As wrapped up as I was during my senior year at Martin Van Buren High School (class of ‘96), I couldn’t help but feel that my school had changed. The teachers were still the same (for better or worse), but the school had started admitting students that would have otherwise gone to the neighboring Andrew Jackson High School. A year before, Jackson “closed” and was converted to a “campus” of mini-schools known as Campus Magnet. I remember seeing students who didn’t care about going to class, more fights, and troublemakers getting away with nonsense.
I’ve said it before and I still believe that mini-schools will never work without a disciplined environment where students are held to higher educational and behavioral expectations. No one should be surprised about the consequences of creating mini-schools.
This isn’t a matter of us versus them because the students that went to my alma mater came from the same neighborhoods and socioeconomic backgrounds as those who would have gone to Jackson. Some schools like Jackson will always have a bad reputation for out of control behavior of students, and low academic performance, but don’t close it and think that by virtue of small class sizes that problems will disappear. I really wonder at what point educators and administrators are going to realize this.
Samuel G. Freedman’s article in the New York Times about the destructive impact Lafayette High School in Bath Beach, Brooklyn is having on its neighbor, John Dewey High School in Coney Island.
UPDATE 7/4/08 – Thanks Jonathan. Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice in Fort Greene is being seen as successful: they have a 93 percent graduation rate – the school only has 79 students….
Jennifer Medina’s article in the New York Times on June 30, 2008.
1 Comment
July 4, 2008 at 7:27 pm
It’s possible for small schools to work – but it’s rare here in New York. These mini-schools run the range, but far too many of them are horrible, and many of them are just poor to mediocre.
Here’s something I wrote. And here’s a list that two of the four TR breakout schools are going to get added to next week.
Jonathan