GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The 14 high schools the city is trying to close this year posted lower-than-average graduation rates — but they are not all the city’s worst.

Now, teachers union officials are drawing attention to three other high schools approved for closure that posted graduation rate increases two times or more than the city’s overall 2 percent gain. In the Bronx, Christopher Columbus High School’s 4-year graduation rate rose by 5.7 percentage points, to 41.6 percent. Norman Thomas High School, in Manhattan, saw its 4-year rate go from 37 percent to 47.8 percent. Brooklyn’s Paul Robeson High School saw a similar leap, to 50 percent from 40.4 percent last year.

“We knew that we had increased our graduation rate last year by 10 percent and have been saying that since November but no one pays any attention,” said Stefanie Siegel, a Robeson teacher who has been active in protests against the school’s planned closure.

“When our spirits were high after we won the court case last year, we made great gains in a short period of time,” she said.

That court case was the lawsuit the teachers union won to stop the city from closing 19 low-performing schools. Performance boosts at three of the high schools kept them off the chopping block this year. Two of the schools got higher progress report grades, 85 percent of which depend on graduation rates and students’ progress toward graduation. The city said it was confident in a leadership change at the third school.

The schools with oversized gains this year still lag well behind the citywide average 4-year graduation rate of 61 percent. And many of the other schools slated for closure continued to post dismal graduation figures. (more…)

This school year, GothamSchools and WNYC reporters will follow three New York City high schools as they try to improve. The following is an introduction to one of those schools: William E. Grady Career and Technical Education High School.

For years, Brooklyn’s William E. Grady Career and Technical Education High School struggled to break free from its reputation as simply a trade school.

“The ‘vocational school’ stigma continues to be a deterrent to students who see themselves as college bound,” the school’s leadership team wrote in its educational plan for the 2008-09 school year. Staff laid out strategies to make the school more challenging — and posted some gains — but the school continued to limp academically. About a fifth of the school’s 1,300 students were absent every day last year, and at the end of the year, not even half of the school’s seniors graduated.

Now, the city is hoping that millions of dollars in federal aid and a new principal will finally jumpstart Grady’s renaissance.

Earlier this year, the city announced the school would undergo the federal “transformation” model of school improvement. That meant the city had to replace Grady’s principal — Carlston Gray, who had headed the school since 2006 — and adopt new class schedules and bonuses for teachers who help their colleagues. In exchange, Grady would get as much as $2 million in federal funds per year over the next three years.

For a new leader, the city turned to Geraldine Maione, who had been principal at Brooklyn’s 3,500-student Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School. (more…)

More than 30 schools across the city are about to embark on an experiment to rapidly boost student performance. In a plan endorsed by President Barack Obama, the city will use millions of federal dollars to either resuscitate the schools, or shut them down and open new ones.

This year, we’ll be following three of these schools.

A Brooklyn high school sees almost half its freshmen drop out before their senior year and struggles with safety, but staff hope that new leadership will revive the school. Another in SoHo draws students from all over the city and has a graduation rate of just 50 percent, but both teachers and students are optimistic that a longer school day and more training for teachers can forge a better future. At a third high school in the Bronx, the staff is fighting to keep the school open despite threats from Mayor Bloomberg, who urged parents not to send their children there.

Those students who showed up this year anyway “will get a terrible education that…they’ll probably never recover from,” Bloomberg told reporters.

Together, the three high schools serve over 3,000 of the city’s neediest students. They are part of a group of schools targeted by both the mayor, who calls them “failing,” and President Obama, who calls the worst among them “dropout factories.” Both men describe the schools’ resuscitation as crucial to solving poverty and improving the economy. But how should the schools get fixed? And what role should Obama’s team in Washington, D.C., play?

In this project, a collaboration of GothamSchools and WNYC that launches formally on Monday, we will follow three efforts to change three struggling schools. (more…)

To comply with federal rules meant to turn struggling schools around, the city is playing a game of musical chairs — or, rather, musical principals.

Under the rules, the 11 struggling schools the city wants to “transform” can’t get federal dollars unless the city replaces their current principals with a new leader. But in one case, school officials have removed the principal from one struggling school — and made her the new leader at another.

Geraldine Maione will move from being principal at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn, one of the 11 transformation schools, to being principal at William Grady, another of the 11.

The shuffling of principals highlights the compromise approach that the city is taking with the 11 schools it selected for “transformation.” The transformation model is the least severe of the four federal school turnaround strategies because it does not require officials to remove any teachers. It does, however, require that the principal be replaced.

But officials have wanted to keep some of the 11 principals, citing improvements their schools have made on their watch. (more…)

The city is removing principals of some schools the city is overhauling with federal funds but keeping others in place, according to an email from a principal today.

In an email obtained by GothamSchools, the principal of William Grady CTE High School told his staff that the city had decided to replace him and several other unnamed principals next year. The announcement was not a complete surprise, as principals of the eleven schools set to begin a new turnaround strategy next year have known they could lose their jobs for over a month.

The new strategy, known as the transformation model, is part of a federal program to improve some of the state’s lowest-performing schools. Though it is the least invasive of the four models offered — it doesn’t require firing teachers — it does call for the removal of principals.

In his email, Grady High School principal Carlston Gray wrote that while new principals who have been in their schools for three years or fewer will keep their jobs, others will be replaced. He suggested that some may be able to remain involved in their current schools. (more…)