Dive Brief:
- NYC Education Chancellor Carmen Farina is considering a plan that would consolidate small, struggling schools in order to spread resources.
- If put in place, the plan would reverse a Bloomberg-era policy that divided large failing schools into smaller schools.
- Farnia believes when schools are too small, they may lack the necessary support services that specific students need. Thirty-five of the 94 schools currently facing closure if they don't improve in three years are schools with 300 students or less.
Dive Insight:
“There’s such a thing as schools that are too small, you don’t have support services,” Fariña said at a town hall meeting Wednesday night in Manhattan, according to the New York Post. While the city currently plans to invest $120 million on the 300 poorly performing schools, Farnia said she is open to all options for improvement. Consolidating the schools would definitely let the money spread further -- for example, instead of paying for two speech therapists, you only need one -- but some fear bigger schools will allow students to slip through the cracks and not get attention they deserve.
“In my mind, this is simply further evidence of the contortions you have to go through if you rule out school closings,” Mayor Bloomberg's former deputy chancellor Professor Eric Nadelstern of Columbia University’s Teachers College told the Post. “By ruling out one, probably the most effective strategy we’ve implemented around improving failing schools, they have to come up with a slew of subsequent policies that are not likely to raise student achievement.”