Closing Time (or, Oops! I Did It Again.)

Yesterday, NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein wrote an op-ed in the New York Post ("Closing Time") outlining the rationale for closing schools in NYC. Klein explained:

Starting in 2002, we began phasing out and shutting down schools that had a history of failure. These decisions...were an acknowledgement that the schools weren't remotely educating students - and that they weren't going to get better on their own.

To demonstrate the success of prior school closings, Klein provides us with the example of Bushwick High School in Brooklyn:

Bushwick HS had a graduation rate of just 23 percent. We replaced it with four new small schools, which now make up what we call the Bushwick campus. Last year, the new schools had a combined graduation rate of nearly 60 percent -almost triple what it once was. The students literally paraded through their neighborhood in June, demonstrating the pride that they feel for their schools and their community.

If the intent of school closings is to clear out the students who previously attended the "failing school," replace them with higher performing students, and declare victory, Bushwick is a marked success.

The tables below compare the incoming 9th grade students at Bushwick High School with the incoming 9th graders at the small schools that took Bushwick's place. Bushwick stopped taking 9th graders through the formal admissions process in September of 2002, but continued receiving "over the counter students" (OTCs)- students who have not been placed in any school, who are transferring, or who arrive in the middle of the year - in the 2003-2004 school year as well. Zoned schools like Bushwick represent combinations of the formal admissions process students and OTC students; while the small schools do receive OTCs, the proportion of the student population comprised by these students is much smaller.

How was the old Bushwick different from the schools that replaced it?

• The most notable differences include the ELL population and the percentage of students who come into 9th grade proficient in reading and math. Bushwick 9th graders were 30.6% ELL, while in their first year, the new small schools served between 19.5 and 26% ELL. Even more drastically, 83% of the Bushwick OTC kids were ELLs.
  
  
• On most other indicators listed in Table 1 below, the Bushwick 9th graders were lower performing than the 9th graders attending the new small schools. This is particularly true of the Bushwick OTC students.
  

Table 1. Characteristics of Incoming 9th Graders at Bushwick Campus
(click to enlarge)

• Though the small schools are supposed to serve more ELLs as they grow, Table 2 below demonstrates that they are actually serving fewer ELLs over time. By September 2005, the small school 9th graders were between 14.8 - 17.5% ELL; recall that Bushwick served 30.6%.

• Table 2 below shows that the second year classes (04-05) at the Bushwick small schools are significantly more advantaged than the first year classes. (The more disadvantaged population of the first class is a result of the small schools missing the first round of the admissions process in their first year, leaving them to choose from lower achieving students.)
  
  
• While the last Bushwick 9th graders had fewer than 10% of students proficient in both reading and math, the Harbor School had 20.2% proficient in reading and 45.5% in math in 2004; the Academy for Urban Planning 9th graders had 24.1% proficient in reading and 22% in math. Even when the percentage of proficient incoming students drops in 2005, they are still much more likely to be proficient as 9th graders than the Bushwick students were.
  
  
  Table 2. Characteristics of Incoming 9th Graders at the Bushwick Campus, September 2004 and 2005
  

This is an "oops! I did it again" moment for the Department of Education. As I wrote in a previous post, the DOE already made this mistake by declaring victory at Evander Childs in the Bronx.

Can the DOE out-oops Britney? We'll see.