The New Marketplace How Small-School Reforms and School Choice Have Reshaped New York City’S High Schools
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The New Marketplace How Small-School Reforms and School Choice Have Reshaped New York City’s High Schools by CLARA HEMPHILL AND KIM NAUER WITH HELEN ZELON AND THOMAS JACOBS CENTER FOR NEW YORK CITY AFFAIRS MILANO THE NEW SCHOOL FOR MANAGEMENT AND URBAN POLICY June 2009 CONTENTS 1 Executive Summary 5 Recommendations From the Field The Center for New York City Affairs is dedicated to 8 The Graduation Challenge: What’s Next for NYC’s advancing innovative public policies that strengthen High Schools? neighborhoods, support families and reduce urban 14 Handle With Care: The New Small Schools poverty. Our tools include rigorous analysis; journalistic research; candid public dialogue with stakeholders; and 24 Second Chances: Using Credit Recovery strategic planning with government officials, nonprofit 31 Help Wanted: Small School Staff Turnover practitioners and community residents. 35 Collateral Damage: Large Schools Suffered 42 Case Study: Tilden High School Andrew White, Director 44 Case Study: New Utrecht High School Carin Mirowitz, Deputy Director 46 Case Study: Truman High School Kim Nauer, Education Project Director Clara Hemphill, Senior Editor 48 Midsize Schools: Best of Both Worlds? Kendra Hurley, Associate Editor 52 Winners and Losers: High School Choice Aditi Anand, Coordinator 59 Culture Shock: Immigrants and Choice Rajeev Yerneni, Research Associate Maibe González Fuentes, David Howe, Thomas Jacobs, 62 Unmet Needs: Special Education John Kelly, Arpan Munier, Daniel Stephen Orrell, 63 No Transfers Allowed: Perils of Choice Research Assistants 66 Sources and Resources 68 Advisory Board and Acknowledgments Edited by Andrew White Designed by Michael Fusco, michaelfuscodesign.com CHARTS AND TABLES 2 Total Citywide High School Population SY 2002–03 to 2007–08 Additional reporting and analysis by Maibe González 3 NYC Four-Year Graduation Rates: Class of 1997 to Class of 2007 Fuentes, Helaine Olen, Daniel Stephen Orrell, Jessica Siegel and Rajeev Yerneni. 4 Incoming Ninth-Grade Proficiency Levels by School Size 9 Class of 2007 Diploma Breakdown by Four-Year Graduation Rate 10 Class of 2007 Map: Regents and Local Diploma Graduation Rate The Center for New York City Affairs Schools Watch project is made possible thanks to the generous support of 11 Class of 2007 Map: Regents Diploma Graduation Rate Comparison the Sirus Fund, the United Way of New York City, the Ira W. DeCamp Foundation and the Robert 12 Eighth-Grade Proficiency and Regents Diploma Rates Sterling Clark Foundation. 16 Comparing Four-Year Graduation Rates: New Small Schools 19 Comparing School Outcomes for At-Risk Students Copyright © 2009 The New School 21 The New Small Schools: Clouds on the Horizon Center for New York City Affairs 28 At-Risk Students: Percent of Total Population by School Size 72 Fifth Avenue, 6th floor 29 At-Risk Students: Citywide Distribution by School Size New York, NY 10011 Tel 212.229.5418 32 The New Small Schools: Teacher Experience Profile Fax 212.229.5335 33 Teacher Turnover by School Size [email protected] 37 Large Schools: Possible Effects of a Bubble in Enrollment www.centernyc.org 41 Large School Closings: A Possible Domino Effect? 49 Potential Benefits of Midsize Schools 61 How to Apply to High School in New York City The New Marketplace How Small-School Reforms and School Choice Have Reshaped New York City’s High Schools EXECUTIVE SUMMARY his report looks at how two major initiatives of New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein T have affected students who are most at risk of dropping out of school: the creation of 200 new small high schools and the expansion of high school choice. Klein, who, before becoming chancellor, was best known for his antitrust work against Microsoft as a Justice Department prosecutor, has long maintained that competition is a fundamental tool for improving the school system. In his seven years as chancellor, he has sought to break up the monopoly of large, zoned high schools that served students from the city’s working-class and low-income neighborhoods and replace them with a marketplace of small schools with a wide array of themes ranging from civil rights to environmental research, hospitality and tourism, and medical science. He expanded the city’s already extensive system of school choice, forced schools to compete against one another for students and tested the idea that the best schools would flourish while the worst would eventually close. Since 2002, he has ordered 21 large high schools closed for poor performance and promised to close more in coming years. The Center for New York City Affairs’ 18-month investigation by a team of 10 reporters, researchers and editors found that these reforms did, in fact, expand opportunities for many high school students, including the most vulnerable. Yet some of the early small-school gains