Evidence-based Whole-School Reform | High School Redesign ...



Nine High Schools, One RoofInside Small Schools: Adlai E. Stevenson High School used to be one of the most dangerous in New York City. Today, it is home to nine small high schools that teach the same people, and each school has different results.By LIZ ROBBINS and THEODORIC MEYERNY Times: Published: March 16, 2013 HYPERLINK "" teachers heard footsteps thundering in the hallways at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in the Bronx, they threw down iron gates to stop student gangs from rioting, even as other students tried to deconstruct literature behind locked classroom doors. A decade ago, Stevenson, in the borough’s Castle Hill section, was one of the city’s most dangerous, overcrowded schools, barely containing its 3,054 students — when they showed up for class. From One Failing School, Nine ExperimentsOf course, the building was also a microcosm of the diverse, discordant Bronx life outside its beige-bricked walls, and it carried more than fear on its four floors: Stevenson also boasted a renowned gospel choir, an auto shop, a championship basketball team, a 65-piece marching band and a 30-teacher English department, and it offered a dozen Advanced Placement classes to students, some of whom went on to Ivy League schools. Still, one factor was impossible to ignore: only 30 percent of its students were graduating, a statistic it shared with other comprehensive high schools in poor neighborhoods throughout the city. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has made closing large, low-performing high schools like Stevenson a linchpin of his reform strategy. In the big schools’ place, he opened smaller, often theme-based schools designed to give students a more supportive educational experience. Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesStudents at Millennium Art Academy, including Santos Cruz, a senior, discussed “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Since 2002, the city has closed or begun to phase out 63 high schools, 22 of them in the Bronx, including Stevenson. Of the 337 new high schools that have opened, nine are in what is now called the Stevenson Campus, the most under one roof anywhere in the city. They are identified in their hallways by the color of their door frames, and by flags, like those of Renaissance city-states. Each school has its own vision of utopia, from video game design classes at the new Bronx Compass to college-level discussions of “A Streetcar Named Desire” at Millennium Art Academy. Success varies wildly from floor to floor. The graduation rate for schools in the building has nearly doubled, to 57.3 percent at the five traditional four-year schools with graduating classes in 2011, according to statistics from the city’s Education Department. Attendance at Stevenson has gone from 75 percent a decade ago to 81 percent across the nine schools this year. And while city data shows a 62 percent plunge in violent crime in the building since 2004-5, the state says that overall episodes in the schools have declined much less steeply. And SAT scores — under 10 percent of students took the test in 2011 — show no marked improvement. Scores on the English Regents exams have climbed, but those on the United States history and government test are no better than Stevenson’s were a decade ago. According to state data, only about 2.4 percent of the students who started at six small schools in the building in 2007 were equipped to do college work four years later — far below the city’s average of 20.7 percent. Still, only 14 percent of students graduated with a Regents degree from Stevenson in 2005; at the five schools with graduating classes in 2011, 40 percent did. “The work that is happening at the Stevenson campus is dramatically better today, without question, than it was in 2004,” said Marc Sternberg, a deputy education chancellor, who that year started Bronx Lab, a small school on the Evander Childs Educational Campus in the Bronx. “And we have a long way to go.” Reform inevitably means upheaval, and Stevenson has experienced a constant churn: of the first five small schools started there, four no longer have their founding principals. Twenty to 30 percent of a school’s young teachers often leave at the end of a school year. Two schools that were started on Stevenson’s third floor — the School for Community Research and Learning, and the Gateway School for Environmental Research and Technology — are already being phased out, after they received D grades on the city-mandated progress reports and graduation rates dipped below 50 percent. Another school, the Antonia Pantoja Preparatory Academy, which has students in 6th through 12th grade, nearly closed its high school because of poor performance. “What we care about are student outcomes, not being right all the time,” Mr. Sternberg said, explaining the decision to shutter the newly opened schools. “When we see that we haven’t gotten it right, we intervene.” Last week, the Panel for Education Policy approved a new round of closings, of 22 schools, including the Jonathan Levin High School for Media and Communications, which opened in 2002 in the Bronx. The city removed the hulking Herbert H. Lehman High School from the chopping block but said it would reduce enrollment there and add three small schools inside the building. Rick Ouimet, 37, a popular English teacher at Millennium who began his career in 1998 at Stevenson, wrestles with whether small schools are the better path. “Is the educational quality necessarily higher?” he asked. Millennium received five consecutive A’s from the city, until the 2011-12 school year, when it got a B. To Mr. Ouimet, the opening and closing of schools “symbolizes how with all the change, things really haven’t changed that much.” “As teachers,” he said, “we’re all trying to figure out, is there a master plan?” Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesThe Saturday intra-campus basketball league offers an outlet for school pride at Stevenson. The Bronx, historically the most impoverished borough in terms of education, has been a proving ground for the small schools movement. In 2001, officials, in conjunction with a nonprofit organization, New Visions for Public Schools, targeted Stevenson and other large neighborhood schools like Morris and Evander Childs high schools to close. Officials cut back enrollment at large schools while adding smaller schools throughout the area. Stevenson’s last freshman class entered in September 2005, and its last seniors graduated in 2009.Michael Soguero, an assistant principal at the School for the Physical City in Manhattan (now closed), opened Bronx Guild High School in 2002, in a corner of the top floor at Stevenson. Programs were based on the expeditionary learning tenets of its partner, Outward Bound. The next year, the School for Community Research and Learning moved in on the third floor. In 2004, Stevenson got three new schools: Gateway was on the third floor; Millennium and the Pablo Neruda School for Architecture and World Studies, which had each opened the year before at Lehman High School, two miles away, moved into Stevenson’s first and fourth floors. By then, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had begun to support the effort to establish small New York City high schools; it has given more than $70 million since 2000 to New Visions. “The very beginning was turbulent because morale was low at Stevenson as they were phasing out,” recalled Maxine Nodel, the founding principal of Millennium, the most traditional school in the building. “All the funding and resources were going to the Bill and Melinda Gates small schools, and because of that there was inequity. The larger, factory-style school didn’t have a chance against them.” As Joel I. Klein, the schools chancellor at the time, adopted the small schools initiative citywide in 2004, he also designated the most dangerous environments, including Stevenson, as “impact” schools, installing metal detectors and flooding hallways with police officers. Small schools had separate entrances from those for Stevenson’s students. Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesThe sign in the lobby is already out of date; nine schools now occupy what is called the Stevenson Campus. The demographics on the Stevenson campus have remained relatively unchanged since it was a zoned school: ninth graders typically enter with 1s and 2s on the city tests in math and English, meaning that they are below grade level; the student population is 65 percent Hispanic and 28 percent black. None of the new schools in the building screens its students for admission. “The kids came from a certain geographical area in the Bronx. Kids are still the same challenging kids,” said Gerald Martori, who spent 28 years at Stevenson and was its principal from 2004 to 2008; he is now the principal of Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Queens. “I think that’s one of the things that people overlook. Just living is a challenge, and it didn’t matter if you call it Stevenson or S.C.R.L. The problem is bigger than the school, whether it’s 4,000 or 400.” The problems do not go away quickly. Antonia Pantoja, which opened on Stevenson’s second floor in 2007 in partnership with the College Board, got a D on its latest middle school report card. The principal, Nancy Diaz, sought to truncate the school at the eighth grade starting next year, several education officials said. But the Education Department refused, saying it would instead monitor the school’s progress. Ms. Diaz would not comment for this article. Even the school’s parents association president, Elena Vila, lacked confidence in its future; she kept her daughter in sixth grade there but transferred her twin sons, ninth graders, to Millennium because she found Antonia Pantoja “unfocused.” Why one school succeeds and another fails is complicated, of course, but the process is not random, according to dozens of educators who have spent time at Stevenson. A school thrives, they say, because of its aggressive leadership, its adherence to its theme, and its teachers’ ability to engage students. “I think Bloomberg had a vision for change that was so needed,” said Bronx Guild’s principal, Sam Decker. “And I don’t agree with every decision he has made. I am not a fan of closing schools; I don’t think it serves a purpose. I think it demoralizes kids and tells them they are great big losers. But I very much believe in the small school strategy, the personalization.” Thirty percent of Bronx Guild’s students receive special education services, and one teacher advises a student through graduation. All students leave campus twice a week for internships. Milosh Marinovich, 27, teaches the television police drama “The Wire” in his junior English class as Greek tragedy. In James Mohr’s class in global history, students create Facebook pages for Voltaire and Rousseau. Bronx Guild received the only A in the building in 2011-12, and Mr. Decker noted the paradox. The Bloomberg administration is fixated on statistics, and yet the very aim of small schools is to offer intangible benefits.