June 30, 2007 -- New York City's growing crop of small high schools racked up a 73 percent graduation rate in 2007 - 18 points higher than traditional schools and the second straight year they have outpaced them, the Department of Education said yesterday.
And once August graduates are factored in, that number could climb to 77 percent, according to city estimates.
"We've got to tell everyone in the country to throw away excuses and throw away low expectations," Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said at a press conference at the Evander Childs Educational Campus School in The Bronx.
That school, which Klein's mother attended half a century ago, saw its graduation rates surge from 31 percent in 2002 to an estimated 80 percent this year.
Evander Childs is being phased out as a traditional high school, and will graduate its last traditional class in 2008. After that, the campus will house only six small schools: the Bronx Aerospace Academy, HS for Contemporary Arts, Bronx HS for Writing and Communication Arts, Bronx Lab School, HS of Computers and Technology, and Bronx Academy of Health Careers.
"You are not counted as a number, you are counted as an individual," said Health Careers graduate Joshua Sukhlall, who is bound for SUNY Albany in the fall. He credited the school's health focus with putting him on track for a career as a pharmacist.
Citywide, high schools had a 55 percent graduation rate last year, according to the most recent data from the Department of Education.
The city began creating small schools in 2002 with a focus on turning around dismal graduation rates. Thirty of the schools were placed in failing high schools that were previously marked for closure.
This year, 47 of those 200 small schools had graduating classes.
Just over 90 percent of students in these new schools are black or Latino, two groups that have historically struggled in comparison to white and Asian students.
"It's really quite amazing, and it says that if you really make changes, these kids can be educated. And for so many years, the conventional wisdom was, 'Oh, they're minorities, they can't be educated,' and I think that is such an outrage," Mayor Bloomberg said on weekly WABC radio show.
Klein also said special-education and English-language-learner students are not being left out. This year, 64 percent of 12th-grade special-ed students attending a new school graduated. And of the freshman class in the 2006-2007 school year, 13 percent were English-language learners, compared to 11 percent citywide.
The Carnegie Corp. also announced a $10 million grant to improve small schools by making sure students are put on a path to higher education. A pilot program will track students during their first two years of college to make sure they have the support needed to graduate.
cbennett@nypost.com
