Move by former NYC Mayor Bloomberg to create smaller schools leads to big disparities within single buildings

BARRY WILLIAMS/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

A parent-funded greenhouse sits on top of the school building that houses M.S. 256 Academic & Athletic Excellence, M.S. 258 Community Action School, and P.S. 333 Manhattan School for Children at 154 W. 93rd St. Students at P.S. 333 study science in the greenhouse.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg reinvented the public school system, closing more than 160 failing institutions and opening 654 new, smaller ones in their place.

Roughly half of the city’s more than 1,700 schools share a building — and one in the Bronx is split among nine schools.

Supporters say the Bloomberg overhaul helped boost academic achievement during his tenure — with high school graduation rates climbing from 50.9% in 2002 to 61.3% in 2013. But critics say he created a system of winners and losers among students, with needier kids pushed into lower-performing schools.

A Daily News analysis of city and state Department of Education data from the 2013-14 school year examined the disparities between schools that share a building and found significant variations in graduation rates, test scores, race and wealth.

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“The school system Bloomberg created shows marked differences in student populations,” said David Bloomfield, an education professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Grad Center.

“Concentrations of students in poverty led to predictable outcomes,” Bloomfield said.

Often, a charter school moved into the extra space made by closing a failing school. Privately operated, city-funded charters now make up about 11% of all schools.

The imbalances between schools within a single building can be striking.

Of the 55 buildings with multiple schools that teach the third grade, 33 buildings had a disparity of 20 percentage points or greater in third-grade math proficiency rates. Twenty-six buildings had the same level of disparity in third-grade reading proficiency.

The top 10 disparities in both measures — with one exception involving a gifted and talented school — were charter schools out-performing public schools.

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The News found the biggest disparities in third-grade proficiency at a Brownsville, Brooklyn building shared by Public School 401, Christopher Avenue Community School, where only 8% tested proficient in math last school year, and the Leadership Preparatory Ocean Hill Charter School, where 100% tested proficient — a 92 percentage point difference.

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John Visconti, president of the parent group at M.S. 256, said the school has changed principals at least twice in the last few years.

Just 7% of Christopher Avenue third-graders tested proficient in reading, versus 80% at the charter school.

The public school — on the first and second floors — serves a significantly higher percentage of students who are homeless, on special education plans, and who qualify for free or reduced lunch, according to state data.

But Leadership Preparatory officials pointed out their elementary school — which is on the third floor and has a student population roughly 87% classified as economically disadvantaged — includes a low-income preference in its lottery.

The News found that the relatively new charter ranked 12th citywide in third-grade reading proficiency and first in math last school year, beating even some gifted and talented schools.

Fifth-graders at the charter’s new middle school on the fourth floor did not perform as well — only 12% passed reading and 39% passed math.

Barbara Martinez, spokeswoman for Uncommon Schools — the parent organization that owns Leadership Preparatory — said the fifth grade had all new students last year, “most of whom were several grade levels behind in reading and math.”

The second biggest disparity was at a Harlem building shared by Public School 123, where only 6% of third-graders tested proficient in math, and a Success Academy charter, where 97% of third-grade kids tested proficient in math.

Even within the district schools, there were huge gaps in achievement — often predicated by equally huge gaps in income among the students’ families.

The biggest financial disparity was found on the Upper West Side, in a multi-school building where kids at Public School 333, the Manhattan School for Children, learn science in a “stunning rooftop greenhouse” donated by parents.

Only 18% of those students qualified for free or reduced lunch — a difference of 69 percentage points compared to the kids at Middle School 256, Academic & Athletic Excellence, where 88% qualified for free or reduced lunch. Proficiency rates were in the single digits at M.S. 256.

Those two schools on W. 93rd St. between Amsterdam and Columbus Aves. also have the second-highest disparity in racial makeup in the same building. Academic & Athletic Excellence is 96% black and Hispanic; The Manhattan School for Children is 80% white and Asian.

There's also a stark inequity in their respective Parent Teacher Associations. The parent group at P.S. 333 reported raising more than $400,000 last school year for classroom and office supplies, field trips, professional development and technology.

“We have a greenhouse on the roof that three parents provided,” said Jane Rodriguez, 47, a former schoolteacher whose daughter Julia, 7, is a second-grader at Manhattan School for Children. “There are differences between the schools, definitely. We follow a more progressive curriculum. Our students learn by doing.”

John Visconti, president of the parent group at M.S. 256, said this is the first year the organization has been in operation, so they’ve been focused on hiring a new principal and establishing by-laws.

“The school had a lot of rough starts,” said Visconti, who enrolled his 6th-grade son in the school for its unique French dual language program, which also attracts children from many African and Caribbean countries. “They had a principal last year that left and the year before that they had another principal.”

But he added that with the new principal in place, the teachers have been acting as a more cohesive unit and already math scores have shown a big improvement.

The third school in the building, Middle School 258, the Community Action School, had 67% of its students eligible for free or reduced lunch last year, according to state data.

The News found one of the most widespread disparities within co-located schools was in their demographic makeup — 51 buildings have schools with a difference of 20 percentage points or more in the percent of students who are black or Hispanic.

“What those kids experience, it just reinforces the institutional racism that’s in the school system,” said Mona Davis, president of the New York City Parents Union, citing a recent study by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles that found the city had one of the most segregated school systems in the nation.

“It’s unfortunate that children are exposed and conditioned to it at such a young age.”

With Chelsia Rose Marcius, Barry Paddock, Erik Badia, Ben Chapman

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/bloomberg-move-smaller-schools-leads-big-disparities-article-1.2151180