exit strategy: sizing up new york city's dropout rates

8/7/2019 Exit Strategy: Sizing Up New York City's Dropout Rates

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EXIT

STRATEGSizin up NYCsdropout challenLast sprin, Mayor MichaelBloomber and schoolsChancellor Joel Klein had oodnews to report: New York Cityhih school raduation rate ha

improved. The bad news: Fortypercent o students still ailedto raduate on time. Thousanddropped out. Thousands moreremained in school, their uturuncertain. As the mayors schoreorms roll on, their successwill ultimately be juded by theraduation rate. But inside thatstatistic, inside the citys 300-od

hih schools, the eort to etstudents to the nish line is acomplex story o success and chane and consequence. At itheart are 140,000 youn adultsrisk o losin out, and bein los

WINTER 2008 VOL. 31 NO. 04

By Hee Z

THESE communITIES

fAcE moRTAlRISkS AndwIll SEE THEIR

dREAmSSHRIvEl.


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WINTER 2008

City Limits investigates

New York City hih school students will soon ace tougher

graduation requirements. Photo: Jarrett Murphy

Cover image: DeWitt Clinton Hih School in the Bronx, whic

boasted a 68 percent graduation rate in 2006. Photo: JM

Dear Editor,

We are pleased that the CriminalJustice Aencys research was ea-

tured so prominently throuhoutPrisoners Dilemma: How NYCsBail System Puts Justice On Hold(City Limits Investiates, Vol. 31,No. 3, Fall 2007), and that you usedsuch care to present our data andresearch ndins accurately. In theinterest o even more complete ac-

curacy, however, we would like to provide some clarication or aew items. Further details are available on our website at www.nycja.or/research.

You mentioned that the CJA release recommendation is based oninormation that is correlated with risk o ailure to appear, whichis true. One example is whether the deendant expects a riend

or amily member to come to the arrainment. Yet you stated thattwo deendants could have about the same odds o showin up orcourt even i one were expectin someone at arrainment and theother was not. Actually, the research shows that the odds are not thesame. All else bein equal, the deendant who is expectin someoneat arrainment has sinicantly better odds o showin up or cour t.Thats why the item is used in calculatin the score upon which therecommendation is based.

Another statement that miht be misunderstood was a reerenceto comparisons o individual judes release rates at arrainmentin Brooklyn and Manhattan, based on a small sample o obser vedarrainments. Statistics cited or a Brooklyn jude who releasedless than 50 percent and a Manhattan jude who released 100 per-cent o the deendants comin beore them at arrainment reer

to nonelony cases only. No jude in the study sample released100 percent o elony cases. However, your point is well taken thatdeendants chances or release depend to a reat extent on whichjude they see.

Finally, it was not always clear that data rom the CJA Annual Re-port or 2005 pertainin to bail makin and ailure to appear werebased on cases disposed in Criminal Court, and thus excluded elo-ny-level cases that were transerred to Supreme Court or adjudica-tion. In terms o makin bail, the situation is thus even bleaker thanyour article implies. For example, you cited data showin that only11 percent o deendants who had bail set were able to make bail atarrainment. This was actually the proportion only or cases thatwere eventually disposed in Criminal Court. With the more seriousSupreme Court cases included in the base, the proportion makin

bail at arrainment was lower (9 percent). Moreover, most CriminalCourt cases reach disposition much more quickly than do SupremeCourt cases, so the potential or lenthy detention is reater in thetypes o cases that were not included in the data. Supreme Courtcases are not included in the release-to-disposition data in the An-nual Report because at the time the report is compiled or eachprevious years arrests, a lare proportion o Supreme Court caseshave not yet reached disposition.

Jerome E. McElroy, Executive Director,

and Mary T. Phillips, Ph.D., Deputy Director of Research,

New York City Criminal Justice Agency, Inc. (CJA)

in jailfor nothaving$200?

Who stays

Poor PeoPle. thats notright.

PrisonersDileMMaHow NYCs bail systemputs justice on holdEvery year New York City

detains thousands o people whoare presumed innocent. Theyare pretrial detainees. They arethe majority in city jails. Andmost o them are behind barsnot because they are dangerous,but because they could notaord bail. They await trial awayrom jobs and amilies and acea harder time proving theirinnocence. Its a problem withwhich New York has struggledor decades. But as courts dealincreasingly with low-levelcrimes, and as the consequencesbecome more serious orbeing convicted o even minoroenses, the stakes o a systemthat conditions reedom onfnances are growing higher.

FALL 2007 VOL. 31 NO. 03

B j Mup

letters


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PUBLISHERS NOTE

The power o a hih school diploma is proound. Beyond educations role in the trainin andbuildin o curious and independent minds, a diploma larely determines economic destiny.Nationally, a sinle years population o dropouts will earn $192 billion less over a lietime owork than their peers who do raduate. The number o youn New Yorkers who will be ableto obtain that crucial deree represents a power ul measure o our collective will to create asociety o dynamism and oppor tunity.

While the citys our-year raduation rate o 60 percent can be said to represent somekind o proress, the scale o whats at stake is truly staerin: I the 140,000 youn adults

between 16 and 21 who are at risk o droppin out o the New York City public schools com-prised a separate educational entity, they would represent the second-larest hih schooldistrict in the United States.

This is not your athers dropout rate. In an increasinly demandin lobal economy, onewith steep demands or sot and hard skills, dropouts all arther behind their raduatinpeers than at any point in our history. In enerations past, in an industrial economy, a drop-out miht nd his or her way to stable employment and the promise o a middle-class lie bydint o desire and hard work. Today the prospects or that kind o economic success withouta diploma are ar, ar rimmer.

The mayor, the chancellor, parents, teachers, students, principals and the public at lareall reconize that we are in the midst o sea chane in education in New York. Larelyunprecedented central control, the imposition o various testin reimes, merit pay, schoolradin, small schools and more are all the hallmarks o a new era.

But the results o all this chane are ar rom clear. Critics complain o an elitist, noblesse

oblie approach by City Hall and the Department o Education based in Tweed Court-house; deenders counter with praise or a steady drumbeat o innovation. Some worry thatall this heat and liht amounts to a mere shufin o the deck to drive data in avorable waysand strand the most vulnerable children on the outside lookin in. Still others see merit inthe chancellors aruments that proress in reorientin a system so vast and underperorm-in comes only very slowly and with costsboth material and human.

In this issue oCLIwe look at who drops out and why, and at the strateies o the mayorand chancellor to improve the citys hih schools. We examine the phenomena o pushoutskids who somehow maically disappear rom trackin and accountability mea-suresand also ask i a loomin new diploma standard miht derail the raile statisticalproress the Bloomber administration has made.

With its plans or inrastructure, housin and development, its clear this mayoralty willleave an enormous mark on the physical landscape o New York. But its just as clear thatthe ar-reachin chanes emanatin rom Tweed Courthouse will prove even more conse-

quential to our schools, our children and the citys uture.

Andy Breslau,

Publisher

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CITY FUTURES BOaRD OF DIRECTOR

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WWW.CITYLImITS.O

WHO COUNT& WHOSCOUNTINg?New York Citys

strule to raduatCHAPTERS

I. The choice

II. Vocabulary lesson

III. Worlds o dierence

IV. Small solutions

V. Chartin a new path

VI. Lost in transition

VII. Still losin track

VIII. grade: Incomplete

IN FOCUS

Rate Debate What graduation stats really mean

gED ABCs Questioning a credential

Diploma Dollars The high price of dropping out

Works in Proress The personal touch deters dropouts

Snapshot o Strule A school welcomes the toughest cases

Seatin Reservations Will there be room if dropouts stay?

WINTER 2008 VOL. 31 NO


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wHocounTS & wHoS

counTInG?I. The choiceAnthonys ot a problem. A baby-acedboy in a white hoodie with a pencil-thinjawline trace o a beard, hes hunkereddown on an upholstered bench, poisedhalway between tears and a touh-uymask. Anthonys not yet 18 and a newather, with a son, Anthony, Jr., only two

weeks old. His babys mother, who is 24,is pressin him to leave school to helpsupport her and the baby.

Hes ot to choose, he eels, betweenbein a man and nishin school. Hismother never raduated school; hisirlriend didnt, either. Hes not sureabout his dad, whos not around to say.But Anthony eels dierently; he wants

his diploma. Still, nishin is ar romeasy: At 17, Anthonys well behind onhis hih school credits and, as a stu-dent at the John V. Lindsay WildcatAcademy, a charter hih school indowntown Manhattan, hes eelin thesqueeze o homework and atherhood,torn between his desire to raduateand an equal appetite to please the peo-ple he cares or. He has to o to work,he has to o to school; hes behind inhis classes and has to make up lessonshe doesnt understand; and he has tochane diapers. But riht now, hes sit-tin in the school hallway, mopin.

Anthonys acin a test, today and ev-ery day: Does he have the discipline anddrive to raduate rom hih school? Its

the touhest test hes had to ace, the resultsraduation, gED, or in school entirelywill aect hisand livelihood. Whether Anthony eup employed or jobless, independenincarcerated, sel-sucient or weldependent hans in the balance;sons uture, too, larely hines onthonys daily decision to come to scand learn.

