If there’s any way to turn around a failure-factory school, it’s not low expectations and happy talk. But that’s all that state and city education leaders offer.
In Sunday’s Post, reporter Susan Edelman cut through the hype over progress by the 62 schools on the state’s “persistently struggling” list — including 27 supposedly being fixed via Mayor de Blasio’s “Renewal” program.
Chancellor Betty Rosa and other state officials had cheered “progress” by the struggling schools — “without,” as Edelman noted, “mentioning that the bar for success was set extremely low.”
Rosa gushed that 68 percent of the schools had met their targets for improvement. Edelman pointed out that the targets were set at 1 percent gains across measures such as attendance, state test scores and graduation rates — over two years.
The city Department of Education is playing the same “empty goals” game. In a new analysis of Renewal data, Families for Excellent Schools found that only 45 percent of (typically easy) targets tied to student achievement were met.
Only 45 of the 86 Renewal schools met at least half their goals last year. Only three hit all of their targets.
And some lost ground in key areas: Boys and Girls HS, for example, saw its college-readiness score fall from 7.3 percent in 2013-14 to 6.7 percent in 2015-16.
In two years of the Renewal program, the city closed or merged eight of the 94 original schools — its hand forced by plummeting enrollment.
Meanwhile, it spent more than $406 million this school year to pretend to fix the remaining 86. Which isn’t all for nothing: In October, Edelman and fellow Post reporter Aaron Short found that $12.7 million a year is going to at least 114 educrats and “coaches” for the program.
So the Renewal schools’ spotty attendance, enrollment drops, safety issues and continued poor academic performance aren’t bad news for everyone. The kids lose, but, hey, lots of adults are doing quite well.
For shame: Keeping these schools open while pretending they’re making serious progress is educational malpractice.