Education Is Being Downgraded At Cardozo High School Because Of Their Budget Problems.

In a previous post I wrote that one of the most sought after high schools in the City was found with a $400,000 shortfall and the DOE required that the school cut its budget to make up for the shortfall.  That resulted in the school excessing over 20 teachers and overcrowded and uncovered classrooms at the beginning of the school year. Tweed rather than make the Principal accountable for his poor financial decisions decided to keep the Principal and hurt the students of the school instead. 

By the October 6th deadline there were 385 oversized classes and 18 uncovered classrooms.  Since that time the school has scrambled to correct the situation at Cardozo with only about twenty overcrowded classrooms and two uncovered classes.  However, the cost to the student's education is significant.  Here are just some of the changes that hurt the student's academic achievement.

Science:  Living Environment, Earth Science, and Chemistry classes have been reduced from five instructional days and a laboratory requirement to four instructional days.  Unfortunately, for the students the State Regents is based upon five instructional days not four!  When the Earth Science instructional days were reduiced to four instructional days two years ago the Regents passing percentage dropped to 40% and was even worse last year.  The same thing is expected for Chemistry.

Advanced Placement:  All Advanced Placement courses were reduced from two sessions of instruction daily to one class per day.  This 50% reduction in instruction time will result in less college credit for the students who's scores are compared to the rest of the nation where the students take two classes daily.

Sixth Period Teaching:  Many teachers are teaching six periods and studies have shown that teachers who are overloaded with that many classes wear down and are not as "effective".  This is a bad time for teachers to take an extra class as their student scores will affect their own grade as a teacher.

Rotating Teachers: A few classes have no permanent teacher and weekly ATRs are being used to

provide supervision to the students who are suffering from unstable  conditions and academic neglect.  In one first period Math class a students told his parent that the few students who show up supervise themselves since no teacher has been assigned to the class.

When it comes to the DOE leadership at Tweed its their ideology first and "children last.....Always".

  Oh, by the way, the DOE did offer to add teachers to the school if the school was willing to take the students coming out of incarceration and suspension centers as part of the deal, I was told the school said no and I can't blame them.