This video features Kymberly Walcott, now a senior in Hunter College in New York City. She describes the terrible injustice of closing her high school, Jamaica High School.
The idea that closing schools is a “remedy” was one of the cruelest aspects of the failed No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
Countless schools were closed because they had low scores. Typically, these schools were located in black and brown communities, and the students enrolled in them were, of course, nonwhite. Children were dispersed, communities were disrupted, teachers and principals and support staff lost their jobs and had to fend for themselves.
Jamaica High School was once one of the greatest high schools in the nation and in New York City. As its population changed from white to predominantly nonwhite, its reputation changed. It enrolled needier students. But instead of providing the school with the supports it needed, school officials in the Bloomberg era declared that it was a “failing school.” That immediately sent enrollments into a tail spin, as parents withdrew their children. The label became a self-fulfilling prophecy, dooming the school. The Department of Education closed it and replaced it with small high schools, none of which could match the broad curriculum, the programs for ELLs, or other offerings at the original school.
This article in the New Yorker in 2015 captures a sense of what was lost.
There is no evidence that closing schools produces better outcomes for students. It predictably produces disruption and chaos, which are not good for children and teens.
If there are any researchers out there who have a source for the number of schools closed by NCLB and RTTT, please let me know. I have searched for the number without success.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Failing means test scores and a few other indicators do not pass muster for a school. The whole school is judged by productivity measures applied to franchise stores. Open and close without regard to strengths and what resources are needed to make a difference in the community the school serves. Better for a franchise mentality, outsource to computers as much as you can at every school and call it personalized learning.
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A strong and compelling comparison: The “school is judged by productivity measures applied to franchise stores.” I am reminded of a telling accusation made by one of our local anti-reform activists who said that the district had come in and, despite massive community resistance, shut down their neighborhood school “like a K-Mart store.”
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May I post this statement on my fb page?
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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This is from 2015 but it’s still relevant vis-a-vis school closings and punishing teachers and the students: Billionaire hedge fund managers have called on Puerto Rico to lay off teachers and close schools so that the island can pay them back the billions it owes.
The hedge funds called for Puerto Rico to avoid financial default – and repay its debts – by collecting more taxes, selling $4bn worth of public buildings and drastically cutting public spending, particularly on education.
The group of 34 hedge funds hired former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists to come up with a solution to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis after the island’s governor declared its $72bn debt “unpayable” – paving the way for bankruptcy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/28/hedge-funds-puerto-rico-close-schools-fire-teachers-pay-us-back
Now after hurricane Maria and the outmigration of many Puerto Ricans, the school closing mania has gone into hyper gear.
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3.5 million white folks left NYC between 1950 and 2000, while the non-white population increased by 3.5 mil, leaving NYC’s overall population in 2000 almost identical to the population in 1950. Whites were 90% of NYC in 1950, but only 44% in 2000, according to the US Census Bureau. The white minority continued to dominate NYC economic and political life, a building boom for high-rise Manhattan luxe condos with housing out of reach for median families, and the starving of public schools for the non-white, non-elite. As NYC public schools changed radically from white to non-white in those decades, public schools were balkanized into underfunded, under-served minority schools in poor neighborhoods vs. sheltered, privileged, parent-subsidized public schools in white catchment areas, with selective magnet schools and the legendary special high schools like Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, etc., which have always been heavily white. This white education policy faced no opposition from “liberal” UFT chiefs in a town run by “liberal Democrats.” Perhaps Cynthia Nixon can finally make the UFT and the Democrats pay for the drastically unequal city and schools they built decade by decade.
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Stuyvesant and Bronx Science are currently 82 and 77 percent non-white, respectively, and both are 44% low-income. The suburbs, elite private schools, and “holistic” admissions schools like Eleanor Roosevelt and Beacon are where you’ll find the privileged whites.
Your other points about white flight are well taken—but let’s remember that a disproportionately white teaching force was fleeing as well. Schools like Jamaica were great for drawing a paycheck but not for sending your own kids. Perhaps a city-employee residential requirement would have helped with integration and stability.
