NYC Graduation Rate Continues To Show A Racial Gap

The New York City high school graduation rate inched up to 77.3% and of course Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza hailed it.  However, they were silent on the racial achievement gap.  Black (74%) and Hispanic (72%) were lower than Whites (85%) while Asians(88%) had a 3% higher graduation rate than Whites.

Of all kids who began their freshman year in 2015, 88.2 percent of Asian students were handed a diploma last year, followed by whites at 85 percent, blacks at 73.7 percent, and Hispanics at 72 percent, according to the figures.  More discouraging was the graduation rate for Special Education students and English Language Learners who only had a graduation rate of 52.5% and 40.9% respectively.

While City Hall and the Department of Education cast these annual hikes as evidence of skillful stewardship, continually shifting standards and graduation requirements give critics pause.   Moreover, students have been given new routes to graduation in recent years. Changes include the option of taking assessments in languages other than English and swapping out a required social studies exam for a test in another subject, including art and math.  Finally the State made it easier to appeal low Regents grades.

 Statewide, while the State achieved an 83.4% graduation rate,  only 12% of black students and 17% of Hispanic students earned advanced designation, compared with more than 47% of white students.  I suspect that these numbers are lower for New York City.. Charter schools in the State only had a 80.8% graduation rate,which is  2.6% less than traditional public schools in the State.

Chancellor Carranza has vowed to have a graduation rate of 84% by 2025 which will only increase the already abundant academic fraud.in New York City high schools.

What Is The College Graduation Rate For NYC Students?

With the high school graduation rate increasing yearly (75.9%) and more students attending college, has the college graduation rate improved?  The answer is a disappointing not really.  Based on the latest 2017 data he college graduation rate for NYC high school graduates is 22% for CUNY and 26% for SUNY.  For two year associates degree from community college the graduation rate is a disappointing 32%.

The reason for the disappointing college graduation rate is that colleges try to maintain high standards and unlike high school, there is no such thing as " credit recovery", scholarship requirements by principals to ensure more students graduate and administrative pressure to pass undeserving students.  Just look at my academic fraud posts.

The bottom line is that less than one out of every four students who enter college will achieve a four year college degree and that is disappointing.

NYC High Schools Practice Academic Fraud To Jack Up The Graduation Rate

Most high school teachers in New York City know that academic fraud is practiced in most, if not all the schools.  Be it scholarship requirements, easy credits, blended learning, grade inflation, or administrative pressure to pass failing students.  The New York Post has an article dealing with the widespread academic fraud practiced in the New York City high schools.

Maspeth high school is just an extreme example of the common practice of academic fraud.  If your an untenured teacher and you dare fail too many students, look to be discontinued.  For tenured teachers, look for poor observations and a 3020-a termination hearing. It doesn't matter that these students did not deserve to pass, they want you to pass them anyway.

The DOE will claim that they do not tolerate academic fraud but they put intense pressure on school administrators to pass as many students they can or risk negative consequences for the Principal and the school.  Hence, academic fraud is encouraged while the DOE looks the other way. No wonder there is a disconnect between the graduation rate and being "college ready" at many of the NYC high schools..


Rather than going into detail of the academic fraud that goes on in the New York City high schools please read my academic fraud articles from my blog.  In addition, you can also read my numerous graduation rate articles as well and they will give you a complete understanding how academic fraud is practiced in the New York City high schools.

NYC's Bogus Graduation Rate Increases Again.

While I usually disagree with the New York Post's Editorial.  I find myself in agreement that the NYC graduation rate is bogus.  As expected. the NYC graduation rate improved to 75.9% and Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza proclaimed success in improving student academic achievement. However, the truth is far different.

It's no secret that the graduation rate is bogus and that many schools are simply diploma mills.  Principals are always pressuring teachers, especially untenured teachers to pass failing students.  Furthermore, many schools give "credit recovery" courses that consist of a paper or an online test that the student can take as many times as he or she needs to pass.  Finally, the State lowered Regents graduation standards and eliminated the requirement of taking the Social Studies Regents. Finally the academic achievement gap between White/Asian students and Black/Latino students is as wide as ever when it comes to getting an advanced Regents diploma.  50% Asian and 35% White students achieved that goal, compared to only Black 8% and Latino 12% students.  You can read the article Here.

Back in 2017  I posted all the unscreened high schools in Queens that showed that few schools had a graduation rate/college readiness rate of less than 1.5 that is a better indicator of student academic achievement .  Anything over 2 are simply a diploma mill  You can see the list Here

More NYC Students Going To College But Are They Getting A Degree?

With great fanfare Chancellor Richard Carranza hailed the 59% of the high school graduates who went to college, other continuing education programs, or the military.  The problem with the 59% figure it doesn't tell one how many high school graduates who entered these continuing education programs finished with a degree.

