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What does the asterisk mean on three of the top 5 schools?

I strongly suggest you and all readers study Gary Rubinstein’s “The Vindication Of P.S. 84″ Parts 1 – 3 http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/, it’s eye opening.

There are no “Failing Schools.”  Take Samuel Gompers H.S.; its “peer index”, for example, includes a Junior High School, a School for the Deaf, schools without any data, etc.  Gompers is a CTE school, why would a Junior H.S. be in its peer group? Writes Rubinstein, “In conclusion, the school progress reports are not mathematically valid enough to be used for decisions to shut down schools.”

“Failing Schools” are forced to (or like Columbus, welcome) enroll students new/small schools sort out, we all know this…yet it cannot be repeated enough.  Students in unsupported/starved schools arrive needing remediation (the need for remediation doesn’t start Freshman year of college), they are 1′s and 2′s.  They are ELLs, OTCs, Special Needs, etc., it cannot possibly be repeated enough.  

Writes Rubinstein, “I’ve learned and will attempt to explain…three major flaws in the system that make the progress score completely invalid.”

Last year at Lehman we received our weakest class of freshman in the history of the school.  This year the freshman class was even far weaker still.  Of course we will never get past our F even with federal transformation money.  Clearly it is a hard school to improve as is,  why do they insist on stacking the decks even further against us?  Labeling a school as failing is like sticking a scarlet letter on them.  Any parent who is vested in their child’s education, even if that child is a weak student, would never send their kid to an “f” school.

I am sure you get it.,  As they phase out the large comprehensive high schools for Emperor Michael I and his lackeys pride and joys namely the small schools which pick their students, the worst of the worst are shifted to the large schools dragging them down.  We saw thisd in Brooklyn.  I think of the originasl high schools that were originally part of the Brooklyn high school district, school after school was closed in favor of these small schools.  They have managed for all this time to protect the 3 M’s (Midwood, Madison, Murrow) by seeing to it that the number of special needs students is kept as low as possible, but so what if Erasmus, Jefferson, Canarsie, Tilden, South Shore, Prospect Heights, Robeson, Transit Tech, Maxwell are closed.  Form all these small schools, let the worst of the worst go to other schools.  And when Dewey, FDR, Sheepshead Bay, Barton start picking up these kids and their achievement rates go down, we’ll close them too after we do transformation or restart or whatever else they do.  Meanwhile Emperor Michael I runs around claiming how the schools are improved and they give schools A and show less than 20% of their graduates are capable of doing college level work, but the school is an A or a B.  For years Lehman High School had some great programs with a vbery strong Principal who worked hard to provide a quality education.  I understand in some respects he was very unpopular with staff members but then the unqualified lawyer who ran the school system into the ground for 8 years,  put into effect another of his bird brained ideas, an executive Principal who had done wonders at one of this small schools.  We now know how she did it.  So it’s Lehman’s turn to get the small school treaatment as well as Clinton’s turn despite the fact both provided quality education to so many students over the years.  Several years down the line, when we’re rid of the Emperor (unless he uses his money to try to buy another term of misery for the schools and his lackey Chancellors, perhaps somebody with half a brain will look at the situation and say what’s the sense of having four or five different organizations in a building with one set of gym facilities for boys and girls, with one auditorium.  With situatins where each of the small schools cannot have a journalism class because there are 4 students in one “school”, five in another, three in a third, not enough to support a journalism class (or AP chemistry or whatever) so let’s combine the schools into one organization.  Until we’re rid of the emperor and the Kleins, Black’s and Walcott’s of the world, we will never have an educational system capable of meeting the needs of our kids.  I wonder just how much money it will cost to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

FWIW, the one “transformation” school success story referenced in the article is “Global Studies” in D15.  In response, the DOE has decided to put to waste the large amount of resources it recently invested there. 

In particular, if that school successfully continues its “transformation”, then it would be entirely foreseeable that its enrollment would increase since presently, there would be room for it do so in the building.  And worse, the parents of D15 might even get another popular Middle/High School option that they have been loudly (and rightly) demanding.

Undeterred by such a frightening possibility, the DOE has instead chosen to insert a Success Academy elementary Charter School into the building.  Accordingly, if the DOE experts have their way, they will effectively strangle the prospects of Global Studies growth in favor of a Charter School that only five percent of Cobble Hill parents would even consider sending their children to. .

Yup, yet another public policy triumph!  Maybe next time when Deputy Chancellor Sternberg declares such a “victory”, I can get invited to the victory happy hour?

FYI—
“47″ (was a school for the Deaf) is a school that has hearing and Deaf students. They are a high school serving grades 9 – 12.