“By knowing the kids, we give them all kinds of life skills,” said Mr. Decker, who wears an earring in his right ear and maintains nonstop office hours for teachers and students, “such as how to talk to people respectfully, how to ask for what you need, how to problem solve, how to work with people you don’t necessarily like. Because we’re all they’ve got.” Jose Espinal, a junior from a Dominican family, spends most of his time at the school with the science teacher, Bill Lynam, and stays until the early evening. Jose has blossomed by becoming the caretaker of the chicken coop behind the school, even recording the chickens’ behavior in a diary. “This is where I feel most comfortable,” Jose said as he sat in the coop. “I feel like nobody can bother me here, not being told what to do, that I’m just a freak.” Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesJose Espinal, a junior, is the caretaker of the chicken coop for the Bronx Guild High School. For students like Jose, the fourth floor pulses with promise. Mr. Decker frequently collaborates with Sabrina Cook, the second-year principal of Pablo Neruda, which has received three B’s in a row. They call their floor the Penthouse. But one floor below, resignation sticks to the walls. The School for Community Research and Learning has been reduced to just juniors and seniors, and occupies a single hallway. Jacqueline Boswell, its third principal in nine years, offers hugs to her students. “She’s trying to close the school with dignity,” Mr. Decker said. “You can’t help,” Ms. Boswell said, “but care and bring your special touch to make your children shine. And to support the staff and to give them hope — which is what we do every day.” Closing a school is an intrinsically hopeless process, though, despite the best faces (and the balloons) that the weary staff and the students offered on a recent visit. One rainy, windy morning in February, only 10 students attended Jeanette Toomer’s English language arts A.P. class for juniors. Ms. Toomer attributed the 50 percent absentee rate to students being nervous that there would be a video camera, and the “bad weather.” The students gave PowerPoint presentations about grammar. “Furthermore, we learnt about complex sentences,” one student read. “The best part of the school is having not a lot of students, so teachers can focus more on your weaknesses,” said Valerie Ventura, 17, a student in Ms. Toomer’s class. The downside? “I don’t really like having one hallway,” she said. “It feels different, like you don’t have the high school experience you were expecting.” Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesAt Bronx Compass High School, George Jimenez participated in a rap recording session. During the tenure of William Mulqueen, the founding principal of S.C.R.L., the school was investigated for a possible cheating incident involving a Regents exam (a chemistry teacher was reprimanded), and an assistant principal resigned and sued the Education Department, claiming religious and other types of discrimination. The department proposed closing the school in 2009, but it was given a reprieve. At a hearing to consider the school’s future, all Stevenson campus principals were required to sit on the dais with department officials. “That gave the impression to the public that we were a part of the messenger system for the school closing, that we were aligned with the powers that be,” said one principal who attended the meeting, and spoke about it on the condition of anonymity so as not to antagonize the department. “We sat there like puppets. It was like the Salem Witch Trial.” The following year, S.C.R.L. was told it would be phased out. Last winter it was Gateway’s turn. “I don’t think that by putting a new name to the school, spending a lot of money on the stationery and changing the school is going to be any solution,” Raul Giansante, the president of the parents association, said at the public hearing on Gateway’s closing. “I think that the solution that we have on our hands is to put more money into the location.”At the outset, Gateway offered internships and environmental field work. But the population grew rapidly, leading to overcrowding, and the school began taking on more special education students and students learning the English language. Resources dwindled. Clifford Siegel, who officials said was chosen as principal in part because he was an influential teachers union representative, who could help assuage members’ anger over the large school closings, declined to speak for this article. He instructed his teachers to do the same. One fundamental reason that the school struggled was lack of innovation, said Eric Nadelstern, the former deputy superintendent of Bronx schools, who led the small school movement there. Gateway still had eight 40-minute periods a day, and teachers organized into departments. “If you open a small school as a replica of Stevenson, it’s going to have a similar result,” Mr. Nadelstern said. Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesAt the Bronx Guild High School, Milosh Marinovich, an English teacher, searched for a book for a student. While students slipped through the cracks at Stevenson, now teachers contact parents or guardians to improve attendance, and provide counseling. But there are trade-offs with the small schools as well. Students are mostly segregated from the other schools, and can be suspended if they go to other floors. Campus spirit is similarly fractured, and the schools’ different schedules make joining a varsity sports team at Stevenson challenging. The Saturday intra-campus basketball league offers one outlet for school pride, with teams wearing school jerseys and the championship banner hanging in the winning school’s hallway. The smaller schools have trouble offering the kinds of after-school activities high school students expect. “I wish we could have a science club; I wish they had a fashion club,” said Katherine Vargas, a senior at Millennium. “The students would do it ourselves, but of course you need an adult, you would need a space, you would need a time, you would need materials, and it adds up.” At Bronx Guild, the skateboarding club uses the hallways to practice after school. At Bronx Compass, the newest school in the building, the principal, Stacy McCoy, 29, outsources students to city programs or nonprofits. “Small schools don’t have to give it up, they just have to be smart about the way they use people to link students with those opportunities,” she said. To increase attendance at her school, which has just 91 ninth graders, Ms. McCoy chose to open the gym at 7:30 a.m. and offer breakfast. It worked so well that the other schools asked to join next year. Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesAt Bronx Compass, the newest school in the building, the principal, Stacy McCoy, watched students work on their art projects. Sharing space and resources is not without tension for the nine schools. Even with two cafeterias, students can find themselves eating lunch at 10 a.m. or 2 p.m. The Bronx Community High School, a transfer school (a school that takes students who have failed elsewhere) that opened in 2007 on the first floor, is expanding into some of Millennium’s rooms next year. Bronx Bridges, for those learning English, on the third floor, will expand along with Bronx Compass once S.C.R.L. and Gateway depart. The closing of Stevenson and the opening of the small schools has led to waste in surprising places. When Anthony DiMasso, the Bronx Guild digital music teacher, was setting up his ground-floor classroom, he found a power source in the wall that had been supplying electricity to public address speakers. They had been unused for four years, since Stevenson closed. Next door, the Gateway music teacher, Lewis Traver, a Stevenson holdover who supervises the depleted jazz band and after-school music program, saved old violins, tubas, basses and drums in frigid storage rooms. Mr. Lynam, the Bronx Guild science teacher who also taught at Stevenson, rescued body models, textbooks, shelves, and old lamps from Dumpsters, stashing them in his lab. Outside Stevenson, eight metal flagpoles stand bare at the school’s main entrance. They flew the individual school’s flags, until officials discovered that the location was a natural wind tunnel, and the ripped flags were removed. Even with uneven success at Stevenson, the Education Department said the small schools have fulfilled their initial purpose by doubling graduation rates. “That was the goal. That was achieved,” saidShael Polakow-Suransky, the department’s chief academic officer. “Now we need to set a harder goal: how do we double the college readiness?” Students are not the only ones being graded. The examples of S.C.R.L. and Gateway remind the teachers and principals on the Stevenson campus that their schools have less margin for error and experimentation. “The system we have in place right now punishes schools that don’t do well,” said Mr. Marinovich, the Bronx Guild English teacher. “You’re not really giving them a chance to do any better, are you?” Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesKwaku Gyeabour, a senior at Gateway High School who plays four instruments, participates in the after-school jazz program. The students at the closing schools find learning on borrowed time bittersweet. “People there, some of them care, some of them are sad, some are indifferent,” said Kwaku Gyeabour, a senior at Gateway, with a saxophone around his neck during band practice. “I care because when I get into a place of power someday, I will not be able to look back and say I went to this school and be proud of it. Some people are like, ‘You know what, the school is burning, let it burn.’ ” Before returning to practice “Cry Me a River,” he shrugged, smiled and said: “We’re just enjoying our last days of school.” ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download