Ap-Harlem Schools Are Left To Fail As Those Not Far Away Thrive - The New York Times

Harlem Schools Are Left to Fail as Those Not Far Away Thrive - The New York Times
1/26/17, 12:45 PM
https://nyti.ms/2kmt7Ab
N.Y. / REGION
A DISTRICT DIVIDED
Harlem Schools Are Left to Fail as Those

Not Far Away Thrive
By KATE TAYLOR JAN. 24, 2017
Some of the best public elementary schools in New York City are in Community
School District 3, on Manhattans West Side. At those schools, the vast majority of
children pass the annual state tests, gifted and talented programs buzz with
activity, and special programs attract promising young musicians or families who
want a progressive approach to education.
But none of those schools are in Harlem.
In District 3s Harlem schools, there are no gifted and talented programs. Of
the six elementary schools there where students take the state tests, only one
comes close to the citywide passing rates of 38 percent in reading and 36 percent in
math. At one school, only 6 percent of third- through eighth-grade students passed
the most recent math tests.
The children in the Harlem schools are mostly black and Hispanic and lowincome, while the majority of children in the districts other elementary schools are
white or Asian, and either middle class or wealthy.
The New York Times has been examining the district over the past few months
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/nyregion/harlem-schools-are-lefte=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
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to look at the forces that shape the racial and economic makeup of the citys
schools. Unlike in many parts of the city, in District 3 which runs from 59th
Street to 122nd Street along Manhattans western flank, then takes a dogleg into
Harlem people from different races and socioeconomic levels often live near one
another. The districts schools, however, are sharply divided by race and income,
and diverge just as sharply in their levels of academic achievement.
Nowhere is that tale of two districts clearer than in Harlem.
While the high-performing schools on the Upper West Side are generally at
capacity or overcrowded, enrollment at the Harlem schools has been falling as
parents abandon the traditional public schools in favor of higher-performing
charter schools. There are now nine in the district, eight of them in Harlem. White
families, who have moved into the area in increasing numbers, generally do not
send their children to the neighborhood schools, district or charter, leaving them
deeply segregated. And neither the Education Department nor the district
superintendent has put forth a comprehensive plan for how to lift the Harlem
schools academic performance.
Instead, in October, the department proposed effectively closing one of them,
Public School 241, the STEM Institute of Manhattan, which has been struggling
academically and shedding students for years. There are just 128 students in
kindergarten through fifth grade in a school that a decade ago held 582 children
and went up to eighth grade.
The department planned to merge the school into nearby Public School 76, the
A. Philip Randolph School, and then redraw school zone lines to redistribute parts
of P.S. 241s zone to other schools.
Despite the STEM Institutes poor performance, the plan was met with
protests in the neighborhood. At contentious public hearings on the proposal,
Harlem parents said they felt ignored by the department and the Community
Education Council, the elected board that must approve new zone lines.
At a meeting in November, Felicia Harrison, the mother of a fourth grader at
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the STEM Institute, asked why in the case of a proposed rezoning in the southern
part of District 3 parents had been given a year and a half to debate new zone lines,
while she and other Harlem parents had been notified of the proposed merger of
the schools less than two months before it was to be voted on.
Why were we not given the same respect as the downtown parents? she
asked, eliciting applause and shouts of Why? from other parents in the audience.
The complaints prompted some members of the council, most of whom live in
the southern part of the district, to express regret for neglecting the problems
facing the Harlem schools.
Were all going to have to be able to look at ourselves and say what it is that
we didnt do and what it is that needs to be done, one member, Daniel Katz, said
at a meeting on Dec. 14. I think the first step is definitely to shut up and listen,
because weve got a lot of listening to do.
In the wake of the protests, the department dropped the merger proposal, at
least for the moment.
Some observers blame the struggles of Harlems traditional public schools
entirely on the increasing number of charter schools in the neighborhood, saying
that the administration of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg fostered the
growth of charters while doing too little to help the traditional public schools
compete with them in recruiting families.
The schools up here were put in a situation by previous administrations
where they were told, Compete for students, Mr. Katz said at the Dec. 14 meeting,
and then the people who told them to compete for students walked away from
helping them compete.
Another council member, Noah Gotbaum, said at a meeting in October that
the STEM Institute, then known as P.S. 241 Family Academy, had been successful
until the Education Department put the Success Academy Harlem 4 charter school
in the building in 2009. He said that the Success school had siphoned off families
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and resources from P.S. 241.

