Murray Bergtraum High School is literally within view of City Hall in New York City. Just cross a busy intersection and there it is.
It used to be a good school with a good reputation. Sitting in the center of New York City’s financial and governmental activity, it prepared young people for business careers.
No longer. The Bloomberg administration has a policy of preferring small high schools and charter schools. It’s policy for large high schools is, at best, benign neglect, but more often, dumping ground.
Bergtraum became a dumping ground for students who couldn’t go anywhere else. In ten years of Bloomberg-Klein reforms, it went from a good school to a holding pen.
Since NYC’s miraculous test score gains collapsed in 2010, you don’t hear much boasting about the scores.
But you will hear boasting about the graduation rate. You don’t hear much about the credit recovery programs on which the grad rate data rest.
But when you think of Bloomberg and Klein and Eric Nadelstern (quoted in the article), remember Bergtraum.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When you get past the insipid, smarmy rhetoric of corporate education reform, it’s true motives reveal themselves: to destabilize and ultimately eliminate the neighborhood public school, and to replace it with private charters or online workhouses.
In NYC under Bloomberg and Klein, the neighborhood high schools were attacked first, but the process is now filtering down to the middle and elementary schools under Bloomberg’s current lapdog Chancellor, Dennis Walcott.
When viewed from the perspective of the stability and identity a neighborhood school provides – especially in poor communities – the essence of corporate reform is thrown into stark relief: a kind of social vandalism benefitting the wealthy and powerful, and undermining communities.
Thank you Diane. I am the UFT rep at the school and invite your readers to view my full take on the issue: http://laborslessons.blogspot.com/2012/08/hope-for-my-school.html
John Elfrank-Dana
Starve the Beast. When the school I taught in proclaimed that all students should go to college, it dumped misfit students into mechanical arts – shop classes. It then defunded that very department. It then increased the size of its separate behavioral disorder school which was understaffed with teachers and yet had many underpaid and under-trained aides who acted as security guards. The local police kept a close eye and a direct line open to the so-called school. The dropout rate was high, as was the incarceration rate. Some of this was inevitable because of certain true behaviorally disordered students who were dangerous. The rest was simply Starve the Beast collateral damage.
Defund the department that people wanted to do away with in order to do away with the students the school wished to rid themselves of. Pay anyone else except qualified teachers to work with students. Pay any company. Pay any contractors to build and maintain the dumping ground. Use money to rid yourself of anything you wish to disassociate yourself from your school brand. Let young lives hit total loss of hope – and then dump them.
Businesses and governmental agencies starve the beast by defunding on a daily basis. Even retirees are being denied the pensions they paid into for the length of their careers. Dump them. The money could be used elsewhere to keep those in power in power.
Oh, there you go being negative again. Look on the bright side – think of how all those dumped kids are now lining the pockets of the executives of the for-profit prisons.
My alma mater recently played Murray Bergtraum in the PSAL girls basketball championship game. I can’t remember exactly when, but I want to say it was about a year or two ago. I hadn’t known much about the school until I researched our opponents out of curiosity, but I was brought up to date on the present state of the school. I was not aware of their past. Simply put, the decline of this school is tragic for both the teachers and the student body. It’s terrible that a school like this could be turned into a “dumping ground”. Amazing (well, not really) how the mayor, in trying to improve education, actually destroys a successful school. He probably expects the teachers currently there to successfully teach the students as well. What techniques could be used in a situation like that? How could a teacher even survive in that environment, much less thrive? What happened to this school is simply sad. Nice job Mr. Mayor.
As a teacher at Bergtraum for 8 years now, I can report that the teaching techniques that have been pressed upon us over the last 2 years have been slap-dash, confusing to the students, and what’s the worst part, is that they continually change from semester to semester. As a result, there is little continuity for the students or us. We are threatened with “U” ratings unless we conform to the constantly revised approaches to teaching. And while we and our students struggle to adapt to the latest rubrics imposed on us, we find the administration turns a blind eye to the chronic discipline issues that disrupt learning in the building. Cell phone use by students is rampant, packs of noisy students roam the hallways disrupting and distracting classes in session, the dean’s office has been decimated by budget cuts so there is little help there, and the guidance counselors have been removed so that option for defusing troubled students is no longer available. It’s an environment that often sends me home on the verge of tears.
I taught at Bergtraum for one week last year as a rotating ATR (excessed teacher). I researched the school’s history and engaged with students and staff. As you say, Diane, it started with a dream, a few steps from the Wall Street where vital business partnerships were planned from its beginnings. By the time I arrived in early June 2012, things had certainly deteriorated. On my first day, they handed me something called the “Substitute Assignment Form.” One section caught my eye:
“All teachers should walk about the classroom (when delivering the lesson for the day. Sitting at the desk is not considered acceptable behavior and is a poor classroom technique…..We will not accept anything short of professional attitude and effort. Failure to comply may result in your dismissal.”
Nice way to engage the enthusiasm of a professional, right? So lovely to be welcomed with a threat. This top down, authoritative language certainly contracts my spirit. In my week there, I met some wonderful teachers, a great office staff and helpful AP. I was also given challenging classes with no lesson plans. For one social studies class, I was told responsibility to make sure I prepared these kids for their Regents with the lesson plan in American History I was given. I hunkered down with the kids, gave them some helpful tips on how to take a Regents test and started going over the lesson. “This is a Global History class, Miz, not American History.” Whoops – now what do I do for the rest of the period?
Your comment about this school becoming a “holding pen” really stings with the truth. There is a plenty of talent within its halls: students, teachers and administrators. (The Chinese language class I subbed for was amazing!) But this talent seems to be invisible, unsupported. It’s painful to see.
I am continuing to write my book which chronicles my experiences last year rotating through 25 (!) Manhattan pubic high schools, working title, “Yo Miz.” I apologize if I seem self-promotional, but I felt called to tell the stories I saw of the students, teachers, administrators against the backdrop of the hopes, dreams and evolution of the NYC public school system. These are extraordinary times and we need our educational policy leaders to be actual educators. Rotating through all these schools, I got to see the best and the worst. From the scholar tanks to the “holding pens,” if you will.
I shall continue to thank you, Diane, for your incredible energy and for being ground zero for the current progressive education movement.
It is very easy to create a phony graduation rate. You just intimidate all of the teachers into passing virtually all of the students. This happens in charters.
Pressuring teachers into passing students happens not only at charters. I remember years ago being called down to the principal’s office and being asked to justify why a particular student should pass. Now it’s the opposite. The question now is why you aren’t passing more kids?