STATE EDUCATION COMMISSIONER RULES ON CO-LOCATION CASES
As part of the recent law extending mayoral control of the schools, the DOE can no longer close, move, or share public school space (i.e. co-locate schools), without disclosing the impact the proposed change will have on all affected communities. Under this provision, the DOE must receive public comments before it may put the proposal to a vote by the DOE's Panel for Educational Policy (PEP). As of June 2010, the DOE had already voted on more than 70 proposals to close, move, or share public school space. These proposals have included co-locations in which public schools cede their already limited classrooms and space to charter schools.
Thanks to appeals filed by AFC on behalf of public school parents, New York State Commissioner David Steiner has issued two decisions reaffirming that the DOE must follow the law and cannot change space utlization for any school without full disclosure to the affected communities and an opportunity for public comment. Click Here for the full story.
Click here for AFC's press release regarding Commissioner's Steiner's August 2nd decisions.
Click here for the Commissioner's decision on P.S. 94.
Click here for the Commissioner's decision on P.S. 15. |
OUR KIDS ARE "PRECIOUS"
NY1's Cheryl Wills visits AFC in connection with the release of the critically-acclaimed film, “Precious,” and speaks with AFC staff and clients about the real-life struggles facing New York City students. |
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Students with Interrupted
Formal Education:
A Challenge for the New York City Public Schools. May, 2010.
There are more than 15,000 students in the New York City public schools who came to this country having missed two years or more of schooling. These students – known as Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) – present particular challenges for educators trying to raise the 40% on-time graduation rate for English Language Learners in general. A report by Advocates for Children examines the data on the SIFE population and profiles twelve immigrant students who should have been identified as SIFE by their schools. The report uses the experiences of the students to show how the New York City Department of Education (DOE) and individual schools try and often fail to meet their needs.
Read the press release here.
Read the report here. |
AFC Honors Our Pro Bono Partners
Matthew Lenaghan, AFC Deputy Director, presents Caroline Heller of Greenberg Traurig, LLP with the Pro Bono Partner of the Year Award.
Our 2010 pro bono recognition event was a great success -- thank you to all who were able to attend! It was wonderful to spend an evening with people who have volunteered their time and talent to help children in need. Pro bono support is vital to AFC's success, and we are very grateful for all that our pro bonos do to help New York City's most vulnerable children obtain the educational services they need and deserve. In the past year alone, our pro bono attorneys represented 92 families in special education hearings and appeals and co-counseled with AFC on five federal court cases brought to change education policy. More |
AFC speaks out on behalf of Haitian students in need of seats in city schools. March, 2010.
On February 18th, AFC's Gisela Alvarez spoke at a press conference to draw attention to the lack of adequate services available to Haitian English Language Learners at the high school level of the New York City school system. The issues raised included the desperate need to quickly find seats in city schools for young Haitian earthquake survivors arriving in New York, and the plight of Haitian English language learner students at Brooklyn's Samuel J. Tilden high school, who are at risk of being pushed out because the school is slated for closure. NY1 interviewed Gisela in the station's report on the difficulties that young earthquake survivors are encountering as they arrive in New York and try to enroll in school. |
AFC Issues Statement on School Closings. January 2010.
AFC has issued a statement urging the Department of Education to consider the effect of closures on homeless students and those with special needs. Closing failing schools is sometimes necessary, the statement says, but the impact of closures on the city's most at-risk youth must be addressed.
The statement notes that many of the schools facing closure serve extremely disadvantaged student populations. “While the number of students who are homeless rose by 21% citywide from 2007-08 to 2008-09, it went up by a remarkable 580% on average at the schools slated to be closed,” it reports. Many of these schools also serve higher populations of English Language Learners and students with special education needs.
AFC urges the Department of Education to answer a number of questions: What happens to students with special education needs when their schools close? What is the DOE doing to increase the supply of attractive high school options for English Language Learners and student with other special education needs? And, does a school's willingness to serve a diverse population with multiple challenges make it a target for closure? |
Keeping Kids in School and Out of Courts: Symposium with Former Chief Judge Judith Kaye. November, 2009.
Judge Judith S. Kaye |
Almost 100 civic leaders from government agencies, the judiciary, the schools, and the advocacy community gathered at the law firm of Skadden, Arps on November 13 to discuss how to keep New York City's kids in schools and out of courts. Participants convened at the invitation of Former Chief Court of Appeals
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Judge Judith Kaye, who hosted the event in partnership with AFC and the New York State Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children. Speakers emphasized the urgency of the problem, with too many children growing up in the courts and eventually dropping out of school, and shared models of successful innovation and partnership from across the country, the state, and the city. The event kicked off a collaborative effort that will work across agencies to stem the flow of students into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
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Empty Promises: A Case Study of Restructuring and the Exclusion of English Language Learners in Two Brooklyn High Schools. June 2009.
