der kleine Doktor
06-27-2004, 04:37 AM
June 25, 2004 -- WONDERFUL news for New York City par ents: Schools Chan cellor Joel Klein is opening a high school called the "Peace and Diversity Academy" in The Bronx.
The brochure says students lucky enough to be admitted will be able to take courses on: peace, diversity, cultural identity, cultural awareness, bias, conflict resolution, discrimination, prejudice, social action and leadership, and — why not? — war.
All at the same school!
At another new Bronx school, kids will be able to take "Hip-Hop & Citizenship."
Wonder when the students will have time for math and English . . .
Welcome to New York's small-school movement, a theater of the absurd where taxpayers spring for front-row seats and the proceeds go to leftist political groups more interested in ideology than education.
Klein and Mayor Bloomberg are set to open 70 of these small, specialized schools this fall (and 200 by 2008) — many with agendas just as wacky as the Peace and Diversity Academy's.
var zflag_nid="162"; var zflag_cid="8/1"; var zflag_sid="4"; var zflag_width="300"; var zflag_height="250"; var zflag_sz="9";
Advocates tell us small schools mean more intimacy, which supposedly keeps kids in school and engaged. But critics point out that the research shows only small gains, and mostly in measures like improved attendance — not test scores.
Plus, there's the dingbat problem: The city's top advocate of small schools is the leftist group New Visions for Public Schools, which is concerned mainly with self-esteem and political activism. The group has gotten fat off of city contracts. It will run 43 of this fall's new schools.
Enticed by $60 million that Bill Gates put up last year to get the small-school initiative off the ground, Klein doesn't seem interested in the details. But the taxpayers will still pay most of the cost of running these schools, especially after Gates' grant runs out.
So Klein should be able to tell us what's happened with New York's other small schools — 200 or so dating to the late '80s and early '90s, 40 more from the last two years. It should be exceedingly simple to look at their records and see if they've been effective.
Not so.
What became clear at City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz's hearing on small schools this month, and in my own conversations with Department of Education officials, is that Klein's crew seems to consider the record of small schools in the city irrelevant.
"Size is not a factor that stands alone," the senior counselor for education policy, Michele Cahill, told me. In this initiative, the city will focus on "all of the critical elements of a school being present."
That boilerplate echoed her testimony before Moskowitz's committee, where she argued that this small-school initiative is so different from all of the city's other small-school initiatives over the years that it's hardly even worth discussing the record.
Another reason for Cahill to dodge the issue: That record is weak.
To the extent that the system even has one: So many of the city's small high schools have been exempted from Regents exams, and allowed to judge students based on fuzzy "portfolios" of their work, that there's no test-score data to review. The best the city can point to: slightly above-average attendance rates.
This isn't to say that record is all bad. Some small schools are academically rigorous — but they tend to be placed in neighborhoods where parents fully expect their children to go to college. Far too many of the rest — foisted mainly on The Bronx and Harlem — are like the forthcoming Peace and Diversity Academy, a New Visions product.
And yes, we can judge that school before it even opens — because the city has seen plenty of its ilk before. Take the Urban Peace Academy (the names blur together after a while), which New Visions opened in East Harlem in 1993.
The school says it addresses "issues of peace and justice, wealth and power, racism and oppression and the creation of ourselves and our cultures." What's missing there? Hint: Fewer than half of Urban Peace Academy's class of 2003 met state Regents English standards — and none met Regents math standards.
Flakiness can be expected when you try to open 50, 60 or 70 schools at one time. "Given the skills of the Department of Education, it's going to be hard to maintain a high level of quality," Moskowitz told me after her hearing.
She compared the opening of 70 new small schools to how charter schools are started — typically in groups of five, six or seven. Charters get all their ducks in a row before opening, often delaying if they can't find a suitable principal candidate. Not coincidentally, charter schools have an excellent track record in New York.
By contrast, the city admits that some of the small schools set to open this fall don't even have principals yet, and only a third have hired their staffs.
Worse than the slapdash start-up process, however, is the fact that — just like the rest of the traditional public-school system — these small schools face no accountability.
I asked the Department of Education how many small schools have been shut down since we started experimenting with them by the dozen. The answer: "None."
In more than 14 years — that's disgraceful. Especially since we know that some of them are failing.
Klein's decision to charge ahead with his small-school initiative is understandable — to a point. There are too few quality high schools in New York City. And the lure of gifts from billionaires is strong.
But sticking the city with 200 new high schools, when few are likely to thrive (by virtue of a shortage of quality principals alone) — and none will ever be closed — is no answer.
