Judge Halts New York City's Plan to Close 19 Schools

New York

March 27, 2010

(From The Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2010)

By BARBARA MARTINEZ

A judge on Friday halted a plan to close 19 New York City schools, a ruling that could place New York state in an unflattering light as it competes for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Race to the Top funding.

State Supreme Court Judge Joan B. Lobis in New York County ruled that the nation’s largest school system had failed to properly inform parents and the community about the impact the school closures would have on students.

“We plan on seeking an immediate appeal,” said Michael A. Cardozo, New York’s corporation counsel, in a statement.

He defended the city’s Department of Education against the suit filed by the United Federation of Teachers and the NAACP, among others.

Mr. Cardozo said the city believed it had followed all the procedures required to close the schools, and that unless the ruling was reversed, the city would have to “keep open schools that are failing our children.”

Joel Klein, the city’s schools chancellor, has made school closures a hallmark of his turnaround strategy, having closed more than 90 since 2002.

“It’s very unfortunate that in order to protect jobs, the union is trying to force kids to go to what are clearly failing schools,” said Mr. Klein. “I think it goes against the clear thrust” of what the Obama administration has been advocating–to close “the bottom 5% of schools, the dropout factories.”

While closing schools with low test scores and graduation rates, Mr. Klein has opened smaller schools that tend to outperform the schools they replaced, according to the education department.

In December, the education department, which oversees 1,600 schools with nearly 1.1 million children, said it would close 20 schools “that have failed to advance student learning.” One of those schools was subsequently reprieved after the local community made its case to keep the school open.

At one school slated for closure, William H. Maxwell CTE High School, only 43% of students graduated in 2009 and average attendance was 72%, according to the education department. At Middle School for Academic and Social Excellence, 30% of the students were proficient in English language arts, and fewer than 40% were proficient in math.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the teachers union, said some of the schools “had an extreme difference of opinion” about the data the education department used to measure the schools–and the department should have had a full airing of those differences. “This was a very simple thing,” he said. “They should have followed the law.”

The judge’s ruling underscores the concessions New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had to make last year at the state capital to retain mayoral control of the schools.

“It’s clear now that the mayor and the chancellor don’t have as much control over what happens in their schools as they thought they did,” said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, which advocates closing persistently low-performing schools.

New York is a finalist for as much as $700 million in funds in the government’s Race to the Top competition. The U.S. Department of Education is expected to announce the winners on Monday.

Observers expect New York to lose because it hasn’t made certain legislative changes, such as raising the cap on the number of independently run public charter schools allowed, and letting student test scores play a role in teacher evaluations.