As the NY Post points out, the vast majority of these schools have poverty rates over the city average. And many of them were flooded with high-needs special education and ELL students in recent years, as nearby large high schools closed, and were provided with no extra help to deal with this problem.
Finally, what strategies if any did the city use to try to turn around these schools? Did they ever try systematically reducing class size? No.
Most of these students at these schools continue to suffer from overly large
classes that far exceed the state average of twenty students per class, as well as the goals in the city’s mandated class size reduction plan. In fact, class sizes have risen sharply in most of the schools slated for closure.For example, check out the increases in class size at Beach Channel High school, one of the schools on today’s list of closures, which have occurred despite a promise from the DOE to make specific reductions at this school in return for hundreds of millions of dollars in Contract For Excellence funds.
As Sternberg said, “…we cannot afford to let schools continue to fail students when we know we can do better.”
Most parents and teachers would agree. The Department of Education’s stubborn refusal to follow the law and to allow the students at these schools to have their best chance to succeed is unconscionable, and set up these schools for failure.
The current climate of political correctness along with a 40 year old liberal mindset that excuses failure as someone else's fault prevents the real cause of the NYC so-called "school" problem from being addressed. The truth is that there is no "school" problem but rather a student/parent/culture problem designed and promoted by liberal politicians to serve a socialist wealth-redistributive agenda. The kids and their parents are manipulated pawns in the hands of these socialist liberals. The students and parents have been absolved from any accountability or responsibility for their failure. From the hellish Jewish ghettos in Nazi Germany to the hellish oppression of African Americans in the Jim-Crow South, an enduring sense of self respect and reverence for devinely inspired traditions produced and enabled future scientists, musicians, authors,
ReplyDeleteand statesmen to rise above their circumstances without excuses. Einstein did not blame the history of European oppression of his people. George Washington Carver did not blame America's history of slavery. In the absence political correctness they rose above it. Today, when a politician appoints a person with absolutely no teaching experience or academic background in education as NYC schools chancellor over a predominantly minority student population, twice, it is evident that politician and his cohorts do not want those children to rise above their circumstances and produce another George Washington Carver. Rather, the agenda is to perpetuate an endless cycle of poverty, anger, failure and dependency for voter exploitation. The agenda is to create an environment where student advocacy is so extreme that kids can rampage through halls, in classrooms, assaulting teachers, school safety officers and each other; and if an adult puts out an arm or hand to stop them or raises their voice they risk being charged with corporal punishment.
School buildings can be built with ivory walls, gold paved floors, and staffed with a Nobel Prize winning faculty, but if the students, parents and community lack a reverence for education, lack respect for self and property, lack self control and fundamentals of social discipline, then the school building does not fail them, and the teachers do not fail them. The new slavery of politically correct liberalism helps them fail themselves. It is time for the "failing" students, parents, and communities to stand up and see who their real slave masters are, and reject them and their phoney school chancellor. Only then will "schools' once again become successful.
Wow anonymous you hit the nail on the head with that comment. I am a former NYC DOE teacher and it is true about the parent/student culture that does not have reverence for education. Many of the parents in NYC have to work multiple jobs to provide food and shelter for their families, at the expense of spending time following up with their children's education. The teaching profession as a whole is not respected by the current administration, as the people who are in charge of our city's schools have never taught in a classroom, and are therefore clueless about school culture, and the education system. This is a blatant lack of respect. Is it logical to hire a trained gynecologist as an airline pilot?
ReplyDeletefirst comment, very well said.
ReplyDeletei agree with you except for this line
ReplyDelete" problem designed and promoted by liberal politicians to serve a socialist wealth-redistributive agenda."
unless you are a millionare or were born with a fund-trust i really dont see why you would be oppossed to that idea that single line makes me believe you have an ulterior motive; besides, its completely the opposite because the rich are the ones that want us to stay in a state of idiocracy, thats their real agenda so they can keep us subjugated; you also mention nazi germany because that is exactly what they are doing, they are indoctrinating new generations with a fascist/capitalist mind set dumbming down with innacurate useless made up history they call facts, forcing and threatening teachers to give passing grades to students who dont deserve it or lossing their jobs and/or even worst closing down schools.