are starting to erode, and the core policies of school choice and large-school closings have had a harmful impact on thousands of students, including many who continue to attend large high schools. Among the administration’s successes are these: A substantial number of students who might otherwise have dropped out of large, dysfunctional high schools have instead remained in school thanks to the more personalized settings of the new small schools. Graduation and attendance rates at the new schools are both significantly higher than at the large schools they replaced and have contributed to an overall increase in the citywide graduation rate since 2002. While some critics have suggested that the small schools “creamed” the large schools’ best students, especially in their early years, the center found that the small schools, on average, now enroll roughly the same proportion of students who could be described as at-risk of dropping out as the system as 1 a whole. These include overage students, English-language learners, special education students, and students from very low-income families. Yet the small high schools are no panacea. Attendance rates, while better than they were at the large schools, have declined each year at a majority of the new small schools opened since 2002. Of 158 new schools for which data are available, 127 saw their average daily attendance decline while just 15 had attendance rates that were increasing, according to the center’s analysis of Department of Education (DOE) data. (See “Handle With Care,” page 14.) Graduation-rate trends also point to a significant challenge. Of 30 Bloomberg-era small schools that have graduated at least two classes, nearly half had graduation rates that declined sharply among students in the second four-year cohort. Teacher turnover is higher in the small schools than in the system overall, the center’s analysis shows. (See “Help Wanted,” page 31.) Several new schools lost nearly half their teachers in a one-year period. Principal turnover has also been high: Fifty-six of 124 principals—nearly half—hired to open new schools between 2002 and 2004 have departed. Another giant obstacle looms in plain view. A large proportion (39 percent) of the four-year graduates of small high schools in 2007 received only a “local” diploma, which in most cases represents the bare minimum of requirements set by the state. (Some small schools use more rigorous performance assessments such as detailed research papers, but these also qualify students for only a local diploma). The state is phasing out the local diploma, and the class of 2012 (this fall’s 10th graders) will have to pass all five state Regents exams with a 65 or better in order to graduate. The new schools—and the system as a whole—face an enormous challenge meeting those new standards. (See LARGE SCHOOLS DESERVE MORE ATTENTION “The Challenge of the Regents Diploma,” page 8.) In Small Schools Have Expanded Rapidly, But Large Schools Still Serve Most Kids fact, citywide—in scores of small and large schools 400,000 alike—graduation rates could crater if students fail to rise to the Regents standards over the next three years. City officials say they intend to step up efforts to 300,000 increase achievement levels for all students. But to succeed, this will require a powerful new focus on students attending large high schools. Here’s why: The 200,000 combined enrollment of the small high schools opened during the Klein years was about 58,000—or about SY 2002–03 - 2007–08 one-fifth of the city’s 297,000 high school students in 100,000 2007–08. Another 168,000 students attend large high TOTAL CITYWIDE HIGH SCHOOL POPULATION schools. (The remainder are in midsize schools or in 0 small schools created before Klein’s tenure.) In other 2002–03 2003–04 2004–05 2005–06 2006–07 2007–08 words, despite the creation of nearly 200 new small SCHOOL YEAR high schools during the Bloomberg administration, the LARGE SCHOOLS MIDSIZE SCHOOLS SMALL SCHOOLS a substantial majority of New York City high school (1400+ STUDENTS) (601–1400 STUDENTS) (0–600 STUDENTS) students still attend large high schools. (See “A Case of Collateral Damage,” page 35.) SOURCE: New York State Education Department (NYSED), Basic Educational Data System (BEDS) day enrollment figures from the New York State Report Card, SY 2002–03 to 2007–08. Moreover, the center’s analysis found that the gains NOTE: These numbers are based on NYSED report card enrollment data, which includes every student in the school. Some schools in the analysis have grades below 9-12 and the younger students are for students at the small schools came at the expense reflected in these numbers. The Center for New York City Affairs felt it was important to indicate the full size of the school, since this is the number of students that principals have to manage. But do note that of other students, some of whom were even needier these numbers are somewhat larger than the total number of kids attending grades 9-12.