Anthony is ar rom alone: Tenthousands o youn New Yorkers stle to nish hih school. Many simdont. The class o 2006 included 10dropoutsone or every our raduAnother 17,500 students who bean that class remain in hih school; wher and when they will raduate i

BY HElEn ZElon

New York CitYs

struggle to graduate


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mny hih schools are moving away rom traditional

settings like this oneto smaller, less ormal classrooms

designed to better engage todays students. Photo: JM

[Opposite] Bloobers nd Kleins legacies as school

reormers will hinge on the graduation rate. Photo: City Hall


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open question. That arithmetic outlthe challene acin New York Chih schools, one that will take yeaplay outan expensive, expansiveman experiment that will be the ultimmeasure o Mayor Michael Bloombesweepin education reorms.

Four years ater the Bloomberministration wrested control o the cschools and bean imposin onreinventions o schools manaemcurriculum, nancin, structure andcountability, the 2006 raduation represents more than one classs demic achievement. Every year s2002, more students have raduon time citywide. But the class o is the rst set o students to start nish hih school wholly durin

Bloomber administration; they aretest pilots o the new system.And their results were heralded

2006, the citywide our-year ration rate reached nearly 60 percbased on city Department o Educa(DOE) calculations. Celebratory preleases and news articles laudedachievementthe hihest raduarate in the two decades since the really started keepin track. Editoand pundits touted the citys real press. The 60 percent result represe

an 18 point increase in the raduarate since mayoral control bean2002. By any yardstick, a hiher centae o New York City hih scstudents are raduatin now than attime in decades, said Mayor Blober in May 2007, when the rewere released. Our hard work to rstudent achievement is payin o,we are beinnin to turn around ain system. New York Citys ains the system the prestiious 2007 BPrize or Urban Education, sinlinthe citys schools as exemplars o press in improvin student achievemnarrowin race-linked perormaps and increasin raduation rateamid the labyrinthine challenes wa sprawlin, urban school system omillion students and 80,000 teacher

But still: I you bouht a dozen eand ve were cracked, youd prote

RATE dEBATEWhat graduation statsreally meanThe idea to make New York Citys high schoolgraduation rates a 2005 campaign issue cameright out o the Two Americas. It was JamesKvaal, a longtime John Edwards adviser, whosuggested that Fernando Ferrer highlight thelow percentage o students graduating romthe citys high schools. But when the Demo-cratic mayoral nominee hyped his set o num-bers, the Bloomberg administration counteredwith dierent data and voters were let to picktheir reality.

Theres still time to choose which stats youbelieve: Disagreement over what the gradu-ation rate isand isntcontinues today, inNew York and elsewhere.

Take the most recent snapshots o thecitys graduates. The City Hall press releaseor May 21 o 2007 was headlined: Mayor

Bloomberg Announces that High SchoolGraduation Rate Reaches Historic High o60%. A month earlier, the New York StateEducation Department said that, New YorkCity has increased its 4-year graduation rateto 50 percent in 2006.

It was this gap between the state and citystatistics over which Ferrer and Bloombergwrestled. Why the competing numbers? Be-cause o dierences in who the city and stateconsidered graduates. New York City deemeda person who earned a General EducationalDevelopment (GED) credential to be a highschool graduate, but the state did not. The

state considered students in sel-containedspecial education classes to be part o thestudent population against which the gradu-ation rate was computed, but the city didnt.And New York Citys our-year graduation rateincluded students who graduated in August,ater summer school, as well as those whograduated in June. The state has usually onlytracked the June group.

Similar disputes cloud the national conver-sation about graduation rates. The Manhat-tan Institutes Jay Greene and Marcus Win-ters have decried a nationwide graduationcrisis, with only 70 percent o the class o2003 graduating and just over hal o blacks

and Hispanics earning a diploma. ChristopherSwanson, a researcher with the Editorial Proj-ects in Education Research Center in Mary-land, has put the national graduation rate atan even lower 68 percent.

But Lawrence Mishel o the EconomicPolicy Institute in Washington, D.C., says talko a crisis is overblown. His research indicatesthat the overall national graduation rate issomewhere around 82 percent, and whilethere is a distinct racial gap even in Mishelsestimates, his numbers have blacks and His-panics graduating at a rate o 74 percent oreach groupar better than a 50-50 shot.

The National Center or Education Statisticssays about 87 percent o Americans not inschool and aged 18 through 24in otherwords, old enough to have graduated highschoolhave completed their schoolingrather than dropping out.

So depending on which numbers youpick, one in three high school students ailsto graduateor nearly nine in ten manageto complete high school. For those who putstock in the more alarming stats, the un-certainty only heightens the sense o emer-gency. We know theres a crisis and indeed

part o the problem is its been obscured bythe act that states havent been measuringconsistently or by any kind o standard meth-odology, says Bob Wise, the ormer WestVirginia governor who heads the Alliance orExcellent Education, a nonprot that lobbiesor ederal education standards. The Alliancerecently published a report nding that somestates had as many as 50 categories to de-scribe people who leave school, providingmultiple ways or schools to hide dropouts bysimply calling them something else.

Skeptics, on the other hand, ear an overre-action to overwrought statistics. Those mea-

sures which exaggerate the problem, I think,just move people towards hopelessness,says Mishel. I think especially in New York,a single-minded ocus on so-called on-timegraduation rates is counter-productive. Oneshould, as New York City does, oer gradua-tion rates which look at what happens by theourth year, but also the th sixth and sev-enth years. While wed like to see everyone


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you ordered ten tickets to a ballame butonly six were valid, youd expect yourmoney back. But when the commodityis childrenwith their entire utures atstakeits not clear whether a yield o60 percent (or just 50 percent i you ac-cept the states raduation statistic or

city schools) is cause or celebration asa sin o real proress, or or despair asa harsh reminder o the distance yet tobe spanned.

Under Mayor Bloomber, the DOEsreorm eorts have been ar-reachinand near-constant: increasin autonomyor principals, addin more resourcesor classrooms and neotiatin a lon-souht teachers contract, as well ascreatin hundreds o new small schools,imposin closer oversiht o strulin

students and orin new pathways toeventual raduation. But many o theBloomber-era prorams are so new,and the pace o chane has been so rap-id, that real outcomes are hard to deter-mine. On the round, in some parts othe city, the dropout rate is risin, evenas raduation rates stay static or decline.In many communities, more than hal theboys dont raduate rom hih school.And the advent o more riorous radu-ation standards (2008 raduates mustearn hiher Reents exams scores than

their predecessors) means the ains thecity has made are very likely to ade.

Mayoral control o the citys schoolsis slated to sunset in 2009 i not renewedby the state leislature. Whether andhow it survives will likely be a subject orintense public debate in 2008 and in thenext mayoral campain, and the cityshih school raduation rate will play acritical role in that conversation. But theraduation rate represents more than asimple, stark value. It is a complex andnuanced measure, easily misinterpretedand manipulated. Its an oten-mismea-sured product o social orces, econom-ics, demoraphics and, not least, theschools and students themselvestheirsuccesses and ailures, which add up tothe citys own.

graduation rates are a worry well be-yond the ve borouhs. In some majorU.S. cities, one in our students radu-

graduate in our years, I think wed ratherthat they graduate than not.

In the debate over how many graduate,political agendas are no doubt at play: Someo the people claiming a dropout crisis areadvocates or school vouchers, while their

opponents sometimes hail rom pro-labororganizations that arent exactly unriendlyto teachers unions. But the act is, theresroom or legitimate disagreement and conu-sion over what the graduation rate really is,because there are competing sets o limiteddata or researchers to use.

The simplest way to calculate a gradua-tion rate is use school enrollment gures tocompare the number o diplomas issued in aparticular year to the number o ninth gradersthree school years earlier. The problem withthat method is that ninth grade is a big yearor holding students back, so the size o the

ninth grade is infated, which can produce anarticially low graduation rate.

Other studies use the U.S. Census BureausCurrent Population Survey (CPS), a joint proj-ect with the Bureau o Labor Statistics thatasks respondents i theyve completed highschool. The problem is, those answers aresel-reported, and not everyone is willing toown up to being a dropout. Whats more, CPSignores people in prison and the military, andthe census has always done a better job ocounting white people than minorities. Cen-sus data also ails to distinguish betweenthe GED and the traditional diploma; manyresearchers eel the two cant be treated as

equivalents (see GED ABCs, p. 11).For his part, Mishel uses national long

tudinal studies that track students througtheir years o schooling. The problem withose studies, citics say, is attritionnot eeryone who starts in the survey stays in touc

as the years go on. Dropouts are considereprime candidates to all o the surveys radar, meaning longitudinal studies can undecount them.

Hoping to reduce conusion over thscope o the graduation problem, 45 statincluding New York signed a compact 2005 developed by the National GovernoAssociation to regularize how graduatiorates are trackeda move necessitated bthe ederal No Child Let Behind Act (NCLBwhich requires states to make progress otheir graduation rates.

