New York Diary

Academies of Scale

Yesterday evening marked my first venture into a New York City public school. Let me tell you, it was a harrowing experience. I would never, never, never want my child to attend such an institution.

This is not to say that the school itself was a bad one (and I refrain from giving its name for that purpose); I have absolutely no sense of the quality of the teachers, for example. It was, however, at least nine stories high, with escalators, and the "essays" being displayed in front of an AP English classroom were all under a page long. This is not promising.

It's not the academics that caused my visceral reaction to the place, though. It was the space. The school was like a jail: there were no windows, there was no outdoor space, and it was enormous. Escalators seem to be the perfect place to taunt or fight others far from the eyes of any administrators. The place was impersonal. Students were expected always to be predictably in the place listed by their class schedule, because there were too many to keep track of otherwise.

I think back to my own (very good, public) high school, and I realize that much of the most valuable time I spent there was before classes started, in Mrs. Hall's room playing Scrabble or arguing about Shakespeare, and during my lunch period listening to Mr. Warren lecture to one philosophy class or another. I was close to teachers, guidance counselors, administrators, even the principal. Was I unique in this way? Sure, but only because of the degree of my familiarity with them. Others--from the worst performers to the best, the most troublesome students to the most well-behaved--knew somebody well. Teachers got to know their students. School was a community.

That just wouldn't have been possible in the school I visited. Nobody was allowed into the building before school started, except those with a specific destination (cafeteria, remedial reading classroom, etc.). After a class with a teacher, it is distinctly possible you'd never see them again--and unlikely that they'd keep up with you as a result. No wonder this particular school has a dropout rate of about 30%. And that, according to the New York City Department of Education, is really quite a good rate.

It is hard for me to imagine that a school of that size and impersonality is safe. But such problems can be fixed: more cops, more teachers in the hallways, stiffer penalties for student fighting, expulsion for more serious offenses. Far worse is my sense that such a school could not be a true learning environment. The reason that Stanton was great was because it was a place where everybody was invested in your doing well. Everybody expected you to learn. All the students took hard classes, and, unsurprisingly, nearly all did well--because that's what people were pushing you to do and helping you to do. That's what a school should be; it shouldn't be hard to learn at school. But this monstrosity that is the New York Public School:

I wouldn't have gone every day, I'd bet. There's no way I could make my kid do so.

posted by Skay @ 6:41 AM