“We cannot continue to allow students to move through grades even though they are barely able to read until we lose them entirely in middle or high school,” Klein said at a conference in Washington, D.C.
That sentiment was expressed in recent weeks by local parents who said the city’s troubled middle schools are setting students up for failure.
They contend that students drop out of high school because they lack the reading, writing and math skills necessary to excel in courses in grades 9-12.
That’s because elementary and middle schools have failed to adequately prepare students for advanced learning, parents say.
To support their assertions, they cited the graduation figures recently released by the city and state.
The state Education Department says just 50 percent of New York City students complete high school in four years.
The city Department of Education (DOE) says 60 percent of students in the five boroughs graduate in four years.
While both of these figures are up from the year before, parents say they must improve.
Even state Education Commissioner Richard Mills has said, “The statewide graduation rate has gone up only slightly and is unacceptably low.”
Klein called the “millions of students at risk of dropping out” throughout the country a “crisis.”
He said, “We know the dismal litany of life outcomes for dropouts: low earnings, more likely to need government assistance, to be in jail, to have children who will be dropouts.
“It is clear that as a nation we can no longer tolerate, morally or economically, the failure to educate vast numbers of our children.”
Klein recently announced plans to revamp the DOE’s alternative high school system, the goal of which is to prevent students from dropping out.
Instead, students will be redirected to small learning environments, such as those in small high schools, in hopes that they can get back on track and earn a high school diploma rather than a General Equivalency Diploma (GED).