That was a step orward. But the governor

compact wasnt perect: It has no timeline, ssome states are stretching it out, says Wiswho also points out that the compact refeconly the political lie o that governor whsigned it.

This year New York City and New York staagreed to resolve their long-standing dieences over how to calculate the graduatiorate and move toward the uniorm nationrate. The state said it would begin couning August graduates, and the city agreed switch to the states tabulation methodathough City Hall said it would also continue track its traditional measure to allow compasons to past perormance. Jarrett Murphy

whiCh graduatioN rate?

TAkE TwoNew York Stte nd New York

City esure rdution rtes

dierently. Heres coprison o

the two esures since the stte

ben copilin it in 2004.

Source: NYSED, DOE

0

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

2004 2005 2006

s n

Cy n


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ate on time, and leions o hih schoolsnationwide raduate ewer than six inten. Here in New York, 140,000 younadults aed 16 to 21 are at risk o notnishin hih school; about hal, 68,000,have already dropped out. I these at-risk youn adults were an entity untothemselves, they would constitute thesecond-larest hih school district inthe United Statesa place where every

student aces a test like Anthony.

II. Vocabulary lesson

Sixty years ao, a conversation aboutdropout rates would not have been a toppublic policy debate. Education histori-ans and academics aree that Americasschool districts oriinally did not plan oruniversal hih school raduation. It waswidely held that a sement o studentswould be better served by other routes.A century ao, school leavers otenwent rom the eihth-rade classroomto work at a amily business, a arm ora actory, or to take up a skilled-trade ap-prenticeship. The notion that studentsshould stay on to raduation dates tothe great Depression, when teenaeschool leavers were coaxed out o theirjobs to ive unemployed adult men theopportunity to earn even meaer waes.

Beore that, school leavers were not cas-tiated or their choice; it was expectedthat some younsters would work tosupport their amilies, and equally ex-pected that an able, disciplined younperson with decent manners and a oodwork ethic couldwithout a hih schooldiplomastill obtain work that wouldpermit a middle-class lie, with nancialsecurity and a reliable income.

Today, that expectation would be whol-ly invalid: A hih school diploma, i nota post-secondary credential, is requiredor entry-level employment. Complet-in hih school is an absolute necessityor youn people. Many employers willnot take a job application rom someonewithout a hih school diploma, saysgary Oreld o The Civil Rihts Project(oriinally at Harvard, now at UCLA),which helped attract national attentionto the hih-school dropout question be-innin in 2001. The diploma is an im-portant sin in the labor marketa sino reliability and persistence.

The neative stin o dropout devel-oped in the 1950s, when rebellious teensbecame identied in the public mindwith rumblin ans, cruisin hood-lums and other social ills. Over time, asautomation beat early computerizationand an economy that valued knowlede

and service over production, skmanual labor was increasinly musout o the middle-class marketpThe neative connotation that quischool was a personal ailure, refeca lack o spine and a tendency towdissolute behavior, emered durin

era and persists today.Over and above the stima, d

pin out has proound economic social impact: I everyone in the Ued States on public assistance witha hih school diploma instead had the potential annual savins in welspendin, includin ood stamps public housin supports, would rarom $7.9 to $10.8 billion a year, accin to Jane Waldoel and colleaat Columbia University. Princeton

versity economist Cecilia Elena Rohas shown that just a sinle years ulation o dropouts earns $192 biless over a lietime o work, or ab1.6 percent o the nations gDP, they would i they had raduate1 percent more boys raduated hih school in a iven year, crimcidents miht drop by 100,000 nawide or a savins o $1.4 billion,economists Lance Lochner and EnMoretti, o the University o WesOntario and University o Caliorn

Berkeley, respectively.Beyond the dollars and cents an

terrible loss o talent and destructiolives, Oreld says that a enerathuman rihts are at stake: With hablack and Hispanic youn men laca hih-school diploma or the skillmatch it, he arues, these commties ace mortal risks, and will see tdreams shrivel.

Thinkin o the nations or the craduation rate as a sinle, round nber is a temptin oversimplicationan easy sound bite to swallow onevenin news and ts neatly into a prelease, but unpackin the citys neapercent raduation rate reveals that percent o white students raduatetime, as do 74.5 percent o Asian hschoolers. For black and Hispanicdents, just over hal, or 54.6 percent50.8 percent, respectively, nish

Freddie Perez (let) nd Jonthon DeLTorre at South Brooklyn Community High School,which oers an alternative to traditional high school settings. Photo: JM


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school in our years. While studentscan stay in New York City schools untilthe end o the academic year in whichthey turn 21, students who dont radu-ate hih school on time are much morelikely to drop out altoether.

But trackin the ate o those stu-

dents is one o the complications withinthe citys raduation rate. Because somany kids take extra time to nishand because so many leave schoolstatisticians describe city hih-school-ers in cohorts, not raduatin classes.The 2002 cohort, which included morethan 85,000 students, should haveraduated in 2006. Accordin to cityDOE statistics, nearly 41,000 actuallydid. More than 10,000 dropped out. An-other 17,500 students were dischared

rom the citys attendance rolls, ostensi-bly to other school systems or alterna-tive educational prorams. For years,advocates have asserted that many othese dischared students are actuallydropouts, students pushed o schoolreisters or lon-term absences, ht-in and poor perormance. At the veryleast, the DOEs statistics show thatone in ve students in the class o 2006didnt ormally drop out, raduate orstay enrolled. They just went away.

Even raduation means dierent

thins to dierent people. By the DOEsmeasure, the 2006 raduates includedstudents who raduated in June, thosewho raduated in Auust, gED com-pleters and a small subroup o diploma-earnin students with special needs. Butby New York State Education Depart-ment measures, only June raduates arecounted, with later rads rolled into thenext years data. Those earnin gEDsare not counted as hih school radu-ates by the state, refectin a widely heldperception that the gED exam is notequivalent to a hih school diploma (seeGED ABCs, p.11).

For some 17,000 students in the classo 2006, the story isnt complete. Theyremain enrolled or a th, sixth or sev-enth year o hih school, to accrue es-sential credits, ll an incomplete ymcredit (the bane o thousands o almost-rads) or repeat a ailed Reents-level

class in hopes o passin the exam onthe second or third try.

N ew York has only been trackinactual dropout statistics since1986; beore then, the city relied onextrapolated projections. graduation

rates have lon been releated to a dark,dusty corner o the education statisticsenterprise, says researcher Christo-pher Swanson, director o the EditorialProjects in Education Research Centerand lead author o Diplomas Count, Ed-ucation Week maazines annual radu-ation project. Elements o the ederalNo Child Let Behind Act are linked tohih-school raduation, yet there isno widely accepted, scientically vali-dated method or calculatin radua-

tion rates, says Swanson. The nationsovernors areed in 2005 to adopt a uni-versal method to measure and compareraduation statistics, but its implementa-tion remains contentious.

No matter how the numbers conured, or whos crunchin ththe same inequities persist: raduaaps amon the races, between sexes and between richer and postudents. Children in afuent comnities are better than their less-wea

peers; state data show that low-ndistricts, with ample school spenand low poverty, raduate 91 percetheir students on time, compared 50 percent o students in hih-ndistricts with lower per pupil spenand hiher poverty. Johns Hopkinsearcher Robert Balanz observes nationwide, black and Hispanic dents are three times more likely white students to attend a hih scwhere raduation is not the norm,

where ewer than 60 percent o nraders raduate in our years. In York City, the schools with the lowraduation rates predominantly spoor students o color.

clASS PIcTuREThe cteories o rdute nd dropout oversipliy wht hppens to New Y

City hih school clss between its frst dy o reshn yer nd (or soe) the cp

nd-own procession. Heres how two recent clssesthe clss o 2006 ter the tr

tionl our yers nd the clss o 2003 ter their lel xiu seven yersre

a. 15% Graduated: Local DiplomaB. 11% Graduated: Advanced RegentsC. 19% Graduated: Regents

d. 2% Earned GEDe. 21% Still enrolledF. 12% Dropped outg. 20% Discharged

a. 35% Graduated: Local DiplomaB. 12% Graduated: Regents DiplomaC. 3% Graduated: Regents w/Honors

d. 4% Earned GEDe. 22% DischargedF. 24% Dropped out

B.

a.

d.

e.

F.

a.

B.

C.

d.

e.

F.

g.

2006 2003

C.

Source


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10 WINTER 2008

Swanson and his research roup de-veloped a technique comparin enroll-ment to on-time raduation thats widelyendorsed by education advocates andthink-tankers o varied political stripes,includin the conservative ManhattanInstitute and the more liberal Urban In-

stitute. Swansons measure tracks annu-al instead o cohort enrollment and ex-cludes some subroups the city counts,like gED completers. His analysis showsthat New York City is raduatin only45.2 percent o its students on time, withblack and Hispanic students lain 10percent or more behind their white andAsian peers. girls, no matter their race,lead their brothers in academic achieve-ment by 10 percent or better. The racialsplit emeres well beore hih school

on standardized tests that show the

citys black and Hispanic eihth rad-ers scorin well below white and Asian

students. DOE has made a commitmentto narrowin these aps and has madesome proress, evidenced by improvedelementary-school test scores, but mid-dle-school scoreslon the BermudaTrianle o standardized testinareprovin touh to bude.

