On Sunday April 10th, students from the Urban Youth Collaborative (UYC) held a press conference to release a report (No Closer to College Report) as the first step in our No Closer to College: Fix Or Schools! Campaign.  UYC was joined by parents from the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice, the United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew, NYC Council Education Chair Robert Jackson, and Members Jumaane Williams and Charles Barron, all of whom echoed UYC in calling on new Chancellor-designee Dennis Walcott today to begin his tenure by fixing the City’s failed strategy for dealing with struggling schools.

Mayor Bloomberg’s Department of Education (DOE) has focused its systemic school improvement efforts on one key strategy — closing poorly performing high schools. The DOE has privileged school closure as its primary school improvement policy, as opposed to major initiatives to transform struggling schools from within. If this policy continues, more than 65,000 students – more students than the entire Boston public school system – will have had their high school experience marked by school closure.

Because the DOE has a responsibility to ensure that those students do not become policy casualties, it must invest as much effort in ensuring a rich, rigorous, college-preparatory education for students in the final years of a closing high school as in developing and nurturing the new small schools they continue to create.

This report examines what happened to students in the 21 schools that have completed their phase-out since 2000, when the DOE announced the first school closings, and predicts the destructive impact that school closings may have on students in the high schools that may be at risk of closing next.

The students who attended the 21 closed high schools, almost all of whom are Black and Latino, had significantly higher needs and were much more academically under-prepared than the students across the city’s high school system.

• 74% were eligible for free lunch, compared to 55% citywide
• 21% of students were English Language Learners, compared to 13% citywide
• 46% were overage for grade, compared to 29% citywide
• 89% were below grade level in ELA and 91% below grade level in math – compared to 67% and 70% respectively, citywide

Predictably, the academic outcomes of these 21 schools in their final years before closure were also much worse. A much lower percent of the students in the 21 schools graduated, a much higher percent dropped out, and a sharply higher rate were discharged. At some schools, discharge and dropout rates skyrocketed in the final years of phase-out:

• At Taft High School, the dropout rate spiked from 25% the year closure was announced to 70%
the year that the school closed
• At Morris High School, the discharge rate rose from 33% the year closure was announced to 55% the year that the school closed

Given that some 33,000 students attended the 21 high schools in their final years, the absolute numbers behind the percentages are quite startling:

• 5,612 dropped out,
• 8,089 were still enrolled,
• 9,668 were discharged,
• Only 9,592 actually graduated.
Moreover, indications are that only 15% of the graduates in the closing schools received a Regents diploma, compared to 41% citywide. Similar outcomes can be predicted for students at the schools currently at risk of closing unless the DOE changes policy and invests in ensuring a high quality education for those students.

Instead of intervening aggressively to help the lowest performing schools improve, the DOE has consistently neglected to provide the comprehensive guidance and supports that struggling schools need.

Reports from the NY State Education Department (SED) on 17 schools identified by the state as Persistently Low Achieving (PLA) found that at least 14 of the schools were not provided the assistance from the DOE necessary to raise student achievement. Furthermore, SED reviews of the 11 schools currently implementing the federal transformation model found that the DOE had largely not met their commitment to guide and support the school transformation plans.

The destructive policy of school closings now threatens two additional groups of the city’s high schools: 14 high schools that the Panel for Educational Policy recently voted to close, and 24 PLA high schools. To improve the prospects of poor and working class students of color entering high school academically under-prepared, the Urban Youth Collaborative proposes that the DOE suspend its high school closing policy and instead implement a set of comprehensive interventions to improve the schools:

1. Invest in struggling schools instead of closing them

•    Create a central High School Improvement Zone that brings together struggling and closing schools to help them assess and meet the needs of students
•    Create a set of interventions that are put into action when a school is at risk of closure
•    Ensure that all schools have the resources and capacity to meet the needs of ELLs, students with special needs, and overage students that are assigned to them

2. Build meaningful partnerships with students and community

•    Create stakeholder committees at struggling and phasing out schools that include parents, students, teachers, administrators and community organizations to assess the school’s strengths and weaknesses, identifying and creating plans for improvement, and hiring staff

3. Provide an engaging and rigorous college preparatory curriculum

•    Emphasize and integrate literacy and math skill development across courses in
ninth grade
•    Offer a wide range of subjects instead of just those assessed by high-stakes tests
•    Provide access to hands-on, high-level and college credit-bearing courses
•    Support teachers through ongoing professional development and mentoring
•    Create advisories and summer academies for incoming ninth graders

4. Support students in accessing college

•    Implement early college preparation and orientation programs
•    Hire one college counselor per every 100 students in struggling school
•    Create an early warning system that immediately identifies students who are struggling and off-track for graduation or college, and triggers interventions to help

5. Ensure a safe & respectful school climate

•    Create supportive school environments that utilize non-punitive approaches to safety and get at the root of problems, such as Restorative Justice or Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports

No student should be abandoned as a casualty of school reform policy. High school students from low- income communities of color across the city call on the DOE to launch an aggressive effort to provide these supports to all struggling schools, as a step towards the common goal of guaranteeing a college and career-ready education for all students.

