Mayor-for-life Michael Bloomberg has decided to attack the public school system by shutting down the bottom 10 percent of schools in his third term as mayor of New York City. This decision is propagated by President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” funding for public school systems, which would qualify New York state for more than $700 million.
Let’s make it clear that I believe in a lot of what Obama advocates out of schools: Longer school days, extending the school year and diversifying extracurricular activities. However, the “race to the top” message has resulted in school closures across the country. In this respect, NYC has set the precedent for school closures.
First of all, many of the lowest performing schools are not located in Manhattan. Nineteen of these schools to be closed are located in the Bronx, which is a high need area. The school I currently work at is one of 483 total high schools, and it represents the 17th highest-need school in the entire city.
Second, such an action raises questions about the validity of progress reports, report cards, quality reviews and systems of accountability that were established to measure the quality of institutions across the city. Many of these schools received C’s on their progress reports — which does not qualify them for closure. Taxpayers spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on these systems of accountability that have been completely disregarded.
Finally, the charter school movement in NYC has strong advocates with Bloomberg, Obama, NYC Public Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Education Secretary Arne Duncan in power. There is no doubt that many of these current public schools that are phasing out will be replaced with charter schools that will impose an unfair selection process that leave special needs students to public schools. And we wonder why the public schools fail.
One of the fallacies of charter schools is the notion that they are “public” institutions. Let’s correct this by clarifying that charter schools are funded using public tax-dollars, however, they are not necessarily equally accessible to everyone the way public schools are. If you compare the overall populations of charter schools to public schools, you will notice the dichotomy where public schools are burdened by higher populations of special needs, recently incarcerated and ESL students than charter schools.
So what does a “successful” public school look like in NYC? One notable example is Stuyvesant High School, whose most recent freshman class contains only seven black students, representing less than 1 percent of their cohort. Aren’t “public” school populations supposed to reflect the diversity of their community? What does it mean for a school to be “public” if this is not the case? Have we really pursued equality or have we retrogressed to segregation?
Although a lot of the problems in NYC are a result of Bloomberg’s mismanagement, it is really the fault of Obama who is dangling a massive carrot in front of the mayor’s nose. The question is where is this carrot leading us — better educational outcomes for our highest need children? The money that NYC acquires through “Race to the Top” will not alter the student population in the community I teach. So better educational outcomes as a result of closing schools and increasing funding into a mismanaged system is essentially paying for miracles.
Stephen Lee is a biology teacher in New York and a Rutgers College Class of 2007 alumnus.
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