We do know that for high school graduates who entered community colleges in NYC, only 22% achieved a degree in three years and only 33% in six years.

The Chancellor also  boasted that "college readiness " improved by three percentage points, to 51%.  However, the CUNY metric was changed once again and the 3% improvement must be highly suspect.  The changed CUNY metric no longer includes Algebra II, which many NYC students have difficulty passing.

Chalkbeat has an article that further explains it.

The Disconnect Between Graduating High School And Graduating College - Case Study Newark, New Jersey.

The Department Of Education (DOE) in urban areas brag how their high school  graduation rate is increasing.  The problem is that most educators know that the high school graduation rate is bogus as it's artificially inflated by phony credit recovery courses, administrative pressure to pass undeserving students and grade fixing.  Of course when some of them end up in college, an unpleasant surprise often awaits them.  First, they are required to take no credit remedial courses.  Second, they quickly find out that college is a "sink or swim" environment with no hand holding by the professor.  Either you do the work or fail and many end up dropping out.

A case study is Newark New Jersey.  The data shows that Newark's graduation rate has skyrocketed to 73.47% .  Unfortunately, only 13.7% of those high school graduates actually got a degree of any kind, according to New Jersey's Open Data Network.  According to Chalkbest, 51% of Newark's high school graduates who went directly to college, did better but still disappointing with only 39% of them receiving a degree of any kind.

The Mayor's goal is that 25% of all high school graduates receive a college degree by 2025  he hopes to do this by adding "rigor" to the high school curriculum but if the high schools still use phony credit recovery and grade fixing, the Mayor's goal is simply wishful thinking.

DOE ContinuesTo Award Bogus High School Diplomas.

In the New York Post today there is an article on the New  York State Department of Education audit of the "credit recovery" courses used by Brooklyn's John Dewey High School.  These credit recovery courses were nicknamed by the students as "easy pass".

The NYSED audit, which took years to complete looked at the "credit recovery" courses from 2012 to 2015 and found the following:

• Students not eligible to take the credit recovery courses were allowed to, despite teacher complaints.
• Most credit recovery courses had  no actual teacher, just a packet.
•  77% of the credit recovery courses had no certified teacher,
• 75% of the students were wrongly awarded a diploma due to the bogus creit recovery courses.
• One rookie teacher was responsible for 52 credit recovery courses in one semester.

While the Principal was removed and the DOE went through the motion to fire her using the 3020-a process.  The DOE sabotaged its own case by not allowing  officials to appear at the hearing that would have showed the DOE rubber stamped the "easy pass" system.  The result the ex Principal, Kathleen ­Elvin, now has cushy $169,916 job as a supervisor in the DOE’s Office of Safety Youth Development.  You can read my article Here.

This is just another example how the DOE rather issue bogus high school diplomas rather than give the students the education they deserve.

Bogus High School Graduation Rates Are Nationwide.

 





It's common knowledge that the New York City's high school graduation rates are bogus and few students make it through college or obtain high paying jobs that can support a family.  Unfortunately, the bogus graduation rates are not confined to New York City.  It's a nationwide problem.  Take Washington D.C.  public schools for example.

On Oct. 28, 2015, the D.C. Public Schools district put out a statement lauding itself with this headline: “DC Public Schools Continues Momentum as the Fastest Improving Urban School District in the Country.”  That tale is looking a lot less remarkable in the wake of revelations that educators and administrators, feeling pressure from their bosses to boost graduation rates and student performance, allowed many students who did not have the requisite qualifications to graduate. An example is Ballou High School.

 A city study — undertaken after media reports revealed the situation — found that more than 900 of 2,758 students who graduated from a D.C. public school last year either failed to attend enough classes or improperly took makeup classes. At one campus, Anacostia High in Southeast Washington, nearly 70 percent of the 106 graduates received 2017 diplomas despite violating some aspect of city graduation policy.

This was the result of the education reform movement that pressured school administrators to commit academic fraud to show the "miracle"   Reformers refused to admit, at least publicly, that there are no “miracles” in education. Student success takes hard work by young people and their teachers and parents, and it takes work not just around school policy but also with housing and health and fiscal and transportation policy.

In Washington D.C. like all urban school districts, standardized test scores — which are highly correlated to Zip code and family income — did indeed dramatically rise over the past decade. But officials didn’t like to mention that proficiency rates of D.C. students would still be considered failing in a high-performing district or that a wide achievement gap persists between white students and black and Hispanic students. Some in the District also say that test scores rose because the percentage of white students — who traditionally do better on standardized tests — has grown in District schools in recent years.

In Washington D.C. there was a cheating scandal and academic fraud goes hand in hand with education reforms and while scho0ol districts nationwide report higher graduation rates, the "miracle" is just a mirage as these students drop out in college do to their lack of educational ability.

