For a change, let's bet on success in education, not on failure

by Efrem Sigel

Now that New York City's Department of Education seems likely to pull the plug on its largely unsuccessful School Renewal program at the end of the current school year, the question becomes how to avoid such fiascos in the future.

The program was announced four years ago with great fanfare by Mayor de Blasio in November 2014 — and although the city has poured $773 million (even in New York, a lot of money) into about 100 struggling schools, a never-released evaluation from the RAND Corporation found little in the way of academic gains for children in those schools.

Still, advocates for more money for urban schools appear to be drawing the wrong lesson from the failures of the program. One option that DOE is considering is to kill Renewal but continue to endow those very schools with the same pots of extra money for mental health counseling, dental clinics, and other special services. 

It’s hard to be against providing resources for kids who need help.  But in fact, avoiding pouring more money into failing schools is actually the right lesson of the Renewal program. 

Instead, let’s put resources to better use by investing in the leaders of successful schools and enabling them to double or triple their efforts. By successful schools, I mean not the ones in affluent Greenwich Village or Park Slope, but the handful of high-performing schools in the very neighborhoods where Renewal Schools are located.

My own research for a book on young people growing up in East Harlem identifies half a dozen successful schools in District 4 (East Harlem) out of nearly 40 DOE and charter schools operating there. In contrast to the underperforming schools, at the successful ones a majority of students are achieving proficiency in English Language Arts and math.

And the successful schools all serve students who come from predominantly poor families, many of which are headed by single moms, many living in public housing or shelters. At all of them, Hispanic and black students are 90% or more of enrollment.

One of the DOE schools, PS/IS 171 Patrick Henry, was just honored as one of the best urban schools in the country by the National Center for Urban School Transformation at San Diego State University. One of the charters, Dream Charter School, recently got authorization to expand into the Bronx with two new schools. By so doing, Dream aims to replicate its expertise and record of achievement in neighborhoods that sorely need such models of success.

Those are just two examples. There are more willing and able to blossom, if only the city would invest in their growth.

The leaders of these schools have assembled staffs of dedicated teachers working together as a team, with the kind of esprit and commitment to see every child thrive that are essential for success. Some are already expanding enrollment in their existing buildings. Others could see their schools become the hubs of small networks of neighborhood schools, in effect doubling down on good results.

This would be thinking locally and starting small, e.g., with three schools each in some of the city’s lowest-performing districts, such as East Harlem, the South Bronx and Brownsville−in contrast to the DOE's top-down, command-and-control School Renewal program that cost too much and achieved too little.

Every successful organization, whether it's a for-profit company or a nonprofit serving people in need, knows that the best investment is expansion of a program or product that is working, not failing. For too long in public education we’ve poured money into failure. It’s time, finally, to bet on success.

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A version of this piece appeared on the editorial page of the New York Daily News, December 10, 2018, under the heading, Better School Reform.  https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-better-school-reform-invest-in-success-20181207-story.html


Efrem Sigel is the author of two published novels and 30-odd short stories and memoirs.  He coaches volunteer teams of Harvard Business School alumni in pro bono consulting projects to assist education organizations in the greater New York area.  His forthcoming book will examine the experiences of young people in East Harlem with the schools, with public housing, with social service organizations and with the criminal justice system. He lives in Manhattan.   Efrem Sigel, efrem.sigel@gmail.com