New York Knew Some Schools in Its $773 Million Plan Were Doomed. They Kept Children in Them Anyway.

“Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to ‘shake the foundations of New York City education in 2014 with a new program called Renewal, a signature effort to improve the city’s 94 poorest-performing schools by showering them with millions of dollars in social services and teacher training. A year later, aides raised a confidential alarm: About a third of those schools were likely to fail. The schools were not meeting goals that the city set for higher test scores, increased graduation rates and other academic measures — and probably never would, staff members in the Department of Education warned in an internal memo prepared for the mayor.”