The color o students isnt the onlythin that aects raduation rates; sodoes the color o schools. In an idealworld, all schools would enroll similarlydiverse student bodies and all wouldreceive comparable undin and en-joy comortable resources. In the realworld, some schools are better o thanothers and oten, the better schools re-cruit better studentsand tend to bein more afuent parts o New York City.

I you look at white attitudes, mostpeople will say that blacks and Hispan-ics et the same educational opportu-nity as white kids, says Oreld. But

i they went into two hih schools, one90 percent white, one 90 percent black,they would see dierent planets. Theinequality is out there and it kicks youin the ace. While no New York Citypublic hih school is 90 percent white,New York has plenty o schools where

90 percent or more o the students areo color.

Across the city, the best outcomes,in terms o raduation rate and stu-dent achievement, are in the mostinterated hih schoolsthose thatenroll students rom a broad swath oneihborhoods and ethnicities. Theseare oten selective-admission schools,which draw students rom a wide poolo applicants. Some selective-admis-sions schools, like the prestiious spe-

cialized hih schools, accept students

who score above specic thresholds ona special test. Others look at a students

rade-point averae and standardizedtest scores; still others review studentportolios, conduct interviews and/orauditions and scrutinize writin sam-ples. The contrasts between these di-verse, top-fiht institutions and other,ethnically imbalanced city hih schoolsare stark. Science labs in predomi-nantly black and Hispanic hih schoolsin the Bronx and Brooklyn compriserollin carts stocked with cardboardspectrometers and clatterin beakers,while the lassed-in suite o labs at ra-cially diverse Townsend Harris HihSchool in Queens sits atop the schoolbuildin, chockablock with hih-techtools or DNA analysis and electronmicroscopy. One racially-mixed, selec-tive Brooklyn hih school has threeworkin theaters; a predominantlyHispanic school elsewhere in Brook-lyn is housed in a converted church

space and uses a narrow ormer ch(complete with sacral onts and arcnave) or its ym.

At the time oBrown v. Board ofucation, one in our black Ameriraduated rom hih school. In thecades since Brown, that rate more

doubleduntil the late 1980s, Orsays, when education policy chanrom a civil rihts and antipoverty otation to testin-based policies.

Basically, weve had a one-note edtional policy since the Reaan era: Ten standards to produce ains, Oreld. But acceptance o hih-sttestin as a central remedy leads to a o ideoloical lockdown, he says, punishes low-perormin, larely seated urban schools by orcin the

ocus scarce resources on improvinscores. Its just like a reliion, sayseld. The business leaders have bointo it; so have the overnors. But thelittle evidence that increasin test scincreases economic ains and stevidence that droppin out has a stneative eect, on both the commuand the individual student. The Badministrations education protocolChild Let Behind (NCLB), remaiprooundly controversial mandate. SNCLBs adoption, theres been a fa

in out and in some cases, a reversathe raduation rate, in hihly sereed hih schools.

NCLB dictates that schools documAYP, or annual yearly proress, inscores and hih school raduation rThe New York State Education Dement denes proress as a 1 perannual increase in the raduation so twenty years may pass beoreraduation rate moves rom 50 perto 70 percent, and that would still quas proress. (In other states, anyward tick, however miniscule, qualiWhat this means, in practice, is edemandated low expectations: New YStates tareted hih school raduarate or 2013, the year NCLB setits outside marker, is 55 percent. York States 2006 raduation rate 55 percent. So despite the denitioproress as 1 percent rowth, the

THE BuSH AdmInISTRATIonSEducATIon PRoTocol, no cHIldlEfT BEHInd, REmAInS A PRofoundlYconTRovERSIAl mAndATE.


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WINTER 2008

no dayliht between the status quo andthe tareted 2013 hih school radua-tion rateitsel an implicit acceptancethat slihtly less than hal o studentswill drop out statewide.

I the state isnt exactly aimin hihon uture raduation rates, at least

its reached an areement with NewYork City on what raduation actuallymeansand how to count raduates.The cohort that bean hih school inSeptember 2004with on-time radu-ation projected or June 2008will bethe rst one tracked under the retooled,reconciled system. Both the state andcity will count as raduates studentswho meet the requirements or a hih-school diploma in June and in Auust.gED completers (who do not earn diplo-

mas) will be counted by the city but notdescribed as rads; instead, theyll beassined to a kind o orphan cateory,distinct rom dropouts, dischares andconventional raduates.

What seems like a mere account-in shufe will, in act, aect the citysraduation rate, and likely or the worse:gED completers usually contributeabout 4 percent or 5 percent to the citysoverall raduation rate, so the 2008raduation statistic can be expected todecreasebut not only because o the

chane in how the city counts the gED.

I n New York City hih schools, alldiplomas are not equal. Fity yearsao, the city oered three types odiplomas to its raduates: academic,commercial and eneral, with the un-derstandin that academic diploma-holders would be the likely sement tocontinue on to collee. Today, the citystill oers three levels o diplomas: abasic local diploma and both reularReents and Advanced Reents diplo-mas. But those oerins, and whatthey require, are chanin.

An Advanced Reents diploma re-quires scores o 65 or better on eihtReents Exams. Until now, the reularReents diploma required scores o 55or better on ve exams. Startin thisschool year, the passin score will beraised to 65a hiher hurdle or the

GEd ABcs

Questioninga credentialGED doesnt stand or General EquivalencyDiploma or Graduate Education Degree ormany o the other things or which the acro-nym is oten believed to stand. Launched inthe 1940s or returning servicemen who wentto World War II beore completing high school,GED stands or General Educational Develop-ment and reers to a battery o ve subjecttestswriting, reading, mathematics, scienceand social studiesthat a candidate takes ora total o seven-and-a-hal hours spread over

two days. In 2005, nearly 600,000 Americanstook the test, and each year the United Statesproduces about one GED earner or every sixhigh school grads. Exactly where the GED tsinto the national discussion about the gradua-tion rate is up or debate.

In New York Citys high school class o2006, some 2 percent o students received nota diploma but a GED. The city considered themgraduates. The state did not. But, in describ-ing the GED programs it administers, even thestate reers to the credential as a high schoolequivalency diploma. Does it really mean thesame thing?

No, it doesnt, says Peter Kleinbard, di-rector o the Youth Development Institute atthe Fund or the City o New York. A highschool degree represents our years o workand presumably accumulated learning. A GEDmight represent a comparable skill level, butit also represents less o a sustained involve-ment in schools.

Each o the GEDs ve subject tests gener-

ates a score up to 800. The questions includthings like: Last month, the balance in Tishacheckbook was $1,219.17. Since then she ha

deposited her latest paycheck o $2,425.6and written checks or $850.00 (rent), $235.8(car payment) and $418.37 (credit card pament). What is her current balance?

To earn the GED, a candidate has to paeach subject test by scoring 410 or higher anachieve a combined score o at least 2,250. Icandidate ails the GED, he can repeat the teup to three times a year, even re-taking just thportion o the test where he perormed poorI have 10-plus years doing this and I can teyou a handul o young adults who have comand gone and passed the test in one timesays Evelyn Fernandez-Ketcham o the Ne

Heights Neighborhood Center in WashingtoHeights, which runs a GED program.

The American Council on Education (ACEwhich administers the GED, says the test wamade more rigorous in 2002 ater test desigers consulted teachers to learn what traditionhigh school curricula are covering these dayThe council points to research showing thGED test passers perorm as well as or betton the test than high school diploma holers. Do I think its equivalent to a diplomaI would say its not meant to be an indicatiothat a student has completed the traditionyears o high school, says Dr. Carol Ezzel

the director o psychometrics and research othe ACEs GED Testing Service. However, thtest does measure whats taught on the higschool level, and we set the standard so thonly 60 percent o graduating high school sniors would pass the GED test battery on therst attempt.

Critics o the GED say they ault not the teitsel, but what students do beore they take

The gEDs makers deend the exams rigor, saying that 40 percent o students who get

regular diplomas would ail the GED test the frst time they take it.Photo: JM


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1 WINTER 2008


citys students.But even as the Reents diploma becomes harder to ob

the chance or students to et a non-Reents diploma is ishin. The local diploma will be phased out with the 200hort (i.e., the students who should raduate in 2008).

Taken toether, those loomin chanes could have a matic eect on the number o New York City students

raduate hih school. O those who raduated in 2006, aa third earned the less-demandin local diploma. I thesedents had to meet the more riorous standards that will uture classes, the citys raduation rate would not have bnearly 60 percent; it could have been as low as 40 percent.impact on some roups could be even more strikin: DOEtistics show that while 82.1 percent o Asian and 76.7 pero white raduates earned Reents diplomas, only 52.8 cent o Hispanic and 52.5 percent o black raduates earthe same credential. In the comin year, the citys eoimpose more riorous academic standards miht confict its push to improve raduation rates, stoppin and poss

reversin the systems vaunted, recent proress.The schools leader is willin to take that risk. In the the local diploma isnt doin anybody any ood, ChancJoel Klein tells City Limits. He acknowledes that not everywill meet the more riorous Reents criteriayet. Schoolshave to work doubly hard to et those Reents diplomasacknowledes. But Klein sees hope in the hih school clao the comin years. Theres a dierent population mothrouh the system, Klein explains, citin stron ainourth-rade test scores.

