Data released by the state Education Department shows that the percentage of New York City students graduating high school after four years increased from 44 to 50 percent over a two-year period.
But 50 percent accounts for just half of the city’s high school student population.
“I think any improvement is great but clearly we have a long way to go,” said Mary-Powel Thomas, president of District 15’s Community Education Council (CEC).
The entire state recorded a 67 percent four-year graduation rate in 2006.
“The statewide graduation rate has gone up only slightly and is unacceptably low,” said state Education Commissioner Richard Mills. “We need to act urgently now.”
Brooklyn Technical High School recorded the highest graduation rate in Brooklyn with 92 percent.
Several local high schools had graduation rates at less than 40 percent, including Automotive, Harry Van Arsdale, and Boys and Girls.
With a 26 percent graduation rate, ACORN High School for Social Justice had the second lowest rate in Brooklyn.
An analysis of the data posted on the state Education Department’s website, www.nysed.gov, shows that racial disparities in student achievement still exist.
While the graduation rates for African-American and Hispanic students increased, they remain lower than those for their white classmates.
The four-year graduation rate for Hispanic students rose four percent to 45 percent, and the rate for African-American students jumped three percent to 47 percent.
“The rate among black and Hispanic students is a disaster,” asserted Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum.
Thomas said more must be done to encourage the city’s best teachers to work in struggling schools, many of which have large African-American and Hispanic student bodies.
“If you want to attract your highest quality teachers to your lowest performing schools, it would help to offer them more money,” she said.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools Chancellor Joel Klein have said they’d like to implement such a system.
Calling the graduation rate increases for African-American and Hispanic students “bright spots,” Mills asserted, “New York City has gained. But we still have far to go.”
Bloomberg said the figures “demonstrate that, as a result of the school reforms New York City has made, more students are graduating from our public schools than at any time in decades. Four- and five-year graduation rates have risen steadily and substantially during the past two years.”
Carmen Colon, president of the Association of New York City Education Councils, asserted that the mayor’s repeated restructuring of the public school system and frequent introduction of new policies are not responsible for the increase in the city’s graduation rates.
“The numbers are based on policies that were there before Bloomberg,” she said, and, “do not reflect any given policy or program [implemented by Bloomberg and Klein] – they haven’t been around long enough.”
Regardless of who is responsible for the statistics, Brooklyn parents were less than enthusiastic about the city’s graduation rate figures.
“Everybody agrees that they’re dismal and there have to be new commitments to making sure that students are encouraged to complete school,” said David Bloomfield, president of the Citywide Council on High Schools (CCHS).
Parents say the reason students drop out of high school is that they lack the reading, writing and math skills necessary to complete courses in grades 9-12.
They say this is because elementary and middle schools fail to adequately prepare students for advanced learning.
“The trouble starts long before high school,” Thomas said. “As we’ve seen from standardized test scores, they go steadily down from third grade to eighth grade.”
“Middle school graduates are woefully unprepared to do high school-level work. Those are many of the kids who end up dropping out,” Bloomfield agreed.
But, he noted, “New research shows that many students who had adequate preparation drop out as well.”
The solution is to ensure that kids attend class regularly, he said.
“I think that the entire community has to get behind efforts directed at attendance as well as achievement,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s only the responsibility of the Department of Education” to raise the graduation rate, he continued. “Parents and students bear a high degree of responsibility for making sure that they attend school on time, do their homework, and study, study, study.”
But teenagers must want to go to school and right now, there’s too much emphasis on test prep in elementary and middle schools, so by the time students enter high school, they’re turned off to the learning experience, Colon said.
In those early grades, “they start hitting you with testing and that’s when kids’ minds start to click off. This is boring,” she said.
She offered this advice to DOE officials, “Start making science, history and math exciting…Children will sit for something that’s engaging.”
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