You can read the Washington Post article Here.

Ballou High School Where The Graduation Rate Was All Smoke And Mirrors.

Ballou High School in Washington D.C. is a school with a deep poverty minority student body and has historically struggled academically, with a low graduation rate.  However, in 2017 Ballou High School dramatically improved their graduation rate and every graduate was accepted to college.  The school's success became a national sensation of how real education reform can improve even the worst academically struggling school.  However, NPR did an expose of the 2017 graduation class and found some very disturbing issues that questioned that success.

Unexcused Absences:
The majority of graduating seniors in 2017 missed more than six weeks of school due to unexcused absences.   Moreover,  33 students had unexcused absences of 90 days or more ot of 180 school days.  Of the 164 graduating seniors in 2017, only 23 students had less than 30 unexcused absences. The Washington D.C. public schools policy is that if a student misses class more than 30 days, the student should fail the course.  If the District followed it's own policy than 141 graduating seniors should have failed the courses and not graduate.

High Teacher Turnover:
Ballou High School suffered the highest teacher turnover in the City with 25% of the teachers leaving the school by the end of the 2016-17 school year, many of them in the middle of the term.  Most of the teachers who left cited low morale, administrative pressure to pass undeserving students, and poor student discipline.According to an internal memo only 57 seniors were on track to graduate in April.  The remaining 107 seniors were given massive amount of credit recovery and projects to meet their graduation requirements, despite the fact that many students did not qualify for credit recovery since they didn't bother to show up to their classes.

College Ready:
While its true that all 164 2017 graduates were accepted to college only 16 actually enrolled.  The main reason was the dismally low test scores. Only 9% passed the English test and 0% passed the Math test. Even the students realized that they were unprepared for college.

The Principal of the school has been reassigned and the school district has launched an investigation but will anything change?  Probably not, once the media scrutiny disappears.  Ballou high school will continue to graduate unprepared students where the graduation rate is all smoke and mirrors.

Proof That The Graduation Rate Is Bogus.

Since the Bloomberg era the high school graduation rate has steadily increased from 50% in 2000 to 76% in the last school year.  Of course Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio has claimed that their education reforms are making more high school graduates college and career ready.  The truth is far different.  A recent study by the Center For An Urban Future showed that only 22% of CUNY Community College students graduate with an associates degree within three years. The lowest numbers were in the Bronx with only a 16% graduation rate. The report stated the following:

The disappointingly low community college graduation rate clearly demonstrates that the high school graduation rate  does not make the high school graduate ready for the adult world. The report includes the following paragraph that peopple should take notice.
 These low college completion rates are particularly troubling at a time when a college credential has become the floor to achieving economic success. Indeed, 20 of the 25 fastest-growing occupations in the city that pay over $50,000 annually require a college degree.⁷ Citywide, the average working adult with only a high school diploma earns 32 percent less annually than a worker with an associate’s degree ($27,259 a year versus $36,101) and less than half the earnings of a New Yorker with a bachelors degree ($54,939).⁸ 

The poor community college graduation rate of 22% is an improvement from the 13% in 2008  but still that leaves 78% who don't graduate college in a reasonable time.  The three neighborhoods with the lowest percentage of Bachelor degrees are Mott Haven (9%), Brownsville (11%) and Soundeview (12%),  Manhattan has the highest percentage at 60% and the Bronx the lowest at 19%.

The bottom line with almost 8 out of 10 nyc high school graduates unprepared for higher education, one must question the high school graduation rate and the diploma mills that are many of our high schools.

DOE's Fake News When It Comes To Student Academic Achievement.

Since the election of Donald Trump as President, "fake news", is the news.  Be it from Trump himself , the Democrats, or the media, "fake news" is all the rage.  However, at the DOE, fake news has or misinformation has been the name of the game since the Bloomberg era and continues with Bill de Blasio.

What do I mean by fake news?  The graduation rate which is easily manipulated and fails to show real student academic achievement  is what I call fake news..  Every year the City tells the world that the graduation rate increases from the previous year  The latest is 72%.  However, ask any business or institution of higher learning what they think of the academic proficiency of the New York City graduates and you get a near universal response of how deficient academically these graduates are. In fact,  78% of all New York City high school graduates must take no-credit remedial courses in college.  Furthermore, the average New York City high school averages 37%  "college and career readiness" of the high school graduates.   Not an encouraging statistic if you ask me.  Exclude the 45 top performing high schools, most of them screened or specialized and the remainder of the high schools average closer to 22% for "college and career readiness".  A study by StudentsFirst lists the lowest 72 high schools in the City,  based on the 2014-15 school year. While I usually ignore the education deformer group, their numbers show how bogus the graduation rate  is when compared to real academic proficiency. I also wrote about the "diploma mill" high schools Here and Here.