Some students still wont make it. Students not on tracka traditional diploma, I dont say oret about you, says KA student with ve 55swho would have earned a Re

diploma under the old standards but would all short unthe new onesthat student should et a gED.

III. Worlds o dierenceWhatever the state and city report in comin years, applany sinle raduation rate to the entire city hih schooltem will mask dramatic dierences within.

Draw a line throuh lower Manhattan rom Anthoschool, John V. Lindsay Wildcat Academy on Battery PlacStuyvesant Hih School, not even a mile to the north. Withose two points reside both extremes o the citys schrom Stuyvesant where nearly everyone oes on to a oodlee, to Wildcat, where raduates are oten the rst in tamily to complete hih school (at ae 19, 20, or even 21spite havin ailed at a previous hih school. Populatinlandscape between these extremes are students born hand others rom overseas; able, well-versed students as as over-ae, under-credited teens who nd themselves inparkin lot o hih school, their proress undone by Reexams and other raduation requirements. Some lack asupport or ace pressures to quit rom parents and sibl

Regardless o how smart theyare, high school diploma hold-

ers demonstrate that they showed up or school most days, attendedclasses, put up with long lectures and navigated the myriad rustra-tions o our years in high schoolpractical lie skills that employ-ers respect. The GED, on the other hand, doesnt involve the same

rigorous conditions as earning a high school diploma, says MarcusWinters, a Manhattan Institute researcher. Thats why we see thatlie outcomes o GED recipients are not the same.

A 1998 U.S. Department o Education survey ound that GED hold-ers on average earn more than dropouts, but less than diploma recipi-ents. The truth is, a lot depends on the underlying talents o the stu-dent: While some o those who leave high school are barely literate,others are high-perorming students who dropped out not becausethey were ailing but because they needed to work, became pregnantor simply got ed up with school. Brown University Proessor JohnTyler has ound that the GED coners the most benet on low-per-orming students who leave school. High-perorming dropouts get byon their underlying talents, and do about the same whether they havethe GED or not.

The most important contribution o the GED, most analysts agree,is that it can clear a path or vocational training or college. Its a lessreliable entry-point to the military. The U.S. armed orces began inthe 1980s to limit the number o GED-holding recruits theyll acceptbecause those recruits were much more likely to drop out o trainingthan diploma recipients.

Its widely acknowledged that the existence o the GED probablyencourages some high school students to drop out because it pres-ents an alternative to staying in school. People who work with GEDprograms say that students oten come in with unrealistic expecta-tions o how easy it will be to obtain the credential. Most youngpeople cant just pop in and pop out, says Kleinbard. Most o thekids who drop out o high school have pretty low skills. For those kids,its going to take a couple years to get a GED.

In New York City, dozens o entities run independent GED prepclasses. Separately, some 12,000 students are enrolled in GED pro-grams administered by the citys Department o Education, locatedboth in alternative high schools and at dozens o community-basedorganizations. This year, the DOE restructured its GED programs be-cause only about 15 percent o students were passing the exams.Four separate GED tracks were combined into one called GED Plusand borough centers were set up to direct students to the instruc-tion that ts their skill level. Some 10 programs were shut downbecause their students passing rates were substantially worsethan the average.

Students who enter city-run GED programs are rst tested to seewhat kind o instruction they need. Those with reading levels o ninth

grade or above go right into GED classes. Those who read betweenthe sixth and ninth-grade level are sent to pre-GED instruction, whilestudents with poorer skills get literacy training.

The goal or every student should be a diploma, says Fernandez-Ketcham, but the reality is that some o the students she sees haveso ew credits that no high school can take them. The GED might betheir only shot. Other GED deenders agree. The city should investmore in GED testing and support systems or students, Kleinbard says,because there will always be a subset who needs the GED. JM

Continued from page 11


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WINTER 2008


who themselves dropped out or rom the riends they see onthe street. Amon those who do leave, a minority nd alterna-tive hih school paths within the city school system; otherssay they were counseled out o school entirely, pushed out byadministrators who said they had to leave.

Its axiomatic that ood schools raduate more students andthat bad schools, like those the city has shuttered in recent

years, raduate ar ewer. Schools that are more desired by stu-dentsthose that admit students by academic application orby exam, those that require auditions or portolios and thosethat encourae reater parent and community involvement,or examplehave ar lower dropout rates than mainstream,comprehensive schools. As a rule, the larer the school andthe less ocused its academic mission, the hiher the ractiono students who all behind. But the problems that preventsome students rom earnin their diplomas oten bein wellbeore reshman year.

Most teenaers who drop out o hih school have beenstrulin or some time. In the DOEs nomenclature, they

are over-ae and under-creditedolder than their peers,with ewer credits on their transcripts (over/unders orshort). Bein an over/under is ar rom rare in New YorkCitys schools: The DOE says that nearly hal o all incominninth raders will become over-ae and under-credited sometime durin their hih school careers. Students are expectedto earn 44 credits over our or more years o hih school; stu-dents who earn at least eiht credits a year are considered bythe DOE as on track or raduation, and on-time rads earn11 credits a year. Race and ender aps persist: 11 percentmore boys than irls are over/unders, accordin to the DOE,and amon black and Hispanic students, over/under rates are14 percent above citywide averaes.

For many students, hih school is a shock: For the rsttime, they have to naviate a school environment that maybe three or our times larer than their middle or elementa-ry school. They are no loner moved alon the educationalpipeline with their peers; proress depends on accumulatincredits and passin state exams. Students who arrive in hihschool over-ae because they have been held back in middleor elementary school ace a more dauntin task: More thantwo-thirds eventually drop out. Those who founder while try-in to accumulate ninth and 10th rade credits make up morethan 90 percent o the dropout pool, accordin to researcherSwanson and others.

Other obstacles are social. Historically, Americans lookto schools to address social problems, oten mandatin thatschools stand in loco parentis, llin in or absent or weakamily structures. The dropout crisis in New York challenesschools here to also stand in loco communitasllin sys-temic aps in social and emotional support that, unlled,undermine many students daily lives. Students may lackstron amily supports. They may have outside responsibili-tiespickin up youner siblins, a part-time job, older rela-tives who need carethat preclude ater-school and Saturday

dRoPouT AllEYThe drk spots below represent census trcts where, ccord

to the 2000 U.S. Census, less thn hl o the dult residents

hih school diplos. This swth in the Bronx nd northern

mnhttn is the citys ost sinifcnt concentrtion o suc

trcts. Other dropout hot spots re ound in Coron, Jic

Queensbride in Queens; Brownsville, Bushwick nd Sunse

Prk in Brooklyn; Chintown nd the Lower Est Side in m

httn; nd West Brihton on Stten Islnd.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau,

MaNhattaN

BroNx


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1 WINTER 2008

dIPlomA dollARSThe high price ofdropping out

From 1975 to 2005 the average American drop-out earned a cumulative, infation-adjusted$242,000 less than the average high school di-ploma holder. But calculating the value o grad-uation involves thinking about more than justmoney, more than how individual graduatesare and more than simple cause and eect.

Only hal o dropouts have jobs, compared tomore than two-thirds o people whose educa-tion ended with a high school diploma. Withthe average dropout earning around $19,900a year, he or she skirts pretty close to the ed-eral poverty line ($20,650 or a amily o ourin 2007). Research by the Federal Reserve Bank

o Cleveland has determined that high schooldropouts are 10 times more likely to becomepoor in a given year than high school gradu-ates. Recent research by Columbia UniversitysSchool o Social Work ound that even amongsingle mothers, those with diplomas are lesslikely than dropouts to receive TANF benets (17percent o grads versus 27 percent o dropouts)or ood stamps (31 percent versus 38 percent).

High school graduates have been estimatedto live nine years longer than dropouts, per-haps because they make better decisions (anadditional year o school appears to reducecigarette smoking and increase time spent ex-ercising), earn more money and work healthierjobs. Graduates are also more likely to havehealthy children and to raise kids who nishhigh school and dont become teenage parents.A high school graduate might even help theirspouse earn more: Some studies have oundthat better-educated spouses increase theirmates earnings, perhaps by providing moresound career advice.

Americas swelling prison and jail populationis dominated by dropouts75 percent o thoselocked up lack a diploma. Black men are a lotmore likely than white men to end up incarcer-

ated; research indicates thats due in part to theeducational disparities between the races. Re-searchers Becky Pettit o the University o Wash-ington and Bruce Western o Princeton Universi-ty have estimated that in 1999 the risk o dyingor going to prison by age 34 in 1999 was 22percent or a black male high school graduateand 62 percent or a black male dropout. (Bothnumbers are ar lower or white men).

