The Renewal schools that the Department of Education (DOE) keep pouring money into keeps on losing students as savvy parents refuse to send their children to these acaddemically struggling schools. Even with all the wraparound services the DOE supplies these schools, they still continue to lose students. The result is that the Renewal schools end up with few academically proficient students and no sane "quality teacher"would ever apply to the Renewal schools with all the additional accountability requirements and the added stress associated with these struggling schools. Yet our clueless Chancellor would have everyone believe that "quality teachers" are applying to work in the Renewal schools in her own fantasy world.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Renewal schools keep on losing students, especially the high schools. The DOE's response is that things will be getting better and more students will be going to these schools in the future. Of course they said that in 2014. How is the DOE going to do this? They will allow the Renewal schools to recruit more students for specialized programs like culinary and sports medicine. Unfortunately, the culinary class at one school had ten students enrolled in the picture in the Wall Street Journal article and that does not make a dent in recruiting academically achieving students to these struggling schools.
I'm not optimistic that things will change for the better for the Renewal schools asthey cannot attract "quality teachers",suffer from high teacher turnover with an inexperienced staff, and fail to improve their academic performance as they cannot encourage academically achieving students to select these struggling schools. To try to stem the loss of students and keep their numbers up, the DOE is now allowing the Renewal schools to accept over-the-counter students, many of them "high needs".
For the high schools, only bringing back the neighborhood school zones will improve the Renewal school's academic performance as high school free choice means that no academically achieving student will select these struggling schools and the Renewal schools will continue to lose students and be an academic failure.