Several of you read this. I was trying to explain Mayor Bloomberg to my husband, who doesn't read about schools and tunes out a lot of what I say (smile, yes dear, think about other things and she will go away).
My understanding of your situation is that he is replacing big schools with smaller schools, right? Which is (can be) a good thing, as students are getting lost in the mega schools.
The problem the I understand is 1) he is not replacing the same number of seats 2) he is not replacing a building where the kids can go close to home and 3) he is cherry picking who attends the new, smaller schools, effectively depriving the bottom level of students with a place to go to school.
Or have I missed something?
And if it is that simple, why are the newspapers not screaming?
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5 comments:
Bloomberg owns the media.
Are the rest of my interpretations correct?
100% I'll straighten your husband out when I meet him.
I had an acquaintance just the other day say to me that he believes the good students should all be put in a elite school and allowed to succeed. The kids who don't want an education should be left behind at the failing schools and just continue to falter. My retort was, "who would want to teach at that low end school?" and he replied, "people will always need a paycheck, someone will do it."
The "mini schools" in NYC are just like big schools, but with a smaller number of students. They have big classes. They are located in huge buildings. The kids remain semi-anonymous, as the teacher turnover rates remain moderate to high.
In a few of them, not by cherry picking who gets in, but by not taking those without parental involvement, or who need greater special education services, etc, they get higher "scores" -- but at the expense of their nighboring schools.
Oh, by the way, the neighborhoods with the minischools no longer have "zoned" schools -- in other words, kids no longer have a default option.
Jonathan/jd2718
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