These outcomes hurt not only the dropout,but also society at large; crime harms the victim,the incarcerated perpetrator and the taxpay-ers who pay or prisons. Taxpayers also pick upthe tab or dropouts welare and public healthcare costs. Since they are more likely to be un-

employed or at least earn less than graduates,high school dropouts pay less in taxes and donot contribute as much to public insurance pro-grams like Social Security. Their lower earningsmean dropouts consume less and contributeless to the economy. Dropouts are less likely tovote or give to charities.

Dr. Clive Beleld, an economist at QueensCollege, has estimated that a Hispanic maleNew Yorker who gets a diploma rather thandropping out earns $250,000 more over hislietime, pays $68,700 more in taxes and costsederal and state governments $83,300 less inincarceration, health care and welare costs.

The numbers are stunning, but its neces-sary to recognize that researchers cant withabsolute certainty attribute all these outcomessimply to the act o dropping out. Poverty, orexample, could be as much the cause o drop-ping out as the eectand poverty is also anobvious actor in whether a person is jailed,goes on welare or suers rom ill health. Simi-larly, successul teenage criminals might have

less incentive to nish school; or them, a lio crime could be the cause, not the eect, leaving school.

Its also important to note that the diverging ortunes between high school dropouts angraduates are part o a wider economic tren

in which the gaps in economic returns amonall levels o education are spreading. Yes, high school graduates edge over a dropohas increased in the past 30 years. At the samtime, the average high school graduate has loground to a person with a college degree, anpeople with college degrees are alling urthbehind olks with advanced degrees.

There are competing explanations or whthis has happened. One is that globalizatioand technology have made low-skilled jobeasier to replace, reducing the wages o thless-educated people who work them. An altenative view is that corporations have grante

their executives and managers (who tend have more education) an increasingly largslice o the wage pie, leaving less or worers. Whatever the explanation, the diverginincome gap both strengthens and complicatthe sales pitch to get kids to stay in school: Themust graduate in order to avoid alling eveurther behind, but unless they go to collegthey cannot expect to keep up. JM

A GRowInG GAPIn 1975, n aericn with hih school

diplo de wht in todys ters would be$6,000 ore yer thn person without one.

By 2005, the p ws lost $10,000. Heres

how vere nnul incoe hs chned:

$20k

$40k

$60k

$80k

$100k

'75 '80 '85 '90 '95 '00 '05

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, (2005 dollar

Advanced

Bachelors

Diploma

No Diploma


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WINTER 2008

tutorin, the kinds o prorams thatbrin strulin students up to radelevel. Some students are parents them-selves; accordin to the DOE, 7,000irls will ive birth in a iven academicyear. (Other city statistics suest thou-sands more school-ae irls ive birth,

makin the DOEs estimate a conserva-tive one). Many live unstable domesticlives in which they deal with parentssubstance abuse, money troubles, lealworries, immiration ears and housinproblems. Nearly every hih school inthe city, rom the larest traditional com-prehensive hih schools to the scoreso small schools that have opened since2002, enrolls children who live in home-less shelters or in oster care and rouphomes.

Some travel arther than others tostudy here: Immirant students romover 170 countries enter New York Cityschools. They may live with one parent,or with unamiliar, extended amily, trad-in the stability and structure o homeor opportunity in the United States.Others have survived civil war and vio-lent confict, like the teenaers in the Li-berian enclaves o Staten Island and theSerb and Croat communities o Brook-lyn. About hal o immirant studentsarrive just in time or, or durin, hih

school. O that roup, hal raduate andhal drop out or are dischared. (DOEstatistics show that students who immi-rate durin middle school are aboutas well as the averae city student, withnearly 60 percent raduatin in ouryears.)

For some students with amiliesoverseas, just showin up is a chal-lene. They travel abroad, sometimesor weeks or months at a time, missincoursework and eventually ailin theirclasses. Droppin out starts to look likethe only option or a boy o 18 who hasntyet accumulated reshman credits. Andsome principals say that cultural orcesinfuence access to education: Someboys resist emale authority at the heado the school or a classroom and endup in lon-term suspension. Familieswhose dauhters are destined or ar-raned marriaes, or those whose cul-

tures discourae secondary educationor women, pull their dauhters out oschool as soon as its leal, at ae 17.

A more pedestrian but still very realobstacle or native and orein-born stu-dents alike is discouraement. Studentswho have been let behind even once

lack more than academic skills; theyoten lack the condence to persist andcomplete the coursework they ailed. Ikids do not come into hih school pre-pared to do well, with a solid academicoundationi theyve been wallowinaway in elementary and middle schooland theyre over-ae or radetheyrereally behind the eiht-ball, says RobertTobias, a proessor o education at NewYork University and a 33-year veteran ocity schools who once ran the systems

Department o Assessment and Account-ability. How much can a weak back-round be overcome by hih school?

That students enter hih school un-derprepared is undeniable. Overall,more than hal o the citys eihth-rad-ers tested below rade level on 2006state exams. That was an improvementover earlier years.

Student scores span Levels 1 thouh4, with Levels 3 and 4 dened as meet-in or exceedin rade standards. In2007, one in ve eihth-raders scored

at Level 1 on the Math test. Thou-sands scored similarly on the EnlishLanuae Arts exam. Principals saythat many o these students are be-in promoted into hih school, settinthe stae or almost certain academicailure. But how does the continuedpromotion o truly strulin, Level 1students square with the departmentsstandin ban on social promotion?

It doesnt surprise me, says Chan-cellor Klein. Its possible, he says, thatthe kids slipped throuh the cracks asthe ban on social promotion was imple-mented rade by rade. Five yearsrom now, you wont see sinicantnumbers o Level 1s enterin hihschool, says Klein.

The low-perormin 14- and 15-year-olds who already have been promoted tohih school, o course, cant o back intime. Its easy to blame schools or put-

tin them there. But the pros and co promotion are complex: Studwho dont master their coursewshouldnt, by rihts, advance to the rade, but those who are let behindtheir condence erodin with evermester. Under-credited students, e

cially those who enter hih schoolater bein held back in elementarmiddle school, have the hihest drorates. Cauht between a moral rockan analytical hard place, school admtrators oten opt to move students athe educational pipeline.

The stima o retention contininto hih school. Its socially dito be 16 years old and in a roomureshmen, repeatin a class like LiEnvironment or the third time.

many hih schools have students are 19 or 20, still strulin to comptheir coursework and pass the ReeOther students deride them as SSeniors; they are ostracized rom mschools mainstream, ar rom the hschool social radar. New York City ally bound to educate students untiend o the academic year in which turn 21, but the complex social dicand the academic challene o beinyears old in hih school means thatoo many over/unders ive up on t

studies and drop out.

IV. Small solutionsMayor Bloomber is nothin i nman with a plan, and a world-classtrepreneurs knack or puttin his pinto action. When he won controthe Board o Education in 2002, hivampin o the city schools bean a renaminthe Board became thepartment, sinalin its place in thehierarchyand a relocation o the scsystem headquarters, rom its lonbastion on Livinston Street in Brooto the Tweed Courthouse that sits bto-back with City Hall, physically pmate to the mayor and his sta.

Bloomber and Kleins ChilFirst initiative launched the duos to remake the city schools in 2003. Sthen, Children First has been the ra


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woRkS In

PRoGRESSThe personal touchdeters dropoutsThis article and Snapshot on Struggle on p. 20 wereproduced in partnership with the Center for New YorkCity Affairs at The New School, which has launched aproject focused on improving city schools relentlesslyhigh dropout rate and creating new opportunities forstudents to stay in school and succeed. For more infor-mation, email [email protected].

I kids at South Brooklyn Community HighSchool or Leadership are more than 30 minuteslate in the morning, a counselor telephones their

parents to nd out why. I they miss a couple odays o school, the counselor visits their hometo see whats wrong. When the kids leave thebuilding or lunch, the grown-ups wait outsideor them to return, cajoling them back into thebuilding as soon as the bell rings.

Come on kids, lets make this happen!a counselor shouted cheerully, clapping hishands ater lunch one day. Come on Leo!Frank, come on man!

South Brooklyn Community High School,which serves 150 students at a time, is one othe citys most successul programs designed toencourage chronic truants to return to schooland get their diplomas. As many as 69 percento South Brooklyn students ultimately get theirdiplomas, compared to 19 percent o kids withsimilar backgroundsover-age or their grade,with ew academic creditsenrolled in tradi-tional high schools.

The school, located in Red Hook, is a part-nership between the Department o Education(DOE) and Good Shepherd Services, a citywidesocial service agency. That means the teachers,who are paid by the DOE, and the advocatecounselors, employed by Good Shepherd,work together to see that kids get the attention

they need.Students, who are aged 16 to 21, must re-quest admission to South Brooklyn, and a par-ent or other caring adult must accompanythem to the interview. Students must read atleast at a sixth-grade level to be admitted,and they must have accumulated enough highschool credits at their old school to show theyhave a good chance o graduating within two

years. Students who need classes in English asa Second Language arent eligible, and, while10 percent o students receive special educa-tion services, those supports are limited.

