19 Schools Axed, Amid Protests of Thousands

Throwing more money at bad public schools hasn't worked. In historically under-served communities with parents who often have limited abilities to prepare their kids for schooling, something is needed along the lines of the KIPP charter school curriculum or the Harlem Empowerment Zone. http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0416mw.html

The only thing they need to learn is to look up from their texting in time to avoid a bus.

Many of these schools only had 40% graduation rates? and low attendance? but where will all the students from those particular school zones go? Are they supposed to go to other schools? With MTA cuts to student metrocards, it would make it even harder to have those students travel even farther.

Metrocards to students are the sacred cow. It won't get cut so the kids can still hang out with their friends and still fail to graduate uninterrupted. YEAH! Rewarding failure is what we do best!

I'm more confused as to how this is cost savings?

if they divie up the large school into many smaller schools they're going to need extra admin staff for each school. mark my words, that's how it works in city government, even bloomberg's.

I'm confused about how this is all going to work. So they close the schools, and open new ones, right?

Where will they get the teachers? It seems like the most likely pool of teachers will be the suddenly-unemployed ones from the closed schools. Sure, the schools didn't work -- but the teachers are presumably not permanently out of a job just because they worked at a bad school. In the process they can maybe get rid of a few truly bad-apple teachers -- but you can't get rid of too many, because you've got to hire someone. A new crop of Harvard graduates isn't going to magically appear to take those jobs. So the teachers are likely to be largely the same, right?

So where do they get the students? Well, if you aren't going to bus kids around the city, the students will be the same -- and a lot of them will still be homeless or from bad neighborhoods. So the kids might be shuffled a little, but they'll also largely be the same.

And where do you put these new schools? Well, you can't just build new buildings when there are perfectly good schools right there in the neighborhood. So you use the old physical plant.

So same teachers, same kids, same buildings...it sounds like the only things changing are the principals, the names of the schools, and maybe just shuffling everyone around a little. How is that going to fix anything? Or am I missing some key step?

...and that's why the small schools aren't necessarily any better than the big schools

Step 1: Close schools

Step 2:

Step 3: Profit!

Agree. Their goal is privatization of the school system.

19 School axed ... to do what?

What I axing you to do?

Change da speling.

they were 'axed' to close down

Leave it to Gothamist to misspell a header about school closings. It's "19 Schools axed", plural, i.e. more than one. Wow.

Maybe they were referring to P.S. 19. Yeah, that's the ticket.

They must be graduates of the NYC public school system.

Wait a minute. I thought after they closed the schools that they would reopen smaller schools within the buildings that they closed.

Sometimes its just best to blow it all up and start from scratch.

"Sometimes its just best to blow it all up and start from scratch."

And sometimes, it's advantageous to create an illusion of change so that people remain content with all the marvelous "progress."

Putting the same students in the same buildings under new administrations is a great way to fudge numbers, but its effect on the quality of education remains dubious.

The biggest obstacle to a decent education is often the parent/guardian.

It's only a win win for future employers. Those miseducated kids will someday compete for jobs along side the Mexicans.

Exactly. Idiot parents protecting their idiotic schools to further marginalize their children.