Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

In addition to the story about the Chicago mayoral race that glossed over the impact of school closures, today’s NYTimes featured an article by Elizabeth Shapiro on the “failure” of Mayor de Blasio’s $773,000,000 Renewal Program. The article describes the inability of any urban school system to find a way to “fix broken schools” and details some of the factors that caused 25% of the renewal schools to close while a similar percentage of those schools improved enough to be removed from the list.

One of the factors that contributed to the inability to turn “renewal” schools around was the fact that the “renewal school” label scared off parents who exercised choice… thereby leaving the “renewal schools” populated by parents who were less invested in assuring the success of their children. It’s no surprise that “renewal schools” were seldom chosen by parents who engaged in the choice process, but it is a surprise that “reformers” failed to see that this would be a predictable consequence of the system, a consequence that led to even more intractability of “fixing” the “renewal” schools.

One thing is clear about Mayor de Blasio: he is NOT backing down from his position that school closures is the answer. Here’s the closing sentence from the article:

“The era of closing schools has come to an end,” the mayor said.

Thankfully, Mr. de Blasio does not have the ethos of the impatient neoliberal reformers who seek the favor of billionaire venture capitalists at the expense of the struggling middle class residents in the city.