Calling Out the ‘Renewal’ Sham

Hallelujah: City Comptroller Scott Stringer has gotten religion on the sham that is Mayor de Blasio’s bloated Renewal schools program.

In an April 5 letter, Stringer demands that new Chancellor Richard Carranza determine if the mayor’s $600 million boondoggle is effective. After all, he writes, the absence of “consistent progress across all Renewal schools suggests the need for a more thorough review of the program’s components and their overall impact.”

Stringer wants the Department of Education to detail its spending on each of those components: longer school days, teacher training, “leadership coaches” and consultants.

On the other hand, he also complains that the decisions to close a few Renewal schools are “breeding needless distrust in communities.” Is he hoping to tap that distrust in a future mayoral run?

It’s not clear if Carranza saw the letter before he told Chalkbeat last week that the Renewal program lacks a single clear “theory of action” and noted that simply providing a package of social services (as the city does by making each Renewal a “community school”) “doesn’t cause academic improvement.”

On the merits, Carranza should junk Renewal now, and move to close those schools. After all, the benchmarks they’re supposed to meet are a joke — and even ones that fall short have remained open.

The program isn’t really about turning around failed schools, but merely pretending to.