Sociology

got a D from Mayor Michael Bloomberg last week.

If we were cynical and defeatist, we might just throw up our hands and accept that we’re sending our children to a bad school. If only I could afford to send my child to a really good school, we’d tell ourselves. Except when New York City parents hear that our children attend Central Park East I, their first reaction is, “Wow, I hear that’s a really good school.” And they’re right.

We agree with the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, and Mayor Bloomberg that schools must be places where children learn to their fullest potential. But the tools the administration is using to achieve that are threatening to destroy small, nurturing schools like ours. At the moment it feels to us that we’re trying to educate our children in spite of the city’s experts, not in partnership with them. The new grading system is flawed and threatens the one lifelong gift that, rich or poor, we can give our children — a quality education.

Central Park East I, which was founded in 1974 and has a record of sending students on to good high schools and colleges, is typical of small schools dotted around the city that embrace a progressive educational philosophy. As an unzoned school, it doesn’t have the usual geographic restrictions imposed on who can attend. Parents of Central Park East I students live next door in the working-class homes of East 106th Street, and as far away as Queens, the Bronx and the Upper West Side. We’re university academics, bus drivers, Wall Street bankers, office workers, chefs and Broadway performers.

What we all share is a passionate commitment to the quality of our children’s education. And our pride in our school isn’t just our opinion: visitors worldwide come to learn from our school. Prestigious teachers’ colleges regularly ask us to let their students work in our classrooms as student teachers.

So how could a school like ours earn a failing grade? The question, really, is why the education professionals judging our school can’t recognize excellence when they see it?

It’s particularly bizarre in our case, because during a recent visit to our school, a New York City Department of Education official told us he considered Central Park East I a “model” for progressive schools. Assessors who visited the school in 2005 wrote in a report that the school is “child centered”; and our children “thoughtful and articulate” and “enthusiastic about learning.”

So why have we scored so poorly?

Our attendance is “low.” We scored 92 percent, which is considered on the low side for schools like ours. But we’re a school in a blue-collar neighborhood where health problems keep children home. In fact, East Harlem has one of the highest rates of asthma in the city.

The city’s grading system uses an