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When Murry Bergtraum High School opened in Lower Manhattan 33 years ago, it became known for academic achievement and an innovative business program. Junior Rodney Willis says he chose the school because of that reputation. Now, he's one of 2600 students in a school that was designed for 2000. He says he can't concentrate in class because his teachers spend more time disciplining other students than they do teaching.
ACT: Rodney Willis (0:07): The kids just run wild. People don't care. They portrayed it like a business environment, but it's really a zoo in there. It's real crazy.
Before a child in New York City enters high school, he or she can submit a list of 12 school choices. The city assigns the students to schools based on those lists. Fantasia Johnson, a sophomore at Murry Bergtraum, says it didn't occur to her, or her mom, to choose any of the smaller schools. But now, she wishes she had put some of them on her list. She says sometimes there aren't even enough seats in the crowded classrooms at Murry Bergtraum. And she says she's often learning beside older kids who have flunked.
ACT: Fantasia Johnson (0:11): Some kids don't graduate or get the credits they need, so they have to go to other people's classes, so you're in there with a mixture of seniors, the middle, the freshman.
John Elfrank-Dana, a social studies teacher at Murry Bergtraum, says that the school was already getting crowded in the 1990s. But since Mayor Bloomberg started the push for small schools four years ago, Elfrank-Dana seen a greater percentage of unruly, lower-performing students. The school is also admitting more students with learning disabilities and limited English.
ACT: John Elfrank (0:10): The more motivated kids, the more kids from functional families are gravitating to the small schools, and we get pretty much what's leftover.
Elfrank-Dana says now more than three-fourths of the incoming freshmen have reading skills below their grade level. Only about 60 percent of the students actually graduate. And violence is pervasive. He says the parents of many of Murry Bergtraum's students are unemployed or work at minimum wage jobs. They don't have the time to fully research the school options available for their kids, so those kids end up here …. But supporters of small schools say they're not to blame for problems at large schools. Beverly Donahue is Vice President of Policy for New Visions, a non-profit organization that has helped design and fund almost half of the new small schools in the city. She says small schools aren't the reason large schools fail. But she agrees that access to information does affect which students end up in higher quality schools.
ACT: Beverly Donahue (0:09): Families who may have had access to more information about the small schools may have been inclined to ensure that their students applied to those.
In other words, some families know how to work the system better than others …. Less than a mile away from Murry Bergtraum, there's a new small school with a similar student population called Essex Street Academy. More than two-thirds of the students there are from families that earn less than 25 thousand dollars a year. Classes at Essex are smaller than those at Murry Bergtraum, and principal Alex Shub greets every student every morning - with a hug.
DOC SOUND (0:14):
Student: ALEX!
Alex Shub hugs and greets kids one-by-one in the morning…
ACT: Alex Shub (0:11) : It reminds them that they're kids … And particularly poor kids, and minority kids, they get criminalized, they become a scary thing for people. And it's just a reminder. They're children.
Shub says that parents are learning about his school because every year, more students want to enroll. Freshman Ben Santiago says he picked Essex Academy because his cousin goes to Murry Bergtraum and always complains about how little attention he gets from his teachers there.
ACT: Ben Santiago (0:05): We're based on a community. We're all together. There's more time put into each student.
It's important to feel close to your teachers, says Craig Richards, a professor of education at Columbia University's Teachers College. But it's not clear whether that makes for a better education.
ACT: Craig Richards (0:09): Converting that into real student outcomes - higher graduation rates, more success at attending college and graduating from college, we're still looking at the evidence.
Even if small schools do yield better results, Richards says the city can't abandon large schools. The answer may be for large schools to act like small schools. Murry Bergtraum is now trying "small learning communities," which keep students together for core classes and gives them more contact with teachers. Ailsa Chang, Columbia Radio News.