Thousands of students in failing New York City high schools won’t be allowed to transfer this year, despite the federal law that requires options for all students attending struggling schools.

Last year, 1,600 high school students in the city chose to leave failing schools for better ones under the No Child Left Behind law. At a City Council hearing yesterday, city and state officials disclosed that the number of high-school transfers would drop to zero this year.

Officials of the city Department of Education and the state Education Department said the city’s new “high school choice” plan satisfies No Child Left Behind’s requirement of school choice. Under the plan, all rising ninth graders and some rising 10th-graders submit a list of 12 schools they would attend. Last year, the first year of the process, 80% of students were assigned to one of their choices.

“Children who made 12 choices had an opportunity to choose not to be in one of those schools,” the deputy chancellor for operations, LaVerne Srinivasan, said. “They’ve had an opportunity for choice and they’ve exercised their opportunity for choice.”

The state agency’s associate commissioner, Shelia Evans-Tranumn, said the admissions scheme constitutes choice for ninth- and 10th-graders, even if their schools were designated as “in need of improvement” after the date when they submitted their 12 choices. She said 11th- and 12th-graders would have no choice option this year because of “overcrowding.”

The chairwoman of the council’s Committee on Education, Eva Moskowitz, who convened the hearing, and a federal official who testified, Eugene Hickok, deputy secretary of education, said they don’t see letting children try to pick their high schools as the same as giving them an option to transfer to a better school.

“There has to be some way that students in need-of-improvement, Title I high schools have the chance” to attend better schools, Mr. Hickok said.

Although Mr. Hickok emphasized that he and his colleagues are “not local compliance officers” and are “not in the business of signing off or okaying school choice,” he said the city’s so-called “choice” plan is not “keyed to Title I, needs-improvement schools.”

Title I schools qualify for federal poverty aid, and their students are supposed to be granted choices under the No Child Left Behind law.

Mr. Hickok acknowledged that “the city can only offer seats when seats are available,” but he said, “Capacity cannot be a district excuse. Districts have to find ways to build capacity for choice.”

He said the timeline for building capacity should be “very aggressive.”

Ms. Moskowitz criticized the city’s plan for high-school choice more aggressively.

“High-school choice is not choice as NCLB defines it,” she said.

Holding up the freshly issued “Directory of the New York City Public High Schools,” she said not only are most high-school students denied choice, but the eighth-graders who now must choose a high school have to seek out Appendix C to find out which schools are “in need of improvement.”

Ms. Srinivasan said she would consider changing the high school directory next year so that it is clearer which schools are below par.

As the lively five-hour hearing progressed, it became clear that the problems with implementing No Child Left Behind aren’t limited to high schools.

Last year, 26,395 students asked to transfer. This year, that number has dropped to 4,950.

Part of the decline is due to the fact that high-school students aren’t being allowed to transfer. But Ms. Moskowitz said the decline also has to do with the way that parents were notified about the transfer option.

In an August letter, the city education department sent letters to parents whose children attended schools the state had just deemed “schools in need of improvement.”

Rather than encouraging families to consider their options, including transferring, the letter told parents: “Unfortunately, it is likely that not every student who applies will be offered a transfer.”

Ms. Moskowitz said the education department “might as well tell them to go home and stick with their lousy school.”

After being read a portion of the letter, Mr. Hickok said, “It certainly doesn’t uphold the spirit of the law.”

Even state officials, who approved the letter before it was sent, said the letter didn’t convey the right “tone.” Ms. Evans-Tranumn said the notice should have been written “in a more positive light” with “more positive language.”

Ms. Srinivasan said the city has sent many notes to parents and No Child Left Behind outreach has been “more extensive and more personalized than before.” She said the decline in transfer requests was not due to outreach. Rather, she said, it was due, at least in part, to the success of the city’s Children First reforms and parents’ commitment to neighborhood schools.

Starting Monday, families who applied for transfers are to receive letters from the city giving them two transfer options. If they decide to transfer, they will be able to start at a new school on October 28. If they chose not to transfer, other students who want to transfer will be offered those slots.

Ms. Srinivasan said that if about 27% of students who applied for transfers take the city up on its offer – as was the case last year – then the city will be able to accommodate all the demand.

The city and state education departments are planning a series of changes for next year’s No Child Left Behind plans. First, the state is expecting the city to issue notices to most families by the end of the school year if they will be able to transfer. By the 2005-06 school year, state tests will be administered earlier in the year, so that the city can notify all families early about their transfer options.

Second, officials of the city and state agencies said they will work together to reinstitute high-school choice. They say they don’t know what form it will take.