The New York City Department of Education decided a few years ago that Jamaica High School, with its grand building and long history, deserved to die. Its test scores were too low. There was no point in trying to figure out why or to offer help. And so the DOE announced that Jamaica was a failing school. Parents began to withdraw their children or to select other high schools. Enrollment fell. Many faculty, remembering better times, held on. The city was determined to close the school and replace it with small high schools and charters. It is very desirable space in the borough of Queens.
A state report was recently released that documents how a school is swiftly put to death. First, declare it to be a failing schools. Then take away the programs that attract and develop good students. In time, no one will be left who cares about what once was the school, because the school that everyone once knew is dead, even if a few classes remain.
With the heart cut out of the school, it is comforting to learn from the state report that the school continues to “use data to drive and improve instructional outcomes.”
This is the key section in the state report:
· The following findings are based on information ascertained from various stakeholders including parents, teachers, students, administrators as well as school and district documents:
o No honors or advance placement classes are offered to students o The school no longer offers calculus, chemistry or physics
o Only three electives are offered to students: Law, Accounting and
Latin American Literature. Prior to the implementation of the phase out model, elective courses offered to students were: African American Literature, Film, Geography, Forensics, Sociology, Psychology, Computer classes (Word, Excel, visual basic, PowerPoint) and Creative Writing
o Offtrack classes, which were offered to students not meeting Regents requirements, are no longer available
o Students are not able to complete specialty programs: Business, Computer Science, Engineering and Finance Institutes, or Art Institutes
o Students are not offered SAT prep courses
o Two teachers, who are not certified in special education, are
teaching students with disabilities.
· The school uses data to drive and improve instructional outcomes.
A comment by Long Island principal Carol Burris, who has written for this blog:
MY AP worked there. They started bringing over the counter registration kids into the schools, including those recently released from incarceration and still wearing restraining leg chains on their ankles.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
January 2014 cannot come soon enough for NYC schools.
This is the Bloomberg model of education..and all of his other billionaire buddies who have become sudden experts (and stakeholders in the profits of testing).
MY AP worked there. They started bringing over the counter registration kids into the schools, including those recently released from incarceration and still wearing restraining leg chains on their ankles.
Bloomberg has got to be the lowest of the low. He is despicable…bring them to his office. Let him try to teach them.
This is the information that everyone shoud be screaming from a mountain top!
I’d just like to add that James Eterno, Jamaica’s CL, and I wrote a piece stating that Jamaica was closed based on false statistics. No one has ever refuted or contradicted our account, and James emailed them to then Chancellor Joel Klein before the hearing. James gave an eloquent speech explaining the true stats.
But facts don’t matter in Mayor Bloomberg’s neighborhood unless they’re uttered by Mayor Bloomberg himself and echoed in the votes of his eight appointees to the PEP, our fake school board.
http://gothamschools.org/2010/01/13/save-jamaica-high-school/
This is asinine and I’m being polite. Really polite. How-how is this an improvement? It isn’t. This school will never improve and I think that’s the goal. But why prolong the pain? When will NY parents get hip to what mayoral control hasn’t done? That is, improve the schools. Bloomberg (NYC) has had close to ten years. Chicago has had had 17 years. DC has had 5 years and Newark 16. And the result is what? More cities leaning toward that model. A lost generation. An inexperienced teaching corp in high needs schools. A belief that someone with 5 weeks training. (Roy Rogers requires a 15 week program before you go manage one of its restaurants) is an effective and highly-qualified teacher and the need for million dollar studies and consultants to tell us things are messed up. What is most troubling is that If the space is commercial desirable then we have the new urban renewal/land grab of this century. Student removal. Not good.
Thank you so much for bringing this to the attention of your readers, and I know the media follows your posts.
I taught at Jamaica HS for 26 years before retiring in 09. Saw firsthand how the DOE cruzified the school. I know exactly how they did it, but no one seems to be investigating this fraud. If there is I real investigative reporter in New York, or beyond, I would love to give them vital information that will undermind this educational mayors master plan for how to kill a school.
Thanks for picking this up. Hopefully, we can spread the word again about how our students at Jamaica HS are being cheated thanks to school reform.
I have started – albeit slowly – collecting student anecdotes about life in a closing school and publishing them to a new blog, phaseoutschools.wordpress.com. No formal report can express what the students are experiencing as poignantly and concisely as they themselves can, but thank heavens the state recognized what the students and their teachers certainly know. Hopefully something can be done so this doesn’t continue!!
ThiS dictator needs to go! His nanny way of handling things are not right! Thank god the principals and teachers won the fight in this past round of school closings! Why oh why did they give him the opportunity for a 3rd term, shows to prove he is above the law and paid his way through! Terrible state of the city we are in!
Jamaica H.S. is not alone in this regard. I work at The H. S. of Graphic Communication Arts in midtown west Manhattan and the DOE has done everything in its power to close this school. We are a CTE school who have students from all 5 boroughs on our roster. We do not get to pick and choose who our student body is but we accept with open arms so many of the students that no other school wants. We have worked very hard to improve attendance, graduation rates, and test scores but every time we improved, the DOE raised the levels needed to achieve a good school rating- surely, we do want to do better but the DOE has pre-determined that our school, also in a VERY desirable location, should close. They have lowered our incoming class each year, added one, two, then three schools to the “campus” and made us a “turnaround model” school last year, basically telling parents “Do NOT send you children there,” even though our student body, parents and staff members all agree that we do a wonderful job under the worst of circumstances. Mayor Bloomberg and the DOE lost that battle in the courts BUT they have won the battle because so many schools that were good places for students, have been turned into schools that are now fighting to stay alive and having difficutly in doing so. It is a sad day in education when non-educators not only think they know what is best, but try to force their views and ways upon those of us who know differently!