The list of America’s best high schools by US News World Report puts New York City smack on top of the academic heap. There’s a lesson here for United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew.
Seven of the top 10 high schools in the state are located in the five boroughs, all at the very top of the rankings nationwide. Three of the names are familiar by virtue of longtime excellence: Townsend Harris, Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.
Four are lesser known because they were founded as brand-new institutions within the last decade. They are the Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Long Island City, Queens; the High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies in Chinatown; the High School for American Studies at Lehman College in the Bronx, and Queens High School for the Sciences at York College in Jamaica.
Free to start from scratch with committed administrators and faculty, each has developed into a crucially needed engine of high achievement. Hats off to all the adults and kids who are taking the city — and the country — to school.
Graduation rates at or near 100%, plus math and English proficiency at or near that excellent mark, prove a truth that Mulgrew refuses to admit. To wit: Founding a new school rather than attempting to reform an old failure is the fastest, surest way to deliver improved education.
Some 190 times in the last 10 years, the Education Department has closed underperforming schools and replaced them with new institutions. The results have been overwhelmingly positive.
The new schools have generally delivered better results for the kids — in some cases, dramatically so. That’s because trying to change the ingrained culture of a persistently low-performing school without overhauling the staff is, with few exceptions, a losing proposition.
No matter to Mulgrew, who has gone to court in hope of blocking Mayor Bloomberg from closing and reopening 24 failing schools — in the process, letting go and replacing up to half the teachers.
It’s the last part Mulgrew can’t abide, regardless of the impact on students. Bloomberg had it just right in saying: “Suing to stop closing schools which are leaving our children without a future says that your agenda is not to help children.”
Worse, Mulgrew has only himself to blame for disruptions about to befall his members. Bloomberg ordered the closures only after Mulgrew refused to approve a performance evaluation program for teachers that would have resulted in dismissal of a tiny fraction of the teachers, if any.
Now, in desperation, Mulgrew is challenging the mayor’s move by asserting in court papers that Bloomberg is only changing the schools’ names, not really closing them, and thus is barred from removing teachers. Meanwhile, he said in an interview Monday that the only thing Bloomberg had learned in the last decade is how to close schools.
Actually, he has learned how to open schools like the Baccalaureate School for Global Education (ranked 21st in the entire country), the High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies (No. 25), the High School for American Studies (No. 42) and Queens High School for the Sciences at York College (No. 52).
More, please, more.