Since 2002, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) has attempted to reverse the city's severe drop-out crisis through a large scale restructuring of high schools, focused mainly on closing large, comprehensive high schools and replacing them with small high schools that offer a more personalized learning environment. Unfortunately, this reform effort initially included a policy that allowed new small schools to exclude English Language Learners (ELLs), and many small schools still do not provide the programs that ELLs need. To understand how the small schools movement has affected ELL students in New York City, we studied the restructuring of two large Brooklyn high schools – Lafayette High School in Bensonhurst and Tilden High School in East Flatbush. The report illustrates how as a result of this movement, ELLs—who experience some of the lowest graduation rates in the city—are left with fewer and fewer options or are simply left behind. Click here to see the full press release and download the report.
EDUCATE! INCLUDE! RESPECT! A Call for School System Reform to Improve the Educational Experiences of Students with Disabilities in New York City
EDUCATE! INCLUDE! RESPECT! A Call for School System Reform to Improve the Educational Experiences of Students with Disabilities in New York City
The past seven years of education reform have not significantly improved outcomes, experiences or services for New York City's160,000 public school students with disabilities, according to Include! Educate! Respect!, a report issued April 23, 2009 by the ARISE Coalition, a group founded and coordinated by AFC. The report is a review of the reform initiatives and performance data as well as the experiences of parents under the leadership of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein. It describes how Mayor Bloomberg's Children First reforms have left students with disabilities out and calls for the Department of Education (DOE) to focus on specific reform priorities. Click here to see the full press release and download the report.
Horne v. Flores March
2009.
AFC, along with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, filed a “friend of the court” brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Horne v. Flores urging that the requirements in the Equal Education Opportunity Act (EEOA) continue to protect students who do not speak English and are not diminished by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In Horne v. Flores, English language learners in Nogales, Arizona claimed that the inadequate funding for educational programming for English language learners in the state violated the EEOA. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed. The Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, the President of the Arizona Senate, and the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Arizona appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing, among other things, that districts cannot violate the EEOA if they meet the benchmarks for school achievement under NCLB. AFC's brief sets forth the arguments why NCLB does not replace the EEOA's requirements, detailing a number of examples in New York City and other communities where the schools are not providing for the needs of English language learners, but the schools are meeting NCLB benchmarks. New York law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, assisted Advocates for Children in drafting the brief.
Click here to read the full press release.
Click Here to View the Brief
Our Children Our Schools: A Blueprint for Creating Partnerships Between Immigrant Families and New York City Public Schools March 2009.
Over 60% of children in New York City public schools are immigrants or the children of immigrants, but a report by Advocates for Children shows that immigrant families face significant obstacles to participating in their children's education. The report, written in collaboration with immigrant advocates and community groups throughout the city, shows that many immigrant parents remain shut out of school activities and leadership opportunities despite the Department of Education's (DOE's) recent efforts to increase parent involvement in schools. The report offers a number of concrete solutions for building stronger and more meaningful partnerships between schools, immigrant parents and community leaders. Click here to read the full press release and here to download the report.
New Coalition Comes Together To Promote Special Education Reform In New York City Schools: New website launched to collect and share information - August
2008.
Advocates for Children has brought together a new coalition with support from the New York Community Trust. The ARISE Coalition (Action for Reform in Special Education Coalition) announced a new website, www.arisecoalition.org, as a part of a coordinated effort to promote systemic reform to improve special education, promote greater transparency and accountability of the education system, and assure more positive outcomes and options for all students. The diverse coalition of organizations and individuals includes parent organizations, educators, advocates, academics, service providers community-based organizations, specialized schools, and concerned, active individuals and parents and aims to provide a collective and powerful voice on behalf of the 181,000 students with special needs in New York City who have been repeatedly left behind in the development of broad -based school reforms. The website provides informational links and resources for parents and creates a place to collect and share information about the day-to-day experiences of students with special needs and their families in dealing with the school system at every level.
Click here to read the full press release.
http://www.advocatesforchildren.org/Press_Release_8_7_08.pdf
Stuck in the Middle: The Problem of Overage Middle School Students in New York City - July 2008.
Today, the Out of School Youth Coalition, a coalition composed of social service providers, advocates and researchers, released a new report documenting the problem of overage middle school students in New York City. The report was written by Advocates For Children of New York (AFC).
In recent years, community-based providers and school officials that serve students in the public school system have been noticing a disturbing number of sixteen-year-old seventh graders or seventeen-year-old eighth graders who are appearing (or staying) in middle schools across the city. The NYC DOE does not make data on overage middle schoolers publicly available, but educators and advocates working in this field have evidence that the population is substantial. In nine middle schools in the Bronx that serve a combined student population of over 6,000 students, 26% of the students are overage.
The report profiles a diverse cross-section of overage middle school students, identifies promising practices for addressing the problem, and provides detailed recommendations to the DOE. Click here to read the full press release and here to download the report.
To view earlier AFC News stories, please visit our News Archives.
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