The Queens Courier - Another “D” School Targeted to Close by Tonia N. Cimino

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Friday, December 21, 2007 5:52 PM EST

Reaction to the news that Franklin K. Lane High School will be closing is mixed.

It was announced last week that the Brooklyn school - which received a grade of “D” on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s schools progress report - will be phased out in the next 3 1/2 years, and that smaller schools will be opening within the existing building.

“No new ninth graders will be admitted,” said Department of Education (DOE) spokesperson Melody Meyer. “But the current students can finish [at Lane].”

The school, with a total student body of 2,623 - of which approximately 650 are from Queens - had a graduation rate of 32.6 percent for 2007.

“The school has been struggling for a while,” said Councilmember Leroy Comrie.

Meyer confirmed that the institution had been underperforming for the last few years, and said that the smaller learning communities already adopted within grades 10 through 12 will “influence the types of schools set to open.”

Some themes, programs and equipment from these communities will be utilized in the new schools.

The DOE has already accepted 135 proposals for the new institutions - at least one in Franklin K. Lane set to open next fall - and will announce its selection in February 2008.

“I view this as an opportunity to reinvigorate this educational establishment with teachers and programs needed to attract - and retain - children in today’s environment,” said Comrie.

However, students do not necessarily feel the same.

“I don’t agree with it,” said sophomore Vanelssy Rodriguez. “They’re just throwing us out.”

The DOE said that its District Leadership Teams, consisting of PTA members, community education council members, politicians and leaders of community organizations, would be holding workshops open to the public.

The next meeting will be held on January 12, 2008.

A Flawed Reform - December 17, 2007 - The New York Sun

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By DIANE RAVITCH
December 17, 2007

The New York City Department of Education has embarked on a perilous new path in its efforts to raise test scores. Just a few weeks ago, the Department released letter grades for the city's schools, from A to F. In recent days, the Department announced the closure of 14 schools that received a D or an F.

Is the grading system accurate and reliable? Did the grading system identify the worst schools? Is the closure of the lowest-performing schools likely to improve public education? Could the Department have taken other actions that might have been more effective than closing schools? The grading system itself is questionable because it awarded high grades to many schools on the state's and federal government's failing lists while stigmatizing some highly regarded schools with grades of D or F. More than half of the nearly 400 schools that the state or federal government has identified as academically weak received an A or a B. At the same time, 99 schools that are in good standing with the state and the federal government received a D or an F from the city.

The city's grading system produced some other odd results. For example, I.S. 289 in Tribeca, the only middle school in the city that was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for its superior performance, received a D. And P.S. 35 in Staten Island, a school where more than 85% of students regularly pass the state tests, was labeled an F.

The reason for these strange outcomes is that the city gives greater weight to improvement than to performance. High-scoring schools are handicapped by what is known as the "ceiling effect." If their students score consistently well on the state tests, a one-year dip in the scores can get them branded with a D or an F.

When a grading system produces such bizarre results, it lacks face validity. That is, on the face of it, the evaluation system is suspect. Of what value is it to anyone when excellent schools, highly regarded by parents, students, and their community, are officially stigmatized as failures? Conversely, of what value is it to anyone when academically distressed schools win an A or a B?

This dubious evaluation system is now being employed to decide which schools will be shuttered forever. Fourteen schools have been picked out for closure, based on their having received a D or an F. Six of these 14 schools are in good standing with both the state and the federal government.

Will the closing of these 14 schools improve public education in New York City? It is hard to say. No one knows if the replacement schools will be better. What will be different about them? Will they enroll the same pupils? Will they have new principals and a new staff? Will the staff of the closed schools be reassigned elsewhere? Where will the new staff come from? Are there scores of stellar teachers waiting for a new assignment? None of this is clear.

Was there an alternative to closing the 14 schools? When Rudy Crew was chancellor, he created a Chancellor's District, where he clustered the lowest performing schools under his immediate care and redesigned them. These schools had a longer school day, highly-structured reading and math programs, classes in kindergarten through third grade of not more than 20 children and classes in fourth through eighth grades of not more than 25 children, and additional teacher training.

Independent evaluations showed that the Chancellor's District worked; it helped turn around struggling schools. The D.C.-based Council for Great City Schools cited New York City's Chancellor's District as one of the most successful programs in the nation.

