Manhattan

Some Bad Schools Get Good Grades

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In the nearly three years that have passed since the city’s Department of Education gave principals greater control of their schools, several failing schools truly have turned around, according to a new report released Wednesday by The New Schools’ Center for New York City Affairs. But the annual A-through-F grades that city schools receive from the department don’t always accurately convey such progress, the report says.”You shouldn’t try to sum up complicated schools with one letter grade,” said Clara Hemphill, one of the report’s co-authors. “The city must recognize the limited value of the progress report [grade] and rely more on qualitative measurement, on human judgment and less on statistics.”During a forum held in conjunction with the report’s release, Hemphill illustrated the flaws in the grading system by citing the example of the school that scored highest during the 2008-09 school year, Manhattan’s High School of Hospitality Management. The school received an overall grade of “A”, but earned a “D” in school environment. Attendance at the school was low and a survey of parents indicated that the school had low expectations and didn’t engage students well, Hemphill said.She said there were other high-scoring schools where kids have their heads on their desks and teachers kick back reading newspapers and low-scoring schools where kids and teachers are highly engaged.The report says that in some cases, the system “rewards mediocrity and fails to recognize gains made by schools that are striving for excellence.”A DOE official who also spoke at the forum agreed that the grading system isn’t perfect, but said it’s necessary.

Economy

The Search for the Smoking Gun

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During four decades of debate over the causes of black-male joblessness and unemployment, there have been two broad schools of thought. There were those who blamed the problem on the way the economy works, especially its racial contours and barriers, and those who attributed it to the way black men behave, to their culture.According to New York University political science professor Lawrence Mead, black joblessness is about a failure of low-skill black men to choose to work or live up to their employers’ standards when they do get jobs. “The immediate problem is work discipline, a willingness to cooperate, to be a reliable employee,” says Mead. “It’s collective psychology. It’s attitudes, and this is characteristic of poverty, where people want to work in principle.

Education

Shaping Success

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Students in the Harlem Children’s Zone achieve the results they do, Canada says, because they invest more: They invest more actual time in the classroom, with a far longer school day and a school year that begins in September and ends in early August. All Promise Academy students are in school about 60 percent longer than average public school students. Struggling students can spend twice as many hours in school as the average kid—in class and in tutoring or in small-group before- and after-school instruction. HCZ’s corporate and school leaders say they hold each child to high standards and expect teachers to do “whatever it takes” to achieve success. And the charters invest more money per child per year—nearly $19,000 in 2008—than the $14,525 the city spends on children who attend general-education programs in traditional open-enrollment public schools.The financial investment starts well before the first formal day of kindergarten.

Bronx

An Act of Faith

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The HCZ model might not work in every depressed urban center. But something else might work in those cities—or might already be working, albeit outside the media spotlight or the White House’s embrace.William Strickland, like Canada, has dedicated most of his adult life to working to counter urban poverty. He established the nonprofit Manchester Bidwell Corp. in 1968, in Pittsburgh’s toughest district, first as an arts education resource for local schoolchildren and later, when Pittsburgh’s steel industry collapsed, to provide vocational training for unemployed workers. Today, the corporation works with Pittsburgh public schools, placing artists in the classroom and offering a broad swath of after-school, summer and evening programs for kids and adults.An overwhelming majority of teenagers who participate in Strickland’s programs—90 percent—graduate from high school.