These requirements help ensure SouthBrooklyns success, but they also mean that the

school doesnt serve the citys most vulnerableand alienated studentsthose in need o seri-ous remedial help, those with signicant spe-cial education needs and those who dont havethe support o an adult in their lives.

Still, the kids at South Brooklyn ace plentyo obstacles and its a good bet that the vastmajority would never graduate without aschool like this. Some students, victims oabuse and neglect, are living in oster care.Teen parents struggle to care or babies andnish school. Some students live with parentswho are drug addicts. One student has beendepressed since his mother died in the attack

on the World Trade Center.The schools support system revolves around

the advocate counselors, who are assignedto each student when they enroll, greet themeach morning when they arrive and ollowtheir progress until they graduate. One morn-ing, the schools six advocate counselors burstinto applause when 17-year-old Gary arrived aew minutes ater 9 a.m., his blond hair pulledback rom his ace. He was almost on time, thecounselors said, and even more important, heallowed people to see his ace, previously hid-den by long hair in his eyes.

Too oten, students are trying to hide romadults, said one o the counselors, John Foley-Murphy. By showing your real ace, you aretrying on a new identity, [with] a sense o be-longing not to the losers or the dropouts, but toa community o achievers.

Beautiul physical surroundings make bothteachers and students eel valued. Classes aresmall, with 20 to 22 students instead o the 34that is standard or New York City high schools.Some teachers have our classes instead o theve that is typical in traditional schools.

The smaller numbers mean teachershave a ghting chance to grade papers in

a timely ashion. The teachers get to knowtheir students well. And having the advocatecounselors on sta means teachers can con-centrate on academics and reer social prob-lems to someone else, knowing they will bedealt with promptly. At South Brooklyn, eachcounselor has 25 students; at a typical highschool, each guidance counselor serves hun-dreds o students.

The kids at South Brooklyn say the teacers at their old schools didnt even know thenames. They could skip class and no one nticed. One girl said she used to swipe her Icard to record her attendance at her large trditional high school, then slip out a side doo

She skipped school or 10 months, she saibeore anyone noticed. At South Brooklyn, shsaid, the teachers are on your case. You canget away with anything. They care. They notic

For students who are behind in their stuies, graduation seems a daunting task. SouBrooklyn makes the task seem manageable boering students the opportunity to earn creits aster than they would in a typical school transer program. Instead o two semesters, thschool oers three 12-week terms, plus a summer session. That means students who ocuintently can accumulate 20 credits a year, neardouble the usual number. And, since some

them are nearing their 21st birthdaysthe daon which they are no longer eligible or pubschoolingaccumulating credits ast can meathe dierence between success and ailure.

Is anything lost in the rush? Kids at SouBrooklyn receive a bare-bones education, winone o the electives or extra-curricular activties that can make high school un.

Nonetheless, teachers manage to inustheir lessons with an excitement and energthat goes beyond the Regents test-prep scommon in public schools. A history teachencouraged students to research why varous groups might have opposed womensurageand showered with praise one stdent who suggested that the liquor industeared women would vote or Prohibition. AEnglish teacher engaged kids in a discussiocomparing The Great Gatsbythe kind novel they might encounter on the Regenexamwith Bodega Dreamsa more accesible book modeled on The Great Gatsby, bset in East Harlem.

The DOE spends $15,811 per pupil, per yeat South Brooklyn, substantially more thathe citywide average o $11,607, according tDOEs 2005-2006 school report card. In add

tion, Good Shepherd provides another $6,00per pupil, per yearmoney that comes roprivate und-raising as well as rom a DOgrant to help prepare students or the wororce. The extra expense seems well worth said English teacher Sydney King, adding: every high school had this amount o suppo[or teachers and students], we wouldnt neeto exist. Clara Hemphill


1 WINTER 2008


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Wlton Hih School in the Bronx now hosts six small schools. Its 2,800 students are morethan the school is supposed to hold. Photo: JM


WINTER 2008

work or the citys onoin waves ochane in departmental oranization,streamlined manaement, nancial ac-countability and budetin. Bloomberand Klein cultivated leadership in theirPrincipals Academy and roomed newteachers in the Teachin Fellows Pro-

ram; they neotiated a lon-overduecontract areement with the teachersunion that beins to reward classroomproessionals and theyve proposedcash-based merit awards o manystripes: Principals are to be rewardedor school improvement; teachers areto be collectively rewarded (in a pooledund at successul schools) or studentproress; hih-school students are tobe rewarded with cash or takin andpassin riorous, collee-level AP ex-

ams. (Compensation is linked to thestudents score, with a hih score o 5earnin more than a passin scoreo 3.) Principals have ained reaterautonomy over their budets, hirinand school manaement; parents haveained some access to school adminis-trators with ull-time parent coordina-tors. School reviews beat school sur-veys beat the recent, much-debated,school report cards.

When it comes to improvin hihschool raduation, Kleins stratey has

been two-proned. He has broken ail-in lare hih schools into smaller ones.And he has created new paths to radu-

ation or kids or whom traditional hihschools o any size arent workin.

S tudents can and do et lost in bi,alienatin city schools. This is, ocourse, no news; its common knowl-ede that actory-style schools with4,000 students oer less personalizedattention than schools one-eihth theirsize. Strulin students are more

likely to all behind in bi schools; theirabsences are less likely to spur action,and when a students attendance di-

minishes, so does achievement. Sschools, oten oranized around a cic theme or academic concentraseem an antidote to the imperslare-school model. With deep-pets undin rom the Bill & Melgates and Carneie Foundations,Broad Foundation, Open Society Itute, New Visions or Public Schand other private/corporate partn

the DOE has rown a colony o sschools, oten set in impoverishedderserved neihborhoods.

noT SPoTSmost city hih schools hd lower drop-

out rtes thn the citywide vere o

14.6 percent in 2006. On the other end

were hih schools with extreely hih

dropout rtes. The DOE hs closed or is

closin ny o the worst-perorin

schools. aon those tht (s o presstie) re to rein open, these posted

the hihest dropout rtes or the clss

o 2006:

Source: DOE

dropout ratesChools

Bushwick Community High School (Brooklyn) 43.0%

Manhattan Comprehensive Night & Day School 37.4%

Far Rockaway High School (Queens) 26.8%

Flushing High School (Queens) 23.3%

Grover Cleveland High School (Queens) 21.8%

John Bowne High School (Queens) 21.3%

Washington Irving High School (Manhattan) 20.8%

John F. Kennedy High School (Bronx) 20.4%

Long Island City High School (Queens) 20%

Monroe Academy for Business and Law (Bronx) 20%


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1 WINTER 2008


If nEw YoRk cITYS 140,000 AT-RISkYounG AdulTS wERE An EnTITY unToTHEmSElvES, THEY would conSTITuTETHE SEcond-lARGEST HIGH ScHooldISTRIcT In THE unITEd STATES.


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Since 2002, 231 small schools have opened in New YCity. About 180 o them have been secondary and hih sch(servin rades 6-12 and 9-12, respectively), each enrollinor ewer students. These schools are youn works in prorthe vast majority have not had a sinle raduatin class, mless a breadth o experience rom which to draw conclusand document trends. But the idea behind them is ar

new; Schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez created his leacy o small schools in the 1980s, some o which thrivday, some not. The key, says Ernest Loan, president oCouncil o School Supervisors and Administrators, the uor school principals and other administrators, is whethsmall school allows or personal interaction amon its playIts your connection to your sta and students that makdierence, he says.

These schools are meant to replace the lare, ailed scho history, oten in the buildin oriinally intended or a sibehemoth o a hih school, accordin to garth Harrieshead o the DOEs Oce o Por tolio Development, which o

sees the creation o new schools. To date, 25 lare, compresive hih school buildins have been remade into educaticomplexes that house two, three, or more small schools. Sotimes the schools sharin the premises are all hih schother times, theyre a mix: a hih school, a transer schoola gED proram can all share a sinle buildin (with studrom 14 to 21 years o ae), or two middle schools and a hschool can share a sinle acility (with students o 11 sotimes sharin a buildin with students 10 years their senIts not ideal, Harries volunteers, but we have the resouwe have, and we have to manae the best we can.

Small schools are ounded on a decided investment inor, personalization and partnership aimed at increasin

raduation rate and access to post-secondary education, Harries. This ocus stems in no small measure rom the cacter o the ailed comprehensive schools the small schare desined to replace. Those environments can no lonbe the warehouses they once were, where hard-to-educatehave been inored, says Harries. He acknowledes thathoned ocus limits the small schools ability to provide sspecialized oerins like school sports teams, advanacademics and specialized electives. Some small schools their resources, co-oerin advanced placement classescampus-wide varsity sports teams. In other settins, schunction essentially as tenantsindependent institutions win a sinle, shared campus.