New York City currently has nearly 400 schools that have been identified by the State Education Department or the federal government as "in need of improvement," a euphemism for a school in academic trouble. The city Department of Education needs an educational strategy to help these schools, not just a plan to close them.

It is not enough to hand out dire letter grades. Schools should get report cards that evaluate their different strengths and weaknesses.

Nor is it enough to turn out the lights. Schools are not a franchise operation. They are deeply embedded community institutions. They should be improved with additional resources, smaller classes, and additional training for educators. The starting point in reforming schools is to have a valid evaluation system that correctly identifies the schools that need extra help. It may not be easy to transform the schools that are in trouble, but if we want a good public education system, there really is no alternative.

Dr. Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the BrookingsInstitution.

NY Daily News Op/Ed - Closing Time by Chancellor Joel Klein

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I wonder if the Chancellor was smoking something with Bill Maher before penning this op/ed...

Just another example of a dictum from on-high at Tweed with no consultation with any parent groups or other significant stakes holders...

Bill Maher, Richard and Lisa Plepler, and Joel Klein - pic courtesy of New York Social Diary

December 10, 2007 -- NOT long ago, right here in New York City, dozens of schools were demonstrating abject failure. Year after year, thousands of students entered these schools. Many didn't pass their classes and didn't get credits. After four years, only 20 percent or 30 percent graduated.

This outcome wasn't remotely OK.

It wasn't all right with me as chancellor, and I know it wasn't all right with the families and communities of our city.

We owe it to our kids to give them schools that set high expectations for students and help them meet and exceed those expectations. We owe it to our kids to help them when they're struggling, not to let them fall further and further behind.

That's why, starting in 2002, we began phasing out and shutting down schools that had a history of failure. These decisions were not an indictment of any single teacher or principal. They were an acknowledgment that the schools weren't remotely educating students - and that they weren't going to get better on their own.

From the start, we considered all relevant data and evidence as we made these decisions.

For high schools, we analyzed how many students were passing Regents exams and how many were graduating after four years. We also looked at how many students wanted to attend the schools - and how many stayed enrolled once they were there. For elementary and middle schools, we considered test scores and promotions. We also consulted with educators who knew the schools best to determine if there was any chance the schools could turn themselves around.

Starting last week, we began notifying the schools on this year's closure list.

This year's process was more transparent than in past years. We also had more information to work with: Our new school Progress Reports and the Quality Reviews we conducted last year allowed me and my colleagues (as well as parents and communities) to see just how well - or how poorly - schools are performing and make clear judgments on the merits.

We considered all schools that received grades of F and D and Quality Review scores below "well-developed." As we have in past years, we also analyzed reams of other information - including historical patterns of performance. And, thanks to the new school environment surveys, we were able for the first time to see what school communities said about their schools .

These schools face different challenges and have a range of problems - but what ties them all together are their records of academic failure.

These are schools that were not serving the needs of their children. These are schools that, for years, haven't been doing what we, as New Yorkers, expect our schools to do for our children.

Consider Franklin K. Lane HS in Queens. Last year, only about 30 percent of students graduated. That's even lower than it was a few years ago, when it was hovering around 40 percent. For years, Lane has been plagued with low performance and safety problems. A new principal started at the school a few years ago. He's done good work in a tough situation, but the challenge of reforming this particular environment from the inside out would have been too long and too slow. We can better serve the students of that community by closing Lane, and opening new schools in its place.

We can't afford to stand by as a school demonstrates such profound failure.

Back in 2003, we shut down a school that had a very similar story. Bushwick HS had a graduation rate of just 23 percent. We replaced it with four new small schools, which now make up what we call the Bushwick campus. Last year, the new schools had a combined graduation rate of nearly 60 percent -almost triple what it once was. The students literally paraded through their neighborhood in June, demonstrating the pride that they feel for their schools and their community.

It's important to note that we don't forget about the students who are attending schools that are being phased out. As we phased out Bushwick, for example, more students attended school and student achievement actually improved.

Bushwick isn't an exception. Over the last five years, closing down and phasing out schools has helped us get rid of our worst schools. Maybe more importantly, it has allowed us to create new schools, schools that are better equipped to help students succeed.

A 60 percent graduation rate isn't nearly high enough. We certainly have more work to do. But almost tripling the graduation rate for students in just four years is the kind of dramatic change that we have achieved and that we are trying to achieve in schools throughout our city.

