‘We demand answers’

Miller photography

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio tells the crowd that “warehousing is the byproduct of school closings,” leaving many children in limbo as their schools are being phased out.

Four of the five top Democratic candidates for mayor joined parents, students and education advocates on Jan. 31 in calling on the city’s Department of Education to provide critical data: What happens to high-needs students when their schools are shuttered?

Because schools packed with high-needs students are the most likely to be closed, it’s especially important to know what becomes of these students, said the speakers at the press conference on the steps of City Hall. Yet, they said, the DOE, which promotes the use of data for all decision-making, had not released any information showing where these students end up and how they fare after their schools are closed.

“DOE, we demand answers,” said Zakiyah Ansari, the advocacy director of the Alliance for Quality Education and a parent herself.

“We have to discuss the failure of the mayor’s educational policies,” said Fred Baptiste, a PTA vice president and the parent of a son at PS 161 in Brooklyn, a school which is losing its middle grades.

The four mayoral hopefuls — Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, City Comptroller John Liu, and former comptroller William Thompson — spoke out against the city’s school closing policy at the press conference, which was sponsored by the Coalition for Educational Justice.

Liu accused the DOE of confusing action with results.

“It’s almost gone to the point where the number of school closures is almost seen as a sign of success or progress,” said Liu.

“Too many people at the Tweed building think closing schools is a panacea,” said de Blasio. “In fact, it misses the point.”

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the other Democratic mayoral candidate, sent a statement noting that since 11 of the 25 schools on the closing list this year are small schools that have opened since 2005, “there is no magic bullet for transforming schools.” She said she wanted to hear Chancellor Dennis Walcott’s plan “to hold schools accountable for enrolling equal amounts of students with high needs.”

The next day the DOE did release the data for 15 schools that the city closed in June, as required by a new law passed by the City Council.

Of the 569 students who attended the four closing high schools during the 2010-11 school year, only 47 percent graduated with a local or Regents diploma (lower than the citywide average by 15 percent) and 22 percent of them dropped out or were discharged (more than twice the citywide average). An additional 10 percent earned special education diplomas.

Fourteen percent of the high school students transferred to other schools, with more than half ending up at another school with a grade of C or lower on its School Progress Report. A small number of students actually transferred to another school in the process of closing.