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As a School Moves Out of Renewal, Can Its Progress Be Sustained?

NEW YORK — DreamYard Preparatory high school in the Bronx has spent the last five years on the kinds of lists schools would rather avoid. First, it was a Priority School, a distinction New York bestows on the lowest-performing schools in the state. Then it became a Focus school, which is for schools that are struggling, if not quite so badly. It has also been part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Renewal Schools program, which aims to turn around troubled schools using extra resources, rather than just shutting them down.

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As a School Moves Out of Renewal, Can Its Progress Be Sustained?
By
ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
, New York Times

NEW YORK — DreamYard Preparatory high school in the Bronx has spent the last five years on the kinds of lists schools would rather avoid. First, it was a Priority School, a distinction New York bestows on the lowest-performing schools in the state. Then it became a Focus school, which is for schools that are struggling, if not quite so badly. It has also been part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Renewal Schools program, which aims to turn around troubled schools using extra resources, rather than just shutting them down.

Now, it has been declared a Rise school, one of 21 Renewal schools that have made enough progress to begin the transition away from the support of the Renewal program.

“I think we’re at a pivotal point,” said Alicia Wargo, the school’s principal. “We’re not exactly where we want to be, but we have made steady progress and gains every year.”

Four years ago, before Renewal began, the graduation rate at DreamYard was a dismal 46 percent. By 2017, its graduation rate had risen to 68 percent. That may not be a comforting figure to prospective parents, but it’s only a bit lower than the city average of 74.3 percent. Laura Feijoo, a senior supervising superintendent at the Education Department, said the school had improved in a variety of areas and she expressed confidence that it had created a “sustainable school improvement structure” to allow that progress to continue.

DreamYard was founded in 2006, during a period when the Bloomberg administration was opening schools rapidly to replace the large, failing schools it had closed. One that was shut down, William H. Taft High School, on East 172nd Street, now houses six smaller schools including DreamYard on its campus.

An arts organization, DreamYard Project, and an education nonprofit called New Visions for Public Schools, started the school, which has retained its focus on art. Students pick a major at the end of their sophomore year and spend two 90-minute blocks each week studying theater, visual arts, music or dance.

Wargo has an unusual background for a principal. She moved to New York City in 2000 to be a visual artist after finishing her master’s degree at Rutgers University. To pay the rent, she worked with nonprofit organizations that sent artists into schools. DreamYard Project was one of them.

“I got to see so many different schools and had to collaborate directly with teachers,” Wargo said. “I got to see what a well-run classroom looks like, and what a not-well-run classroom looks like.”

When DreamYard Project was starting a school, the founders suggested she become its visual arts teacher. She thought she’d stay for a year at the school, she said, but loved it. At the end of her second year teaching, her principal asked if she’d like to become an assistant principal.

“I’d never thought about it before, but I said yes immediately,” Wargo said as she sat in her office, where the standard-issue education department desk and computer were augmented by a colorful rug and a purple beanbag chair. She said she doesn’t miss painting — people ask her all the time — because running a school requires plenty of creativity.

“You’re taught to really think outside the box when you’re educated in the arts,” she said. “And it teaches you to take criticism very well. In grad school in particular, you put your painting on the wall you just get ripped to shreds. So I’m able to listen when people say this is or isn’t working.”

When Wargo took over as principal in the spring of 2012, the young school had yet to find its footing. Just a few months later, DreamYard was designated one of the lowest-performing schools in the state, so Wargo wasn’t surprised when the de Blasio administration put it into the Renewal program.

As part of Renewal, Wargo and her staff were trained to use a Harvard University method of analyzing student data. A nonprofit group, Counseling in Schools, began helping to push students to come to school regularly, though attendance remains a challenge. DreamYard and its partner organizations were able to start paying students minimum wage for internships. And crucially, Wargo said, school was extended by an hour every day. Three days a week, that time is spent on academics. The other two days a week, students experiment with professional and vocational possibilities that interest them, while their teachers work with one another to improve instruction.

On a recent afternoon during that added hour, a group of students heated noodles on a hot plate in cooking class. Down the hall, six of their classmates sat in a circle discussing how they might sell a sugar scrub to manicure customers. In another room, a music production instructor played two clips of music, one with an additional effect, and asked students if they could hear the difference. There has been concern among some educators that the Renewal program might become an albatross for schools. Once they were branded as troubled, would teachers and families avoid them? At DreamYard, enrollment has fallen since the school was placed in the program. But students and teachers say the issue predates Renewal: Families are wary of any school in the Taft building, which has a long and troubled history. Teachers there threatened to walk out in 2002 because the school was so violent, according to the InsideSchools website. In 1997, a Taft teacher was tortured and shot to death in his home, and a former student was convicted of the murder.

“When I was an eighth-grader and told people I was going to Taft, people said, ‘Oh, you’re going to get jumped!'” said Carlos Abreu, a senior theater major who started wearing ties to school every day this year, even though the school has no uniform. “But it’s not like that at all. If you ever hear someone say don’t go to DreamYard, don’t listen to them.”

Of the 94 schools originally in the Renewal program, the education department has decided to close or merge 32 of them; 21 have made enough progress to graduate into Rise.

“Renewal isn’t a formula,” Wargo said. “It isn’t like if you do this and do this and do this, your school will be better — you’re dealing with real people. A curriculum doesn’t turn around a school, a community does.” The big question now for schools like DreamYard is whether they can continue to improve. As a Rise school, not much will change at first. The school will be funded at the same level as when it was in Renewal, and will be able to keep its extra hour per day — time that, at DreamYard, will cost $170,615 this school year alone. For now, the main differences will be a bit more independence, and things like instructional support will come through regular Education Department channels rather than the Renewal Schools office.

“My understanding of being a Rise school is that it’s a vote of confidence. You have enough systems and supports in place to maintain improvement,” Wargo said.

“Our data is what it is; I know we’re not a perfect school,” she added. “There are a lot of challenges. But we are working hard and I really think the staff is doing a great job. We just want to keep moving.”

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