Recent news rom the small hih schools has been, at value, encourain, Harries says: greater numbers o studare raduatin on time, attendance is stroner than in lschools and students eel better connected to school and more committed to stayin there. But its dicult to eneracross 200 schools based on raduation data rom only a e

WINTER 2008


The trck t DeWitt Clinton H.S. A recent report ound that in

race to graduate, nearly hal o city students will all behind.Photo:


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SnAPSHoT ofSTRuGGlEA school welcomes

the toughest casesThere were a ew tense moments on a day inmid-November when 17-year-old Elizabetharrived at Community Prep, a tiny transitionalprogram that prepares students who havebeen released rom juvenile detention to returnto regular high schools. It was 10:30 a.m., andElizabeth was an hour-and-a-hal late or classin the drab converted oce building on East29th Street in Manhattan.

The schools dean and English teacher, IlzeDrozds-Russano, welcomed her, but told herthat only students who arrived on time or up

to 45 minutes late could leave the building orlunch. Elizabeth tensed up, gave an angry lookand seemed ready or a ght. You cant talk tome like that! she shouted.

Principal Mark Ryan came by and deusedthe situation. Were glad to see you, he toldthe girl. Would you like us to give you a call at7:30 a.m. to help you get up?

Elizabeth, a thin girl with gold hoop earrings,black jeans and a black jacket, her blond-and-black streaked hair pulled back into a pony tail,relaxed her tense muscles, shook her head andsilently went o to class.

Shes much better. She didnt curse us out!She didnt break anything! said Drozds-Russano.

She went to class! Thats a major victory!Ryan chimed in.

Such are the success stories at CommunityPrep, a school that serves some o the citys mostchallenging students: kids who are re-enteringthe world ater being released rom juvenile de-tention centers or court-ordered alternatives toincarceration, such as residential treatment a-cilities or teens needing psychiatric help. Manyhave been convicted o assault, robbery or drugdealing; some have been designated Persons inNeed o Supervision (PINS) by the courtskids

whose parents couldnt control them.Community Prep was ounded in 2002 as

a partnership between the Department oEducation (DOE) and the nonprot Centeror Alternative Sentencing and EmploymentServices (CASES) to help kids with serious be-havior problems that other high schools areill-equipped to handle. The idea is to get stu-dents to attend classes regularly, build up their

social and academic skills and prepare themto return to a regular high school or to enrollin a GED program.

The students have trouble getting along withother kids, with grown-ups, with anyone in aposition o authority. But they also crave the at-

tention o a caring adultsomething many othem have never had. Many are the victims oabuse or neglect at home. One child was in 16oster care placements in 16 years. About halhave been diagnosed with special educationneeds. The majority have mental health prob-lems. Most use illegal drugs and many have

parents who use drugs. Most o them are waybehind in their academic work. Some read at arst-grade level.Community Prep is hal therapeutic, hal aca-

demic, Ryan says. Kidsall kids, not just theones hereneed ar more attention rom car-ing adults and ar more help with social andemotional problems than they get in the typicalhigh school, he adds.

At Community Prep, the socialization beginswith a daily advisory, led by a teacher and asocial worker. Similar to group therapy, studentsvent their eelings and learn to control theirbehavior using the principle o restorativejustice. That is, when students break a rule,they must answer questions such as, Who washarmed by your actions? and must nd waysto make amends.

Teachers, employed by the DOE, and couselors, who work or CASES, dont ask kids whthey were incarcerated. Instead, they attemto give them a resh start and to seek out thestrengthsnoting, or example, that one child a master carpenter, another a promising artis

They lure them into the school community witun things to do: a shing trip, a bowling excusion, tickets to Broadway shows. Were tryinto make them eel they are going to miss somthing i they are not here, says Ryan. Thereslot o unconditional love in this building.

Teachers, social workers and drug abuscounselors meet daily to discuss studentprogress. One boy, now living in a group homgot out o jail to nd that his only relative, auncle with whom he had lived beore he gin trouble, had disappeared. One girl had beeon the street, making money since she wa13. When one student began to misbehav

in class, a counselor explained: Christmas coming. He hasnt spoken to his mother or twyears and he thinks shes dead. Staers sugested that another boy had been traumatizeby witnessing the murder o someone shot the head.

Students typically stay at Community Prep one year. The school has room or 85 students;tends to have lower enrollments in the all anlls up during the year as students are reerreRyan says daily attendance hovers around 4percent, compared to a citywide average o 8percent. About one-third o the students eventally return to regular schools or go to ull-timGED programs. Since its ounding, 26 studenhave let Community Prep or jail.

Progress is marked not by the usual measuo passed Regents exams and graduation ratebut by the smallest o steps: staying at schoall day (rather than leaving midday in a hunot getting high or a week or doing homewothree nights in a row, leaving their gang-idenying gear at home. I they take o their beaddont wear their [gang] colors, thats hugesays Drozds-Russano.

When the bell rang at 2:50 p.m. that day November and the students went home, Rya

checked the attendance sheet at the rondesk. O the 65 kids currently on the registe36 had showed up. O those, 19 were less tha45 minutes late and 30 stayed or the whoday. There had been a ew close calls, but nmajor disturbances, no student meltdownThats antastic, Ryan said, pleased with thdays accomplishments. Clara Hemphill


0 WINTER 2008

THE STudEnTSHAvE TRouBlE

GETTInG AlonGwITH oTHER kIdS,wITH GRown-uPS,wITH AnYonE InA PoSITIon ofAuTHoRITY. BuTTHEY AlSo cRAvE

THE ATTEnTIon ofA cARInG AdulT...


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Students t gED clss in the Bronx. The city recently revamped its GED oerings becauseso many students were ailing the exams. Photo: JM


WINTER 2008

By desin, small schools less than twoyears old exclude many special-needsstudents. Even so, most students arebelow rade level. Probably 75 percento our students are comin in with Level1 or 2 Math and ELA tests. Some aresurely over-ae, says Lili Brown, vicepresident or external aairs at NewVisions or Public Schools, a nonprotwhose New Century Hih School proj-

ect has created 83 small hih schools inNew York City. Proress is measuredwith metrics, Brown says. We evaluatestudent data aainst standardized testscores. We ask, what do these kids needto learn? Whatever they learn, they needto learn it aster, to make that our-yearraduate rate.

The pressure to raduate studentsin our years can translate to lower aca-demic expectations: When New Cen-tury Hih Schools recently published a78 percent, our-year raduation rate

nearly 20 percent hiher than city aver-aeit made headlines. But readindeeper into the stats, less than hal o theNew Century raduates earned Reentsdiplomas, as opposed to more than two-thirds o students in demoraphicallycomparable hih schools. So what lookslike proress sometimes isntor atleast isnt as much as it seems. And what

proress there has been at New Centu-ry schools could roll back when the newdiploma requirements kick in.

Brown says the proress will build onitsel. The bar is bein raised at a policyand a practical level, she says. In therst eneration, we asked, Can we etthem to raduate in our years? Thesewere kids who used to raduate at the20 percent to 30 percent level; our sta

almost didnt believe they could radu-ate kids in our years. Every year, shesays, more students raduate with Re-ents diplomas. Still, its impossible touarantee that all students will meet theuniversal Reents criteria in 2008.

New Century students drop out oschool ar less oten than their peers.But day to day, in the classroom, thequality o student discipline and teacherinfuence on policy [has] declined, ac-cordin to a report by the oranization.In addition, current students are comin

to school less reularly, earnin ewercredits and ettin suspended moreoten than previous New Century stu-dent cohorts. Such evolutions are to beexpected in new schools, but when theexperiment is on a rand scalemorethan 200 schools, 100 more planneditcan be dauntin to predict, based onrelatively thin experience, what will hap-

pen in the lives o nearly 80,000 predinantly low-achievin students.

V. Chartin a new pathAs Klein shrunk and replaced lare schools, his reorms also created

avenues or students who were throwith traditional hih schools altoeThe recently-revamped Oce o tiple Pathways to graduation (OMhas a complicated portolio: Basicthe DOE invested $37.5 million tovelop school models to ive strustudents options beyond the traditihih school settin. The Bill & Melgates Foundation contributed an ational $5.3 million. In all 2007, a retorane o educational options was ro

out includin transer schools, citywreerral centers or gED proraYoun Adult Borouh Centers andtions or students either in or recereleased rom incarceration.

From transer schoolssmall,ploma-rantin schools desinedstudents under 17 (the leally persible ae to drop out)to Youn ABorouh Centers, which help ostudents earn enouh credits to rate, these school prorams aim toa cryin need. Transer-school r

ates earn diplomas rom their transchool; Youn Adult Borouh Cediplomas are ranted by the studhome hih school. gED proramsthe other hand, ive over-ae, ar-bestudentsthose who simply cant sucient credits beore their leal rto education expiresaccess to psecondary prorams like commucollee and technical trainin. Pre-gprorams oer remediation to studnot yet ready or gED preparation.

The problem is, relatively ew dents make use o these options; onlpercent o over-ae and under-credhih-schoolers participate in multpathways prorams. O the balance remain in comprehensive hih schewer than one in ve raduate and a small raction earns Reents diplom

A lack o consistency in admissrequirements complicates enrollme

8/7/2019 Exit Strategy: Sizing Up New Y

exit strategy: sizing up new york city's dropout rates

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