It's uncertain whether higher courts might reinstate the closures. In the meantime, parents, school staff and leaders, and education advocates are pushing for the Department of Education (DOE) to consider methods to help struggling schools improve, rather than simply closing them down.
One such strategy, the School Transformation Zone or STZ, is gaining wide support across a broad swath of elected officials, education experts, youth advocates and religious leaders.
Developed by the Coalition for Educational Justice, a parent-led school reform coalition, the Zone would integrate proven school-improvement strategies with strong leadership—"an educator with a track record for improving low-performing schools"—and the oversight of a Zone Coordinating Committee, drawn from key local stakeholders, like members of each school's School Leadership Team.
The CEJ has a strong track record of productive collaboration with the DOE. It has won grants of nearly $30 million for its Middle School Success Initiative targeting reform in low-performing middle schools. The affiliated Brooklyn-based Brooklyn Education Collaborative secured a $444 million commitment from DOE for science labs in city middle and high schools and in the Bronx, the Community Collaborative to Improve Bronx Schools created a signature "Lead Teacher" teacher-training program that has placed master mentor teachers in over 100 public schools citywide.
The School Transformation Zone mandates the use of strategies like an extended school day and longer school year; rich, college-preparatory curriculum; and strong professional support for teachers and principals, with robust parent involvement.
Based in part on former New York City Chancellor Rudy Crew's "Chancellor's District," created in 1996 to support the renewal and growth of struggling schools, the School Transformation Zone would function as a kind of "community incubator" to grow stronger schools: Schools that became part of the Zone would have three years to develop and improve academic outcomes before the possibility of closure.
Additionally, the CEJ proposes that all city schools receiving Federal funds through School Improvement Grants would participate in the Zone, and recommends that DOE apply for federal Innovation Funds to support the Zone's struggling schools. (On April 30th, the U.S. Department of Education announced that New York State will receive over $308 million in School Improvement Grants, to be directed toward 57 "persistently failing" schools, including 34 schools in New York City.)
Under Crew, schools in the Chancellor's District received extra resources directed at decreasing class size, longer school days, and academic tutoring, enrichment and professional-development support for teachers and principals. Students in the Chancellor's District made substantial gains, according to a 2004 report by NYU's Steinhardt Institute for Education and Social Policy, significantly outstripping students in less-challenged schools. (The Chancellor's District was disbanded in 2003 as part of the Department of Education restructuring that consolidated districts into regions.) Crew later established a similar initiative in Miami, which led to gains by 90 percent of that city's schools.
