In the '60s it was an ambitious experiment in progressive education. Today John Dewey High graduates its final class after being closed as a failing high school. What led the Gravesend facility from success to shut-down?1
On April 26, 1963, a dozen New York City principals went into seclusion in Hershey, Pennsylvania. They emerged 10 days later with a plan for what was to be one of the boldest experiments undertaken by the city's public schools, a blueprint for a high school that would foster independent study, replace the letter grade system, extend the school day and encourage students to take charge of their own educations.
On June 26, that experimenttattered and eroded over more than 40 yearswill come to an end as John Dewey High School in Gravesend graduates its final class. Earlier this month, all Dewey teachers received letters telling them their jobs no longer exist. Barring action by an arbitrator, when school reopens in September, the building on Avenue X will house a new school dubbed Shorefront High School of Arts and Sciences at John Dewey Campus.
Few in Dewey's early days would have expected this denouement. For years, Dewey's program attracted press coverage and visitors from across the country. "It is looked upon by school officials as a model for the future and by others as an island of hope in a sea of trouble," Paul Montgomery wrote in The Times in 1971. As recently as 2000, the U.S. Department of Education selected Dewey as a showcase high school, and in 2008 US News and World Reportawarded Dewey a silver medal in its ranking of American high schools.
"Dewey should go down as the greatest experiment on the secondary level in the 20th century," says Bob DeSena, founder of the Council for Unity, a group started at Dewey that works to reduce violence in schools and communities.
So what happened? Who killed John Dewey High School?
Shut and open
John Dewey High School, of course, is not alone. Since 2002, the Bloomberg administration has shut or begun phasing out about 140 schools, many of them, like Dewey, large high schools. The administration says that as of September, it will have opened 589 new schools. About 200 are high schools, most of them small.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and officials at the Department of Education (DOE) staunchly defend the policy. The mayor crowed about the openings of new schools at a press conferencein April, calling the results "really amazing," and adding, "It is an achievement that nobody, nobody, would have thought possible.
There's little doubt that many of the shuttered schools deserved to close, and that some of the new schools have excelled. But the school closings have proved wrenching for many New Yorkers, sparking passionate protests from students, parents and teachers. Critics have charged that the DOE is so eager to close schools that it has ignored other, less-draconian solutions. "They are using schools closings totally inappropriately. School closings should be a last resort," says Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at NYU.
In some cases, critics say, the DOE has--under the banner of improving a facilityactually abetted a school's decline. "DOE has a list of schools they think are not going to make it
and they insure that their predictions come true," says Norm Fruchter, senior scholar at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. The department may place more troubled students, students with special needs and English language learners at the shaky schoolmoves that can further bring down its graduation rate and test results.
The closings have become an annual ritual. This February, the city approved closing all or part of 23 schools. In addition, when the administration and the United Federation of Teachers failed to reach agreement on a plan to evaluate teachers, Bloomberg announced he would designate 33 struggling schools as "turnaround" schools. Under a federal program, this meant DOE would shut the schools and replace up to half their staffs.
Initially, many saw Bloomberg's move as a bluff designed to win concessions from the teachers union and sharply criticized it. "There's a fight going on here that has nothing to do with what's going on at the school," state Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch, usually a Bloomberg ally, said last winter of the mayor's closure plans. Its a labor dispute between labor and management.
Bloomberg eventually spared several "turnaround" schools. But on April 26, the Panel for Education Policy, a body controlled by the mayor, voted to close 24 schools on the original list of 33 and reopen them in new guises and with many new teachers in September. One of those schools was Dewey.
Education reform, '60s style
In the 1960s city officials saw Dewey not as a problem but as a solution. "There has been an increasing dissatisfaction with the goals, methods and results of high school education,'" the group of principals wrote after the Hershey meeting. "How can our high schools do an even better job? What changes must be made in philosophy, organization, curriculum and teaching methods if they are to meet the imperatives of our times."
The school that opened with 1,000 students in September 1969 tried to answer those questions. Named for the American philosopher whose theories form the basis for much of progressive education, it featured a longer day, with students spending 25 percent of their time in independent study or other activities. Resource centers, equipped with books and other materials, were set up as places where students could work on their own or get extra help. The school also had science labs, music practice rooms and art studios as well as a large outside campus that students could use freely. Dewey became home to theatrical productions, various publications and a marine biology program whose students took samples from Jamaica Bay and then pressed the federal government for stricter regulation of discharges into the wetland's waters.
The school offered a plethora of novel courses--on such subjects as the crime and punishment, the emerging city, the Holocaust and the American Dream --and independent study allowed students an even broader selection. Underscoring it all was a belief, as a 1982 documentary on Dewey put it, that youngsters should "be responsible for their education and approach it with zest and concern."
Dewey upended the standard building blocks of high school. Instead of semesters it offered courses in seven-week cycles. Students could graduate after two to six years. Letter grades did not exist. Dewey, an early teacher recalled in the documentary, "freed me to let go of every shibboleth
I had about public education"
Because the school's approach might not suit all teenagers, students had to apply. The school selected students through a process aimed at guaranteeing those accepted would have a range of abilities and reflect the diversity of Brooklyn.
Today many look back fondly on those early days. Naomi Berger graduated in 1975 and some 30 years later helped form the John Dewey Alumni Associationto keep the Dewey model alive. "The opportunities were endless," she recalled. "By virtue of getting a rich experience you were prepared for
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I wasn't commuting from Williamsburg to Coney Island for that schedule.