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Tim,
I knew faculty members at Jamaica. They were dedicated and hard working. How dare you insult them, especially when you are a charter troll?
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I believe Nixon sent her son to “sheltered, privileged, parent-subsidized public schools” in NYC. Not sure if he’s still in the NYC public school system. If not, maybe she’s ready to force Democrats to “pay for the drastically unequal city and schools they built.”
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What an odd comment to make. Since when does sending your child to a public school that is more affluent mean you can’t support a system that would help to change this?
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By the way, Stuyvesant is not “heavily white.” It’s about 18% “white.”
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For some time now, Oakland Unified has made a concerted effort to convince themselves and the public of how much money (how about…none) the district will save if they close and consolidate schools. 1/3 of their schools are now charters, and over the last several years, predictably, the district enrollment has eroded to such an extent that the budget has been severely impacted. In the 15+ years of being involved with the district, I have never seen such a wasted effort of time, money, community engagement, and outside reform groups pushing school closure. They use every tactic you can imagine: bogus surveys, bad data, “grassroots” community parent groups sold talking points (school governance doesn’t matter!) by GO Public Schools. All with the goal of handing over facilities to charter schools, and afterwards having everyone just come to the table and get along….for the kids…the school board even came up with a name for it-“hybrid” school district, where district schools and charter schools happily coexist side by side. I, for one, am having a difficult time with the concept of having my son’s high school peacefully coexist with a charter high school that pushes out 50% of its students. Not going to happen.
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Isn’t it ironic? Think how much money we could save by closing and consolidating schools! At the same time as, let’s open up a whole bunch of new schools as completely new school systems under private management!
It’s enough to give a body whiplash.
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Our nation has lost its will to promote racial diversity. Instead, we have become a profit at any cost culture. I enjoyed the nostalgic article in The New Yorker. It tells a story of when we attempted to address inequities. Those days are sadly gone.
To piggyback on what Ira has said, the value of real estate in NYC has increased tremendously. Manhattan and most of Brooklyn have priced the middle class out of the market. As I have stated before, privatization is a tool of gentrification. Jamaica is a major transportation hub for both the MTA and the LIRR. I do not believe that more educational opportunities are at the heart of the school closings. Politicians often have a symbiotic relationship with developers. I speculate that there is a plan to reinvent Jamaica to provide upscale housing for commuters. I predict that selective charters will be part of the proposals. We have seen this agenda play out in numerous cities, and I predict that Jamaica is a target. Time will tell if I am right or wrong.
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You are right. Public schools function as a tool of the housing market as an asset manipulated by developers to inflate home prices
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Cities often work with developers because they see the opportunity to get much higher tax ratables on the properties.
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We have that going on right now-city of Oakland planning a sale of public land to a private developer to build a charter school…https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/oaklands-exclusive-deal-to-sell-city-owned-land-to-charter-school-draws-opposition/Content?oid=15872497
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Michael Bllomberg and his toadies, Joel Klein and Derek Walcott: serial school killers.
The destruction of Jamaica High School was an object lesson in the heedlessness and viciousness of so-called reform.
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Update on the ongoing ECOT saga in Ohio:
http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180510/yost-seeks-potential-criminal-charges-against-ecot-officials
They finally started enforcing some charter regulations, but only because they’re all running for election and it became politically untenable to continue to pretend it wasn’t happening for another decade.
The public in Ohio will be lucky if they bring criminal charges, because that will force this charter to finally reveal their financials and the names of some of the people who have personally benefitted from this scam.
Charters in Ohio are almost completely opaque. The only way to find out this information is to charge them criminally. The scandal will get bigger. We’ll find out a lot of powerful people in Ohio have been making millions on charter schools. It will involve Democrats and Republicans.
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I would like to see some of these corporate offenders get jail time.
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Only if they end up in the most violent and worst prison in the United States.
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“The label became a self-fulfilling prophecy, dooming the school.”
If that is what happens to schools when adults are in charge, just think what happens to students when all those labels from all those standardized tests are placed upon them.
From the world’s leading testing “expert” Noel Wilson:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.” (from “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 )
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
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