Closing a school is one of the toughest decisions I have to make as chancellor, but it's also one of my most crucial responsibilities. I know that our school system and, more importantly, our students, will be better off because of these decisions.

Joel Klein is New York City schools chancellor.

Queens Chronicle - City Plans To Close Franklin K. Lane HS by Joseph Wendelken

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Beset for decades by the under-achievement of its students and a legacy of violent crime on and around its campus on the Woodhaven-Brooklyn border, Franklin K. Lane High School will begin closing next fall.

The Department of Education announced on Friday the phasing out of the school along with 13 others throughout the city, including Far Rockaway High School.

The releasing of school grades from the DOE’s controversial progress reports in November, which measured standardized test scores, attendance records and responses to parent and student surveys, preceded the announcements. Franklin K. Lane, which was built in 1936 and draws students from both Queens and Brooklyn, received a D.

The high school graduated 32.6 percent of its seniors last spring, down from 39.1 percent the previous year. With students at the school perennially scoring below average on standardized tests, interest in attending Franklin K. Lane has flagged. The size of its student body fell from 3,400 students in the 2004-2005 school year to 2,600 students this year.

According to Melody Meyer, a department spokeswoman, “The only thing that will help the school is to have a clean start.”

In an explanatory piece published in the New York Post on Monday, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein wrote of Lane: “A new principal started at the school a few years ago. He’s done good work in a tough situation, but the challenge of reforming this particular environment from the inside out would have been too long and too slow.”

Instability and violence plagued the school long before current Principal Evan Ahern, whose office deferred comment on the announcement to the city, took control. In 1969 three youths mercilessly beat a chemistry teacher and lit him on fire, prompting responses from then-Police Commissioner Howard Leary and then-Mayor John Lindsay.

During one four-year stretch in the 1990s, five different principals oversaw the school. In January 2003 a 16-member state panel threatened to revoke the school’s charter and laid out a three-year plan for Franklin K. Lane, addressing everything from the instability of its administration to the poor academic performance of its students. Months later, a fight just off the school’s property eventually resulted in two students being shot.

In 2004, the city settled a federal lawsuit with plaintiffs charging that the school illegally pushed out hundreds of struggling students in order to raise its graduation rate.

On Friday, the parents of Franklin K. Lane students received letters informing them that the school will not accept ninth-graders next fall. Students currently in Franklin K. Lane will be given the opportunity to graduate from the school as it decreases in size year by year.

Although Meyer said that department officials held a meeting with parents on Saturday morning, it remains unclear how many attended or how effective the meeting proved less than 24 hours after the announcement of the pending closure. In the next five weeks, two more meetings will be held to keep parents abreast of the changes they can expect to see.

Meyer said that several small schools will eventually occupy the Franklin K. Lane campus and that at least one will open for freshmen by September. The department is currently evaluating 135 different small school proposals, but may opt to expand one of the smaller learning communities currently in the school.

Small schools typically accept 110 students each year. Meyer said that six small schools will certainly not open on the campus by the fall. For this reason, it appears that not enough seats will open up for the approximately 650 freshman that would have enrolled at Franklin K. Lane.

Councilman Joseph Addabbo Jr. (D-Howard Beach), whose district includes J.H.S. 202 and J.H.S. 210, which feed into Franklin K. Lane, questioned where students will go.

“All of these students can’t be going to John Adams (High School in Ozone Park) or some high school in Brooklyn,” he said. “We just aren’t blessed with that much space.”

By June he expects an announcement about the small schools that will occupy the campus.

The small learning communities on which independent, small schools may be based started in 2005 at Lane. They were seen as a way to decrease class size and allow students to forge mentoring relationships with fellow students and teachers.

Many describe the programs as successes, and the school fielded a varsity football team last fall for the first time in 18 years. In 2005, the city removed Franklin K. Lane from its list of Impact Schools, which it compiled to identify those in need of additional police and security presence to address chronic crime issues.

But its reputation in South Queens proved too hard to shed. David Quintana, an Ozone Park resident whose daughter was zoned to attend the school, instead sent her to a high school on the Martin Luther King Jr. small school campus in Manhattan.

“I’m familiar with the school system. I knew I would find some way to get her out of there,” Quintana said. “I’m a big guy and even I feel a little leery around there (Franklin K. Lane).”

He also harbors doubts about the city’s ability to make change at the campus.

“They’ll put a new name on it and bring in a new staff,” Quintana said. “Does that really turn around the school? I don’t know.”