One of the greatest failures of the Bill de Blasio Administration is his Renewal School program. These are struggling schools with a low achieving student population, a competitive disadvantage in recruiting academically proficient students due to the DOE's misguided school choice program, and the Renewal Schools failure to recruit veteran teachers to work in the highly stressful and intensely accountable environment. The result is an influx of "newbie"teachers, year after year, who flee the schools through the Open Market Transfer System every summer and this high staff turnover destabilizes the already struggling schools.
The New York Post has started a one week series on the Renewal Schools and their failure to significantly improve student academic achievement, especially the high schools. The Post article pointed out the following issues of-the Renewal Schools.
- Total enrollment at the 86 Renewal schools currently open has plummeted nearly 25 percent — from 49,391 to 37,146 — since the 2013-2014 school year, before the program began.
- Average per-student spending at each Renewal school is $14,632 this school year, up nearly 35 percent from $10,847 in 2013-2014 — and more than twice the cost of educating students at the elite Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech high schools.
- Only three Renewal schools met all their improvement goals last school year, while 61 showed declines in at least one category and 13 fell in three or more — even after the Renewal schools were given three years to hit targets for which other schools only got one.
I have written various articles on the failure of the Renewal Schools and the various issues that have resulted in their continued struggles and you can read them Here, , Here, Here and Here. For more about the failed Renewal School program please read this.
The bottom line, until the City changes the school choice and fair student funding programs, the Renewal Schools are like a one legged man in an ass kicking contest, they cannot win, or in this case improve academically.