<p>The NY Times reports today on the impending closure of the Jonathan Levin High School in the Bronx. I remember the sad day when teacher Levin was found murdered. The school was supposed to be a testament to his dedication and a path of hope for the typically low performing students he tried to reach out to.</p>
<p>After reading the story I have to ask whether or not it makes sense educationally or economically to start this kind of program or school in a needy area, when it’s clear that the neighborhood’s needs eventually overwhelmed the school, despite the generous resources made available to Jonathan Levin High School. Did it make any sense to maintain such a special or enhanced program in a neighborhood of transients, wherein a very high ratio of students are recent immigrants who were largely uneducated in their former home country?</p>
<p>Not really.</p>
<p>The family is at the heart of the majority of inner city troubles. All solutions that ignore that matter are doomed to fail.</p>
<p>And my general opinion is that we need to end these concentrations of poverty. They are unhealthy.</p>
<p>As a resident of NYC and long-time observer of the public school situation, I have to say that all the opening and closing high schools is just crazy. Every time the Dept. of Education starts talking about closing a school, the students with any kind of knowledge and/or good advice don’t sign up or transfer out. And then the city fills the school with English language learners or other kids they have no other place for. The good teachers who can find other spots leave, and the school spirals downhill.</p>
<p>Enrolling a student in a new high school is always a crapshoot. Every year there are new schools whose principals fail to get it together, and freshmen and sophomores are sitting in the cafeteria until October waiting for their schedules. Some new schools succeed but many others fail. And some schools soldier on for a while but gradually lose steam and die, like this one.</p>
<p>There’s lots of PR about “innovation” but much of it is throwing ideas to the wall and seeing what sticks. And it doesn’t stick, the students who happen to be in the building are totally screwed. Not a pretty picture.</p>
<p>We managed to thread the needle and all the schools my daughter attended were at least acceptable. Two of them were really great. But we were really lucky and the paths away from the terrible neighborhood schools we were zoned for toward great schools are no longer available to families with kids just starting out. </p>
<p>I am really, really glad to be DONE with “NYC school choice.”</p>
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<p>As a former resident and former DOE employee, I agree with everything you wrote. We went through the crazy high school application process with my daughter; the only good thing I can say is that it made the college application process seem easy and fun in comparison. After my D went through the whole thing, we ended up moving out of the city anyway. I took her to visit the high school she’d be attending in our new suburban neighborhood. She said, “It seems really nice. What do I have to do to get in?” I explained that she was in automatically just by living in the neighborhood. She couldn’t believe there was no test, no audition, no interview, no portfolio . . . .</p>