Neoliberal Remodeling of the High Schools of the Bronx: Trying to Save an Urban School District

• In Event: The New Educational Structures of Neoliberalism: Pitfalls and Possibilities of Charter Schools and Other “School Choice” Arrangements

Abstract

For decades the Bronx has been held up as a symbol of urban poverty and decay According to census data, the Bronx remains one of the poorest counties the United States and continues to be plagued by problems like low high school graduation and high drop out rates. While, the Bronx is also a place of great creativity, inspiration, and community activism, the dominant narrative about the Bronx, especially its public schools, has been negative.

Indeed, politicians and education leaders left the Bronx alone for years, leaving it to become one of the lowest performing school district in the state and perhaps the country. In 2002, things changed dramatically. As a part of a larger neoliberal project to reform urban schools nationally, the Gates Foundation, in conjunction with the Carnegie and Soros foundations, put forth an initiative to remake the Bronx schools as charter-like entities. Called the New Century Schools Initiative (NCSI), the idea was to close all of the large comprehensive high schools, and open up small academies that had autonomy to choose their students and their curriculum. NY Department of Education officials endorsed the initiative which they claimed would save the failing district. Even progressive educators heralded the initiative as an opportunity to freely create new programs.

Schools with names like The Academy for Careers in Sports or the Bronx Studio Schools for Artists and Writers, each with 400 students opened in the Bronx from 2002 until 2011, but small high schools were not the answer to district problems. The schools operated like charter schools and did not admit or counseled out students that were not achieving academically. The schools were accountable for improving test scores and that became the sole focus of these schools, which turned progressive educators away from the schools which were focused mainly on test prep.

Based on a year long ethnographic study of three of the NCSI high schools that yielded classroom and meeting observation data, teacher and principal interview data, and student focus group data from each school, this paper reports on the challenges and opportunities created by NCSI schools. It uses the data from the 2005-06 school year to answer the questions: How are students being taught? What are they learning? What kind of preparation are they getting for post-secondary opportunities?

Using neoliberalism as an analytical framework, this paper argues that NCSI is an initiative for public schools that has operated much like a set of charter schools. It provided funding for people to start all kinds of schools, schools that could give low-income, young people attention from teachers that they never would have had in a large public high school. Yet, it created inequities as well. NCSI schools had lower numbers of special education students, transferred students whose academic performance was lagging, and provided test prep in place of more engaged and challenging teaching and learning. As such, NCSI contains all of the problems and possibilities in the marketplace where opportunity is provided for some but where social inequality remains.

Author

• Jessica Shiller, Towson University