If the Bloomberg administration has executed any education policy promises with fidelity, it has been around opening new schools. But its record on the trickier task of improving existing schools has been more mixed.
That trend continued last year, according to our analysis of the city’s progress toward fulfilling the education commitments it made during between September 2011 and August 2012. We found that Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Dennis Walcott are on track to meet most of their school creation goals, but when it comes to improving ones that already exist, their success is less clear. (Each promise is in bold, followed by an explanation of how far the city has come toward meeting it.)
The city did better at fulfilling its school creation and improvement goals than it did at keeping its promises about boosting teacher quality, which we examined earlier this week. In the final part of this series, we will look at whether city officials have kept their word about taking new approaches to handling high-need students and engaging parents.
On creating new schools:
- The city will open 100 new schools before the end of 2013, including 50 charter schools. (Bloomberg’s State of the City address, January 2012)
The city is so far on track to hit this goal. Fifty-four new schools are opening this fall, bringing the total number of schools that have opened under the Bloomberg administration to 589. Of the newest crop of schools, 24 are charter schools. - Fifty new middle schools will open by 2013, of which 25 will be charter schools. (Walcott’s middle schools speech, September 2011)
The city also chipped away mightily at this number, and depending on the method of counting might be more than on track to hit the total. This year, 18 of the 54 new schools opened with middle school grades, including seven charter schools. Another eight of the new schools, all charter schools, opened with elementary grades but plan to serve middle school students once they are at full enrollment in several years. - The city will help high-performing charter networks grow faster. (State of the City)
When Bloomberg made this promise, he specifically name-checked Success Academies and KIPP as two networks whose strong performance he would like to see replicated. This year, three new Success Academy charter schools and one new KIPP school opened in the city. All of them had sought to open since long before Bloomberg made the commitment. At least five other local charter schools also replicated this year. - The city will bring in charter school operators that run successful schools elsewhere. (State of the City)
The city has so far struck out here: Except for KIPP, which has long run New York City schools, none of this year’s new charter schools are part of national networks. One operator that Bloomberg specifically mentioned, Rocketship Education, opened two new charter schools in its native California but so far has not opened or even proposed a school for New York. Its CEO has said dozens of districts have recruited the network but he is wary of operating under different regulations in different places. - The city will launch at least a dozen new career training programs by 2013. (State of the City)
Six new career and technical education schools opened this fall, focusing on tourism, health careers, energy and technology, and software engineering. Four of them are district schools, and two are charter schools that plan to add CTE programs in later years. - The city will open three new high schools that include the first two years of college. (State of the City)
A month after Bloomberg vowed to replicate Brooklyn’s Pathways in Technology High School, where students will be able to earn an associate’s degree by staying on for two years after receiving their high school diploma, Chicago announced it would open five schools in the model. Chicago’s replicas opened their doors this month. But New York City has not added any more “9-14” schools.
On improving existing schools:
- Ten middle schools will undergo “turnaround” using federal funds allocated by the state. (Walcott’s middle schools speech)
After Walcott’s middle school speech, he and city officials did not utter another peep about this plan. Then, in January, when Bloomberg surprised the city by announcing that dozens of schools would undergo turnaround, a federally prescribed overhaul strategy in which principals and teachers are replaced. Of the 33 schools on Bloomberg’s list, just six were middle schools. None of them, of course, ended up being turned around using the strategy, and the city is not receiving the federal funds. - The city will improve 33 struggling schools using “turnaround.” (State of the City, January 2012)
Bloomberg proposed this plan after he came to odds with the teachers union about teacher evaluations, a required component of less aggressive school improvement strategies. It’s no secret how this plan turned out. After the city moved at a blistering pace to close and reopen the schools with new names and new staffs, an arbitrator ruled that the city’s hiring plans violated its contract with the teachers union. The schools could not undergo turnaround, and the city lost out on another pot of federal funds meant to help them. Now, at least some of the schools seem to have reopened for the year in more chaos than they closed. - The city will ask the City Council to redirect funds from 51 low-performing middle schools to other schools that have “shown promise but need continued support to succeed.” (Middle schools speech)
Details about how the City Council’s middle school funds are being spent have always been murky. But Walcott announced details of the evolution in April, when he provided a status update about his middle school reforms. The new program, the Middle School Quality Initiative, is bringing together 18 struggling middle schools so they can learn from the practices of higher-performing schools. - More middle schools will join the Innovation Zone using federal Race to the Top funding. (Middle schools speech)
This year, about 100 schools joined the Innovation Zone, a set of schools that use technology and other changes to tailor instruction to individual students. Of them, 39 were middle schools, bringing the total number of middle schools in the zone to 70, according to department officials. All schools in the zone get support either throughfederal Race to the Top funds or from private donors. - The city will use $15 million in state funds to buy non-fiction books aligned to the Common Core standards. (Middle schools speech)
In April, Walcott announced that purchasing for the two-year book buy was underway. The books would become available to schools April 26, he said.