Large High Schools in the City Are Taking Hard Falls
The boos cascaded over the auditorium as a city education official read out the case against Christopher Columbus High School, one of the last remaining large high schools in the Bronx.Columbus has had "long history of sustained academic failure” and “chronically poor performance and low demand,” Santiago Taveras, a deputy chancellor, told the standing-room crowd. As a result, he said, it should be closed. But the frustrated teachers, soft-spoken students and former football players who stood up at the hearing said otherwise. They described a school that had served some students well, despite the difficult circumstances faced by many. They told of a school that, even after the city identified it as struggling, continued to receive ever-growing proportions of the city's most demanding students — the very students that needed the most help. Sharon Otterman, The New York Times, Jan. 25, 2010