ED. BIGS SAY: NO ESCAPE

There's a simple solution to this problem: if a school district can't or won't provide a student with a transfer from a failing school to a better one, give the parents a voucher and take the money away from the school.  The problem would disappear overnight...

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ED. BIGS SAY: NO ESCAPE

By DAVID ANDREATTA Education Reporter

NIX KIDS' TRANSFERS

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A lack of space in good city public schools forced the Department of Education to turn down mid-year transfer pleas from 1,087 students stuck in failing schools — including 205 who tried twice to escape, according to new data.

 

Federal law guarantees students in schools that do not meet state standards the option to go to a better school — but the demands of roughly one in four students were rejected last month.

The Education Department made offers to 3,517 of the 4,604 students who applied to change schools, and just 2,603 of those offers were for schools that applicants named as one of their choices.

 

As of Jan. 31, when transfers were supposed to take place, 1,626 students had accepted the offer.

 

The department created the mid-year transfer option last summer after the agency was able to meet only a third of the roughly 11,000 requests. Of the students left over from the summer, 962 reapplied and 757 were given an option to transfer.

 

Department spokesman David Cantor said the agency has made progress in accommodating transfer requests since the No Child Left Behind law went into effect in 2002 but that the school system is limited in its capacity.

 

He cited the capacity issue as one reason why the city is lobbying Albany to comply with a court order to pump an additional $9.2 billion in capital funds into city schools over five years.

Charlie King, an attorney who has brought federal and state lawsuits against the city on the transfer issue, called the rejections "mind-boggling and unacceptable."

 

"I don't buy for one minute the capacity excuse," King said. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to find room for 1,100 kids."

 

There were 124,415 students in 339 failing schools who were eligible for a mid-year transfer.