Don’t be fooled by the distraction of Mayor de Blasio’s decision to close three schools this week in an attempt to ward off criticism of his Renewal Schools program. The decision to close those schools only saves 212 students, leaving nearly 21,000 behind.
Rather, the entire Renewal Schools program is broken. This month’s earlier news that the Renewal Schools three-year benchmarks are either missing, secret, or barely goals at all, was just the latest proof point that the de Blasio administration isn’t taking the needs of families seriously.
Mayor de Blasio should be paying attention when the top education official in New York State calls his Renewal Schools program “ridiculous.”
The Renewal School program was supposed to be an ambitious program to turn failing schools around in three years, or else the schools would be closed. But Mayor de Blasio has set such low expectations for the kids stuck in Renewal Schools that it’s clear he never intended for the schools to truly improve. In one school, the three-year goal was to raise students’ average reading scores on the ELA exam from 2.14 to 2.15. That’s like setting a New Year’s resolution to lose a tenth of a pound.
How can the city look parents like me in the eye and tell us that these failing schools will be turned around when the goals would still leave these schools right where they started?
My own daughter goes to P.S. 30, a failing school in Harlem. It’s not one of the Renewal Schools, but it’s emblematic of the low expectations the de Blasio administration sets in city schools. She is a special needs student with an individualized learning plan (IEP). Last year, not a single student with an IEP at P.S. 30 was able to pass the English and Math state exams. When I asked the school why she wasn’t making progress, they told me we should spend more time at home studying – instead of doing their jobs to educate her.
These kinds of low expectations for our kids are unacceptable. My daughter, and every child in New York City, deserves a school that will prepare her for college – not one that says a meaningless .01 percent improvement is a victory that should allow a school to stay open.
Instead, my community is stuck with the Renewal Schools program – Mayor de Blasio’s signature plan to transform failing schools. The city is going to spend $400 million dollars on the Renewal Schools – but it’s hard to look at this week’s news and call them anything but a massive fraud. And our children are paying the price.
If Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina were serious about turning around the failing schools in this city, they wouldn’t be afraid to take immediate action to get kids stuck in our worst schools the education they deserve. They wouldn’t shy away from closing all of the failing schools, giving tens of thousands of students the access to high-quality schools they deserve and ignoring the inconvenience of upsetting their political allies.
Now that the latestRenewal Schools program has been exposed as toothless, I hope that city and state leaders will stand up for New York’s kids and stop pretending that this program is going to make a difference. New York City’s parents need real action – not more broken promises from the de Blasio administration.
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