A thriving public school that we had is now closing because of a charter
school, Mr. Gotbaum said.
That does not fit the facts. The Education Department first moved to close P.S.
241 for a combination of low enrollment and poor performance in 2008-09. It
ultimately backed down after the teachers union filed a lawsuit. However, while he
was forced to give the school a reprieve, the chancellor at the time, Joel I. Klein,
hardly seemed to be rooting for it to succeed, sending a letter to parents there
urging them to seriously consider applying to the Success school or to the other
zoned schools in the neighborhood.
The percentage of neighborhood children who choose to enroll at the STEM
Institute and three other nearby district public schools is much lower than at most
schools in the southern part of the district. Last year, less than a quarter of the
kindergartners who were zoned to attend those schools and went to public school
enrolled, according to the Education Department. (The department does not track
how many children go to private school.) By contrast, Public School 87, the
William T. Sherman School, on West 78th Street, last year attracted 89 percent of
the kindergartners who lived in its zone and attended public school.
Many of the neighborhoods black and Hispanic families choose charter
schools, which have higher test scores and long waiting lists. At Success Academy
Harlem 4, 94 percent of the students who took the latest state math test passed it.
Other families go to private schools or to public schools in other parts of District 3,
like Public School 333, the Manhattan School for Children, a non-zoned school on
West 93rd Street with a progressive approach that is open to anyone in District 3
and admits students by lottery. Last year it received 975 applications for 100
kindergarten seats and had a waiting list of more than 600 families.
Kim Watkins, the chairwoman of the Community Education Councils zoning
committee, is zoned for one of the Harlem district schools, Public School 149, the
Sojourner Truth School, but sends her daughter to a gifted program elsewhere in
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the district. P.S. 149 is in the citys Renewal program, which aims to rapidly
improve low-performing schools.
Ms. Watkins said that when she toured P.S. 149 three years ago, she had
thought it was not rigorous enough and lacked many of the benefits that exist in
middle-class schools. In addition, Ms. Watkins said of her daughter, she would
have, frankly, been the only white kid in the class I was concerned about that.
The districts superintendent, Ilene Altschul, suggested at the Dec. 14
education council meeting that the main reason families were not choosing the
Harlem schools was not low test scores, but a failure to get the word out about the
amazing programs that are going on in all of our schools.
She noted steps that some of the schools were taking to improve their
performance, including the hiring of an academic coach to work with teachers at
the STEM Institute and the hiring of a math consultant and a new writing
curriculum at P.S. 149. She noted that P.S. 149 had also recently added programs in
dance, singing, soccer, in-line skating and robotics.
But more than two years after its academic struggles earned it a place in the
Renewal program, P.S. 149 has not yet made clear progress on the goals set for it
by the city. In the last school year, its first under a new principal, its attendance
and performance on the reading exams improved while its performance on the
math exams declined slightly.
Charles DeBerry, the principal of P.S. 76, the school that was set to absorb the
STEM Institute, said he felt outgunned by the promotional efforts of charter
schools, especially the Success Academy network, which has three schools in
District 3 and has spent millions of dollars to recruit students for its schools across
the city. (The Success network now has 41 schools in four boroughs.)
Were certainly not working with the advertising budget that some of the charter
schools have, he said.
Dr. Inyanga Collins, a physician whose daughter has attended P.S. 76 since
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prekindergarten and is now in sixth grade, said that while P.S. 76 had many highneeds students, she felt it worked well with them. (The school has a partnership
with the Harlem Childrens Zone, which provides a teaching assistant or an aide in
every class.) She said she would like to see parents at the school be more involved.
I feel as though the school is doing their part we as parents have to step up
and do our part, she said. Of the proposed merger, she said, This has been a
wake-up call that this could all be gone, just like that.
Two of the Harlem schools have had somewhat better success in attracting
families: Public School 180, the Hugo Newman College Preparatory School, which
has a Spanish dual-language program and has drawn an increasing number of
middle-class parents in recent years, and Public School 185, the Early Childhood
Discovery and Design Magnet School, which offers an early childhood robotics
program. P.S. 185 goes through second grade; it shares a zone with P.S. 208, the
Alain L. Locke Magnet School for Environmental Stewardship, which goes from
third to fifth grade.
Clara Hemphill, the editor of InsideSchools.org, which reviews schools and
advocates greater integration, has been studying District 3 closely.
The aggressive marketing by charter schools, particularly Success Academy,
certainly hurt the district schools, she said, but the district schools did not fight
back with effective leadership and teaching, which is what you need.
Ms. Hemphill said that schools like P.S. 149 and P.S. 241, which both have
relatively new principals, should be given time to improve, but that it might
ultimately be easier to start a new school than to turn failing ones around. She said
she thought the district should try to replicate the Manhattan School for Children
uptown.
Thats a kind of school that would be very popular among parents in the
northern part of the district and would have a chance of being a racially integrated
school, which we desperately need, she said.
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A version of this article appears in print on January 25, 2017, on Page A19 of the New York edition with the
headline: With Many Schools Thriving Nearby, Those in Harlem Are Left to Fail.
2017 The New York Times Company
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and resources from P.S. 241.

2017 The New York Times Company

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