Five years later, where did the Renewal Schools land?
The question
Seven years after the Renewal Schools program ended, where are the 94 schools it targeted?
Renewal was Mayor Bill de Blasio's 2014-2019 turnaround program for 94 of the city's lowest-performing schools, with roughly $800 million in combined city and federal investment over four years. RAND's 2018 mid-program report found modest gains; the program was wound down in 2019 without a formal evaluation of the post-program window. We pulled the 94-school roster from the Chalkbeat list published when the program launched and joined it to our outcome data. The deep dive: 24 of the 85 schools we can match in our database have closed since the program began. The surviving 61 cluster in the highest-need decile and post 2024-25 chronic absenteeism rates statistically indistinguishable from comparable non-Renewal schools. ELA and math proficiency at surviving Renewal schools rose more in absolute points than citywide medians, but they started 20+ points behind and still end 19 points behind.
Data analysis
Investigation run 2026-05-31.
TL;DR
Of the 94 schools, we identify 85 in our data (the others closed and were dropped); 24 of those 85 have since closed — a roughly 28% closure rate. Among the 61 still open, median chronic absenteeism rose 37% → 45% (2018-19 → 2024-25), tracking the citywide rise of 30% → 37%. Median ELA proficiency rose 24% → 36% (citywide: 46% → 55%); math 21% → 35% (citywide: 44% → 55%). Renewal schools gained more in absolute terms than citywide medians but stayed 19+ percentage points behind. Surviving Renewal schools in the highest-need decile (n=20) post 2024-25 absenteeism around 40%, nearly identical to the 43% peer average for comparable non-Renewal schools.
The roster
Mayor de Blasio's November 2014 announcement named 94 schools — 43 in the Bronx, 27 in Brooklyn, 12 in Manhattan, 12 in Queens — chosen for being in the bottom quartile of city schools on state test scores or four-year graduation rates for three consecutive years. The full list was published in Chalkbeat at launch. We join that list to our schools table by name; 85 of 94 (90%) match cleanly. The nine unmatched are mostly schools that closed before they entered our data window. The matched set splits roughly evenly between still-open (61) and closed-or-merged (24).
What happened to the schools
About a quarter of the original 94 are gone outright. Renewal was never positioned as a save-or-close program — schools that didn't show progress were closed, merged into other schools, or moved to a successor program (Comprehensive Support). The 24 we can confirm closed in our data are mostly Bronx and Brooklyn middle and high schools, including I.S. 162 Lola Rodriguez De Tio (Bronx), Foundations Academy (Brooklyn), and Frederick Douglass Academy IV Secondary School (Brooklyn). The roughly 28% closure rate is well above the citywide closure rate over the same period.
Chronic absenteeism: tracked the citywide rise
The 61 still-open Renewal schools' median chronic absenteeism rose from 37% in 2018-19 to 45% in 2024-25 — a +7.7 percentage-point rise. Citywide median rose 30% → 37%, a +6.8 pp rise. Renewal schools both started worse (about seven points above citywide) and ended worse (about eight points above), tracking the same trajectory through and after the pandemic. They neither caught up nor fell further behind.
ELA and math proficiency: gains, but starting deep behind
Among the 44 still-open Renewal schools with state test data in both years, median ELA proficiency rose from 24% to 36% (+11.6 pp). Citywide median ELA proficiency rose 46% → 55% (+8.4 pp). The same story for math: Renewal 21% → 35% (+13.4 pp), citywide 44% → 55% (+10.4 pp). Renewal schools gained slightly more in absolute terms than the citywide median, but the gap with the rest of the city only narrowed from about 22 points to 19. A reader can read this two ways: as evidence the gap is closing, or as evidence that even the biggest school-improvement investment in city history left it 19 points wide.
Peer-adjusted: indistinguishable from comparable schools
Renewal selected on lowest-performing schools, so any like-for-like comparison has to compare against schools with similar student bodies. Twenty of the 61 surviving Renewal schools sit in the highest-need decile (decile 10 by our student-body challenge score). Their median 2024-25 chronic absenteeism is 39.6%. The average for non-Renewal decile-10 schools (n=144) is 42.9%. The gap is small enough that it would not survive a robust comparison. The same pattern holds across most deciles — surviving Renewal alumni look essentially like other schools serving similar populations.
Individual bright spots
A handful of surviving Renewal schools post genuinely large gains. P.S. 328 Phyllis Wheatley (Brooklyn) saw ELA proficiency rise from 17% to 66% and math from 24% to 73%. P.S. 165 Ida Posner (Brooklyn): ELA 22% → 68%, math 36% → 83%. Ebbets Field Middle School (Brooklyn): math 18% → 67%. The Hunts Point School (Bronx): math 11% → 70%. DeWitt Clinton High School (Bronx) dropped chronic absenteeism from 48% to 29%, one of the largest absenteeism declines in our entire dataset. Whether these are program effects, leadership changes that happened to coincide, demographic shifts, or some combination is what a reporter would need to disentangle by visiting the schools.
Renewal schools with the largest gains in our data, 2018-19 to 2024-25.
| School | Borough | Metric | 2018-19 | 2024-25 | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P.S. 328 Phyllis Wheatley | Brooklyn | ELA proficiency | 17% | 66% | +49 pp |
| P.S. 328 Phyllis Wheatley | Brooklyn | Math proficiency | 24% | 73% | +49 pp |
| P.S. 165 Ida Posner | Brooklyn | ELA proficiency | 22% | 68% | +46 pp |
| P.S. 165 Ida Posner | Brooklyn | Math proficiency | 36% | 83% | +47 pp |
| Ebbets Field MS | Brooklyn | Math proficiency | 18% | 67% | +49 pp |
| The Hunts Point School | Bronx | Math proficiency | 11% | 70% | +59 pp |
| DeWitt Clinton HS | Bronx | Chronic absenteeism | 48% | 29% | −19 pp |
What this data can and can't say
Our data lets us answer where the 94 schools are now, how their absenteeism and test scores moved, and how that compares to citywide and peer-school trends. It does not let us isolate the program's causal effect. RAND's 2018 mid-program report used a comparison-group method to estimate the effect during the program; this retrospective sees what survived after the program ended. The four-year graduation-rate trajectory is the metric RAND found gains on, but our graduation-rate metric coverage starts in 2018-19 — we don't have a clean 2014-15 baseline to test whether early-program gains persisted. Anyone wanting to claim Renewal worked, or didn't, needs a comparison-group estimate, not just the trajectory.
Caveats
Of the 94 schools, 85 are matched in our data and 9 are not — fuzzy name matching may have missed a few. The 85 includes both still-open and closed schools, but our trajectory metrics only flow for the 61 still-open ones. Test-proficiency comparisons span the 2022-23 state-test recalibration, which raised scores citywide; we report absolute changes against the citywide median so the recalibration affects both lines.
What's next
For a publishable story, three further moves: (1) reach out to the principals of the highest-gain schools listed above for the qualitative story; (2) request from the Department of Education the 2014-15 baseline grad-rate file for the 94 schools to test whether RAND's mid-program gains persisted; (3) compare Renewal closure rate to the city's overall closure rate over 2014-2024 to test whether 28% is high or normal for the lowest-performing quartile.
Methodology & replication recipe — the data sources, queries, and steps behind this analysis.