The Department of Education has for years been able to predict which schools will fail based on a number of factors, but many disadvantaged schools have been blamed for their crummy performance and marked for closure anyway, according to a department analysis obtained by The Post.

The report shows that education officials created a dividing line between schools so that those whose “predicted” graduation rates were less than 50 percent — based largely on their size and concentration of low-achieving students — were likely to be closed rather than receive support.

Other recent reports that have questioned the department’s role in supporting schools marked for closure sparked hundreds of protesters to rally outside its headquarters in lower Manhattan yesterday.

Two dozen — including Brooklyn City Councilmembers Jumaane Williams and Charles Barron — were arrested for civil disobedience after they formed a human chain to block traffic.

“It’s very troubling that there are a lot of internal studies that show that the DOE knew what the impact was of steering large numbers of more challenging-to-educate students into specific high schools and [that] now we’re looking to close those,” said Patrick Sullivan, a Manhattan representative to the Panel for Educational Policy.

The panel is scheduled to vote tonight and Thursday on whether to close 14 struggling high schools.

The 2006 analysis conducted for the city by The Parthenon Group recognized the need to reduce high concentrations of low-level students at certain schools.

What surprised some who read the report was that “school closure” — along with changes in admissions targets and efforts to recruit higher-performing students — was listed as one way of achieving that goal.

No specific schools are named in the analysis, and department officials refused to give The Post access to their internal predictions of graduation rates for the 14 schools on the closure list.

They stressed that predicted graduation rate was not a factor in their decisions about which schools to close.

In response to claims that they were setting up schools to fail by assigning them the most challenging students, officials said that, apart from students who arrive mid-year, kids are given a choice of which high school to attend.

But among the high schools slated to close this year, 10 — including Columbus HS in The Bronx and Paul Robeson HS in Brooklyn — serve students whose eighth-grade math and reading scores put them in the bottom one-sixth of high-school students citywide, statistics show.

The same holds true for 10 other schools the city has already started to phase out.

The day before the Panel for Educational Policy begins to meet to discuss closures of 25 public schools, two dozen people were arrested in Downtown Manhattan today as they protested the plan.

Two dozen demonstrators, including two City Council members, were arrested in Downtown Manhattan Monday as they protested the proposed closing of 25 public schools that the Panel for Educational Policy will vote on this week.

Brooklyn Councilmen Jumaane Williams and Charles Barron, angered parents of students and educators were arrested for forming a human chain across Chambers Street, in front of Department of Education headquarters in Tweed Courthouse.

The arrested activists were brought to Manhattan’s 1st Police Precinct.

“We’re saying to Tweed, you can talk about shutting us down all you want. What would happen if we didn’t leave?” said Barron.

“We’re going to let you know, we’re not going take it anymore. Peace,” said Williams.

“We are not stepping down, we are not giving up and we are not finished here tonight,” said one parent. “We want them to sit up and pay attention and we are ready, as we said, to put our bodies on the line.”

Most of the couple hundred attending the protest were high school students from the threatened schools.

Organizers did not allow the youths to take part in the act of civil disobedience, but they cheered on the adults in plastic handcuffs being led away by police.

Students who attend schools on the closure list said they blame the Department of Education for their schools’ failures.

“I think the Department of Education has set up John F. Kennedy for phaseout plenty of years ago,” said one attending student. “They started dumping students in that school, especially students with special needs. It’s not our fault that John F. Kennedy is below standards, it’s the Department of Education’s fault.”

DOE officials said that all 25 schools on the list are failing and do not have hope of turning around fast enough to justify saving. They would not comment on the rally or arrests.

This week, the Panel for Educational Policy will vote on the closures during two separate meetings at Brooklyn Technical High School. The first meeting will be on Tuesday night and the second will be on Thursday.

Last year, approximately 2,000 people showed up to a single meeting on closures, which lasted until 4:30 a.m. The panel voted to close all the schools, but a judge later stopped the city, saying officials had not followed the proper procedure.

They stood and formed a human blockade on Chambers Street Monday evening. The chant could be heard from down the block.

“Save our schools!” They yelled.

Then came the NYPD, and an officer with a megaphone: “I am ordering you to leave this roadway. If you do so voluntarily, no charges will be filed against you.”

But the protestors ignored that warning, so police rounded up the crowd, and out came the handcuffs. Among those arrested: Brooklyn City Council Members Charles Barron and Jumaane Williams.