It's too late to put the brakes on the 70 schools set to open this fall. But if Klein doesn't change course, his legacy will be another crop of schools with words like "Peace" and "Social Justice" in their names — and nothing but air in their curriculums and in their students' heads.
rsager@nypost.com
NYPOST
The brochure says students lucky enough to be admitted will be able to take courses on: peace, diversity, cultural identity, cultural awareness, bias, conflict resolution, discrimination, prejudice, social action and leadership, and — why not? — war.
All at the same school!
At another new Bronx school, kids will be able to take "Hip-Hop & Citizenship."
Wonder when the students will have time for math and English . . .
Welcome to New York's small-school movement, a theater of the absurd where taxpayers spring for front-row seats and the proceeds go to leftist political groups more interested in ideology than education.
Klein and Mayor Bloomberg are set to open 70 of these small, specialized schools this fall (and 200 by 2008) — many with agendas just as wacky as the Peace and Diversity Academy's.
var zflag_nid="162"; var zflag_cid="8/1"; var zflag_sid="4"; var zflag_width="300"; var zflag_height="250"; var zflag_sz="9";
Advocates tell us small schools mean more intimacy, which supposedly keeps kids in school and engaged. But critics point out that the research shows only small gains, and mostly in measures like improved attendance — not test scores.
Plus, there's the dingbat problem: The city's top advocate of small schools is the leftist group New Visions for Public Schools, which is concerned mainly with self-esteem and political activism. The group has gotten fat off of city contracts. It will run 43 of this fall's new schools.
Enticed by $60 million that Bill Gates put up last year to get the small-school initiative off the ground, Klein doesn't seem interested in the details. But the taxpayers will still pay most of the cost of running these schools, especially after Gates' grant runs out.
So Klein should be able to tell us what's happened with New York's other small schools — 200 or so dating to the late '80s and early '90s, 40 more from the last two years. It should be exceedingly simple to look at their records and see if they've been effective.
Not so.
What became clear at City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz's hearing on small schools this month, and in my own conversations with Department of Education officials, is that Klein's crew seems to consider the record of small schools in the city irrelevant.
"Size is not a factor that stands alone," the senior counselor for education policy, Michele Cahill, told me. In this initiative, the city will focus on "all of the critical elements of a school being present."
That boilerplate echoed her testimony before Moskowitz's committee, where she argued that this small-school initiative is so different from all of the city's other small-school initiatives over the years that it's hardly even worth discussing the record.
Another reason for Cahill to dodge the issue: That record is weak.
To the extent that the system even has one: So many of the city's small high schools have been exempted from Regents exams, and allowed to judge students based on fuzzy "portfolios" of their work, that there's no test-score data to review. The best the city can point to: slightly above-average attendance rates.
This isn't to say that record is all bad. Some small schools are academically rigorous — but they tend to be placed in neighborhoods where parents fully expect their children to go to college. Far too many of the rest — foisted mainly on The Bronx and Harlem — are like the forthcoming Peace and Diversity Academy, a New Visions product.
And yes, we can judge that school before it even opens — because the city has seen plenty of its ilk before. Take the Urban Peace Academy (the names blur together after a while), which New Visions opened in East Harlem in 1993.
The school says it addresses "issues of peace and justice, wealth and power, racism and oppression and the creation of ourselves and our cultures." What's missing there? Hint: Fewer than half of Urban Peace Academy's class of 2003 met state Regents English standards — and none met Regents math standards.
Flakiness can be expected when you try to open 50, 60 or 70 schools at one time. "Given the skills of the Department of Education, it's going to be hard to maintain a high level of quality," Moskowitz told me after her hearing.
She compared the opening of 70 new small schools to how charter schools are started — typically in groups of five, six or seven. Charters get all their ducks in a row before opening, often delaying if they can't find a suitable principal candidate. Not coincidentally, charter schools have an excellent track record in New York.
By contrast, the city admits that some of the small schools set to open this fall don't even have principals yet, and only a third have hired their staffs.
Worse than the slapdash start-up process, however, is the fact that — just like the rest of the traditional public-school system — these small schools face no accountability.
I asked the Department of Education how many small schools have been shut down since we started experimenting with them by the dozen. The answer: "None."
In more than 14 years — that's disgraceful. Especially since we know that some of them are failing.
Klein's decision to charge ahead with his small-school initiative is understandable — to a point. There are too few quality high schools in New York City. And the lure of gifts from billionaires is strong.
But sticking the city with 200 new high schools, when few are likely to thrive (by virtue of a shortage of quality principals alone) — and none will ever be closed — is no answer.
It's too late to put the brakes on the 70 schools set to open this fall. But if Klein doesn't change course, his legacy will be another crop of schools with words like "Peace" and "Social Justice" in their names — and nothing but air in their curriculums and in their students' heads.
rsager@nypost.com
NYPOST