The State Ed Department issued a report (finding that the Special Education High School graduation rates within five years outside of New York City are 48% and inside New York City 23%.Joel Klein responded that with the advent of “small” high schools the graduation rate would increase.
Au contraire.
If Tweed is such an advocate of Special Education students why did Klein short change the Collaborative Team Teaching (CTT) program and force the union to go all the way to arbitration to compel compliance?
Why has the Department stuffed Special Education students into large high schools?
A “quick and dirty” look at a sampling of Bronx High Schools: About 15% of the student bodies of large high schools are Special Education students – about double the Special Education enrollment in the small Bronx high schools. Small high schools have very few self contained Special Education classes. Kids are warehoused in large high schools, no wonder that so few graduate.
This is not a large school versus small school issue. The Studio School in Brooklyn is a wonderful small high school with an inclusion model that has done an outstanding job. In Fire Department High School in East New York eighty five per cent of the students are boys and about fifteen percent Special Ed kids in a CTT classes: a challenging population, the staff, a community of learners, is studying and developing approaches and methodologies in an action research project.
Truman has over 400 Special Education students; Stevenson has over five hundred … poor attendance, high rates of cutting and high class failure rates: low graduation rates are the inevitable outcome. Stuffing handicapped kids into Brobdingnagian schools is unconscionable!
Too many schools have been allowed to create “screened” programs, i.e., self select their student bodies, and avoid Special Education and English Language Learners (ELL). The Chancellor constantly flacks Eagle Academy, a second year all boys Bronx high school, which also “pre-screens” students and only has a handful of Special Ed kids.
The leader of the Empowerment initiative has been a vigorous advocate of equity throughout his career and the new Accountability system talks about a “different” method of evaluating schools.
Large schools and small schools can both survive and proper. Columbus can be a model for small and large schools co-existing in the same building.
As long as Tweed “protects” some schools by allowing them to choose their students and packing handicapped kids into the basements of overcrowded high schools, treating them as lepers, we are rightfully suspicious.
Maybe, just maybe, “empowered” schools can create inclusive classes that will benefit all our kids.
2 Comments:
1 Chaz
· Jun 14, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Peter;
How about the UFT alerting the media to how the DOE pre-screens students in certain schools? I believe once the media realizes the rob Peter to pay Paul issue, they will put DOE on the spot.
Peter, you write some very nice articles. How come the union does not carry the ball on them?
2 jd2718
· Jun 17, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Chaz,
it’s national, not just in NYC, and it’s been going on for several decades.
Interesting related discussion last week at Jenny D
School choice really means:
– Choice – for those clever enough or wealthy enough or well-connected enough to take advantage of it, and
– What’s Left Over – for all the rest
And what applies to students also applies to teachers.
This current system is the current system. I moved to a small school several years ago where I am in many ways far better off than I was in my old large school. I am not going to move back out of some sense of personal self-sacrifice.
However, in a better world, or just a better New York City, school chioce would not exist, save perhaps for a handful of small HS’s, alternative HS’s, and Voc HS’s. Regular zoned schools would be where most children went to school, and it would be in everyone’s interest to improve them.
Instead we have this a version of shock therapy, where the weakest and most troubled, the have-nots, are left to fend for themselves while the haves are encouraged to circle their little wagons.
Jonathan