“You want to bring charter schools?” yelled Williams, moments before his arrest. “Then talk to the teachers, talk to the parents, talk to the students. Don’t go shutting down 26 schools in neighborhoods that need it. We’re people, not digits.”

City officials have said the schools in question are not completely closing– but instead, being reorganized with new leadership. Officials also insist these schools have poor graduation rates and low attendance.

The final decision on which of the 26 schools in question to close is expected in a two-part vote: Tuesday and Thursday at Brooklyn tech High School.

Monday’s protestors were brought to the First Precinct Stationhouse in Lower Manhattan, where they were issued summonses for a later court date.

“¡Salven nuestras escuelas!” Este grito se escuchó ayer en la tarde por toda la calle Chambers en Manhattan, que fue cerrada durante un tiempo mientras cientos de estudiantes, padres y maestros de escuelas protestaban el posible cierre de 26 escuelas.

A las 5 de la tarde, mientras comenzaba a oscurecer, una fila de estudiantes y organizadores se unieron en una fila y bloquearon el tráfico fuera de la sede del Departamento de Educación, causando que varios de ellos fueran arrestados por la policía.

Mientras que un agente le ponía las esposas, una adolescente hispana gritaba: “Arréglenlas, no las cierran!”

La protesta fue organizada por una coalición de organizaciones comunitarias, Coalition for Educational Justice, y una organización de jovenes, el Urban Youth Collaborative. El propósito fue llamar atención sobre el proyecto del Departamento de Educación de cerrar estas escuelas, ya que una comisión, el Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) se reunirá esta semana para votar sobre el destino de estas escuelas.

Un portavoz para el Departamento de Educación dijo ayer que “el departamento no va a comentar sobre la protesta”.

Uno de los estudiantes que tomó el micrófono, Wilvin López, dominicano de El Bronx de 16 años, dijo a EL DIARIO LA PRENSA: “Nosotros queremos decir al Departamento de Educación que lo que está haciendo no está bien, porque hay muchos estudiantes que trabajan duro todos los días para mantener sus notas y que ellos quieren cerrar las escuelas por unos estudiantes …eso no está bien”.

López estudia en Samuel Gompers School en El Bronx, una escuela que no está en la lista. Las escuelas que se encuentran en la relación están concentradas en El Bronx, además del Alto Manhattan y el Norte de Brooklyn. En general, son escuelas de primaria, intermedias y de bachillerato que sirven a las minorías.

También son escuelas en las que durante los últimos años han matriculado más estudiantes “altamente necesitados”, según indicó un informe reciente del Independent Budget Office (IBO), una agencia gubernamental que vigila las actividades del gobierno municipal.

Estos estudiantes requerían educación especial o estaban residiendo en viviendas temporales o de emergencia.

El número de estudiantes desamparados en las escuelas enumeradas subió de 245 a 1.145 en un año, del 2008 al 2009. Además, más de 20% de 12 de las escuelas en la lista están en programas de educación especial, a diferencia del promedio de 14% en las otras escuelas de la ciudad. Según los organizadores de la protesta, estos factores contribuyeron “artificalmente” a un declive en el índice de graduación, y que podrían ser salvadas con el apoyo del Departamento de Educación.

La organización Coalition for Educational Justice sostuvo en un comunicado que “estas escuelas estaban condenadas al fracaso”.

El reporte del IBO concluyó que “no hay ninguna garantía que la escuela que se está cerrando será reemplazada por una mejor”.

Muchos de los manifestantes, quienes alzaban afiches rosados y expresaron frustración con las políticas de educación de la administración Bloomberg, diciendo que el alcalde no ha invitado la participación de padres y estudiantes desde quo asumió el cargo en el 2001. Un activista del NY Civic Participation Project, José Rodriguez, dijo: “A Bloomberg le pongo un ‘100’ en sus negocios y un ‘0’ en educación”.

The day before the Panel for Educational Policy votes on closing 25 of the city’s schools, several protesters were arrested in front of Department of Education headquarters on Monday. Among those arrested were Councilman Jumaane Williams and Councilman Charles Barron.

Protests have popped up around the city in the days preceding the vote, where chants such as “fix our schools, don’t shut them down!” could be heard.

United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Michael Mulgrew has decried the current method of closing schools. The schools are given a letter grade based on attendance and graduation rates, as well as parent, student, and teacher surveys. A failing grade means closure. The DOE must provide a statement outlining the impact on the surrounding community when slating the school for closure.

He claims the data is not always accurate, and schools are not given proper support to recover from their difficulties.

“The morale of students is hit hard,” Nigel Hill, a senior at Paul Robeson High School that is slated for closure told the UFT. “Some of the students start to feel they’re not good enough to be in school.”