Nearly Half of NYC DOE Graduates in CUNY Need Extra Classes

New York public schools have failed kids on several fronts, and once they leave the system, the catastrophic losses from years of miseducation become apparent.

Amid chronic truancy, pervasive grade inflation, and failure to prepare students for introductory college classes, urban students are being pushed through the revolving door of education without truly learning, according to The Post.

“Most of the kids we get from New York City schools are underprepared for college,” said Mohammad Alam, Associate Dean of Admissions at Manhattan County Community College.

In the fall of 2022, at seven community colleges at the City University of New York, 5,046 former Department of Education students were enrolled in remedial math, while 4,250 were required to take remedial English — 47% of all new DOE high school graduates, a CUNY spokesperson said. .

The lack of college readiness leaves students, some of whom are now parents themselves, frustrated and angry.

“I don’t think the high schools, especially the public schools in the Bronx, prepared me enough” for college,” said Priscilla Walker, a Bronx mom of two who, at 29, is still trying to get her associate’s degree from BMCC. “This is how the public school system works: ‘These are not my kids, I just don’t care.’

Saleenal Butler, 20, complained that teachers at her former high school, the Millennium Art Academy in the Bronx, were “annoyed when people asked questions.”

“Most are just overwhelmed by how many students they have,” Butler said.

Julian Espinosa, 24, said he was “barely given the tools to succeed” at High School. A. Philip Randolph in Manhattan. The Bronx resident had to take a course in remedial math when he first enrolled at BCC in 2016—an experience so daunting that he promptly dropped out.

“I do not remember anything [I learned] from high school,” said Elian Luna, 21, who graduated from the Bronx Software Engineering Academy in 2019 and loved his teachers but had to take remedial math at BCC.

Cracks in the system are discovered long before students enter high school.

Post-pandemic test scores at K-8 public schools across the city have declined, while chronic truancy hit an all-time high of 40% last year. This means that 352,919 children missed 18 or more days of school, or 10% of the entire year. Among Bronx high school seniors, chronic truancy has reached a shocking 58.2%, according to the Department of Energy.

However, as if by magic, high school graduation rates rose again last year to nearly 84% from 73% four years earlier, with lower standards paving the way.

“Dumb until everyone is through,” said Wai Wah Chin, founder of the China American Union of Greater New York Citizens and a school choice advocate.

Setting the bar low in the name of “fairness” – just to get students through the system – harms both graduates and society, Chin argued.

Former mayors have demanded yearly jumps in alumni numbers to bolster their political ambitions. As a result, the inflation of DOE estimates and even fraud has skyrocketed.

In 2015, Brooklyn’s Dewey High School sent hundreds of underachieving kids to phantom classrooms without certified teachers. Principal Kathleen Alvin called the scheme “Graduation Project”. The children named it “Easy Pass”.

At Maspeth HS, under former principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir, the school set up fake classes, gave points to underachieving students and set grades to push kids out the door, outraged teachers told The Post in 2019. The students called the inerrancy policy the “Maspeth minimum”. Abdul-Mutakabbir is reported to have said that he would give a lagging student a diploma “not worth the paper on which it was printed”.

Last year, teachers at William Cullen Bryant HS in Queens accused administrators of pressuring them to promote students who skipped classes or didn’t show up at all and worked little or no work. At the DOE, children can complete or graduate without attending classes.

At the same time, the DOE bureaucracy has swelled. The Independent Budget Office estimates that the number of managers, analysts, executives and non-classroom educators rose from 3,500 to 5,100 between 2014 and 2021.

Chancellor David Banks promised to cut bloat, but in his first six months in office, Department of Energy central and district offices spent $725 million for fiscal year 2022, more than $100 million over budget, the IBO found, even though school budgets were cut.

The coronavirus pandemic has provided new reasons for dropping graduation standards. In 2020, the state Regents tests were canceled altogether – and when they returned, new rules allowed children to “pass” them with a 50 percent grade.

This drastic academic decline leads to college disaster.

A 2022 audit of students selected by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that only 57% of DOE graduates were “college ready,” and of those who entered post-secondary institutions, a staggering 37% dropped out in their first semester.

Many DOE graduates fail CUNY entrance exams in English, math, or both, forcing them to take extra classes at local colleges to study material they should have learned years ago. Those who do not pass the exams are prohibited from entering CUNY’s four-year colleges.

“Kids who leave high school unprepared end up in community colleges,” said Manhattan Institute education scholar Ray Domanico. “And these two-year colleges have a terrible graduation rate – like in the 20s. Many of these children do not live past their first year.”

“Most of the kids we get from New York schools are ill-prepared for college,” said Mohammad Alam of CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College.

At BCC, more than 50% of new high school graduates who enter cannot handle college-level jobs, one of the admissions officials told The Post.

In an effort to increase these appalling numbers and keep students enrolled at the university, CUNY is now placing students in need of correctional assistance on credit enrollment. “related” courses to make the system “more fair,” officials say.

While DOE school enrollment has plummeted — 121,000 students have left since 2017 — charter schools promise superior education for children who fall behind in reading and math at DOE schools, advocates say.

“DOE schools have demonstrated their ability to advance students through levels of learning or complete the system entirely, regardless of government grades and classroom performance, or even meaningful school attendance,” said Emily D’Vertola of the Empire Center for Public Policy. .

“Public charter schools, on the other hand, adhere to the legal standards of operation, accountability, and student achievement as set out in statutory law,” she said. “If they don’t ‘pass’, they will be shut down.” At least 20 New York “zombie charters” have lost licenses that advocates want to give to other schools.

Publicly funded but privately operated charters offer options that reflect the more efficient DOE schools.

A new world opened up for 17-year-old Shontay Gillard, a Brooklyn Lab Charter Academy student, when she transferred from the US Department of Energy Academy to 10th grade. “Now I have rigorous courses, I attend a lot of AP classes,” she said. Her new teachers “support us and always push us.”

“The Brooklyn Lab has more discipline, more order,” says 16-year-old classmate Jamia Snipes, also a public school refugee.

Bylaws also require accountability, the students say. For example, at Brooklyn’s MESA Charter High School, each teen meets with their teacher twice a day, reviewing weekly reports for each class and informing parents of absenteeism, including reduced classes.

“For me, it was very important to keep me in control,” said Cynthia Estevez, MESA 2020 alumnus. “I still talk to my advisor.”

Chin agreed: accountability is the key to success.

“What charters do is that once the kids get in, the kids are held to a higher standard,” she said. “It’s not that if a child doesn’t play, you lower the standards to fit the kids. You raise a child to meet the standard.”

A decade of silence

From 2012 to 2022, NYC public high school graduation rates skyrocketed, even as chronic absenteeism rose and standards dropped amid the coronavirus pandemic.

20122022 Graduation rate 65% 84% Chronic non-passing 25% 40% Regents Diploma Requirements 65% on five state Regents exams 50% on five Regents exams, with a passing grade in the relevant courses

Meanwhile, city spending per student has nearly doubled:

2012: $18,620

2022: $35,941

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