to underprivileged areas has become a farce. That leaves charters as the only recent reform that’s actually produced good new public schools.
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