The City high schools are full of easy credit "credit recovery courses", online instruction without a certified teacher instructing students such as APEX or PLATO, and administrative pressure on teachers to pass undeserving students by imposing scholarship requirements.  The result is that these  "diploma mill" schools with there phony graduation rates is a disservice to the students.

When you read in the newspapers that the City is improving the academic ability of their student population, remember its all "fake news"!

To Caring Parents. Avoid These Queens High Schools At All Costs.

A major problem parents have is how to guide their middle school child to a safe and academically proficient high school. This post will help parents stay away from schools that have the best chance to potentially harm their child academically.  The three types of schools are the Renewal high schools, high schools with a terrible administration, and diploma mill high schools with low academic proficiency.  Some high schools may fall in more than one category.  However, just being in one of the three categories should disqualify the school from consideration by caring parents who want a quality education for their child.

Renewal Schools:
The Renewal schools, which are academically struggling schools, are rapidly losing experienced and veteran educators to retirement, resignation, or transfer and are populated  by "newbie teachers" who themselves suffer a steep learning curve to master the art of teaching.  These schools suffer from classroom management problems, instructors struggling to learn the curriculum themselves, and are subject to an unstable school environment with high teacher turnover.  Just take a look at this post to better understand why parents don't want their academically proficient child subject to the Renewal School environment.

Bad Administration:
Some of the highest teacher turnover rates are usually associated with terrible principals and their administration. For example the neighborhood around a school like William Cullen Bryant High School is middle class, yet the school cannot attract the neighborhood students because of the Principal, Namita Dwarka, and her Assistant Principals.  Instead the school is forced to reach out to the DOE to get enough "over-the-counter" students to keep their numbers up.  Under her four year tenure as Principal, of the 173 teachers she inherited, she has seen 137 leave.  You can read my post about her and other bad principals Here.

Diploma Mills:
There are far too many schools that operate as "diploma mills"  with very low "college and career readiness" rate.  Many of the Rockaway High Schools fit into this category.  In fact, almost all the high schools in Southeast Queens can fall into the diploma mill category.  Add the Renewal Schools and you have unprepared graduates for the post secondary and the adult world. 

Parents in the know and who have academically proficient children would be wise to avoid these schools at all costs.

Bronxdale, Another DOE Diploma Mill High School

It has become increasingly clear that the DOE only cares about one thing the, graduation rate!  It appears that all other metrics are ignored by the DOE and they want everybody to buy into the fiction that the New York City Public High Schools are producing "college and career ready" students.  A case in point, as brought out by the New York Post, is Bronxdale High School, a Bloomberg small school carved out of the old Christopher Columbus High School.  This school has a graduation rate of 76% but a "college and career readiness" rate of 4%.  That's right, of the 430 students in the school only 17 are ready for post secondary education or a professional career.  According to my metric that's a ratio of 19.0 and it ranks with the worst numbers in the City high schools.  For Queens high schools you can find their numbers Here.

Bronxdale High School was given a perfect 4 out of 4 for rigorous instruction by a clearly delusional DOE bureaucrat , despite the school's abysmal "college and career readiness" scores.  Maybe the DOE evaluator should be evaluated?  Insideschools stated that there is a lack of instruction and too much student-based project work as a negative downside to the school.  No wonder the dismal metric of 19.0.  Moreover, the majority of teachers have less than four years of experience and two thirds are untenured.  Furthermore, the school suffers from high teacher turnover and while 57% of the students go on to some sort of post secondary education most end up in a two year community college, taking no-credit remedial courses.  You can find the school's snapshot Here.

Bronxdale High School has been in the news before when a Leadership Academy Principal, John Chase Jr, was charged with sexual misconduct and harassment of his "newbie" female teaching staff and retained his position by then Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Tweed until the public outrage forced the DOE to change their mind.  You can read my post Here and how the Mayor and Chancellor tried to protect the Principal.

The legacy of the Bloomberg/Klein era of bogus graduation rates and academic fraud continues under Mayor Bill de Blasio and his Chancellor, Carmen Farina.  When will the City and the DOE be held accountable for their failure to graduate students who are prepared for the adult world? In my book its educational malfeasance.

Graduating Unprepared For The Adult World And Workplace.

Every year the Mayor and his Chancellor, be it Bloomberg (Klein, Black, Walcott) or De Blasio (Carmen Farina) sing the same tune.  That their education policies are working and they look to the high school graduation rate as evidence of their claim.   True, the graduation rate continues to climb but are the graduates really ready for college or careers?  The answer is a resounding no.

Far too many students are graduating unprepared for the adult world.  For example 78.3% of all New York City high school graduates had to take at least one no credit remedial course while almost a quarter took two or more remedial courses.Remember, this statistic is based on high school graduates actually applying and attending college and does not include the 20% who never bothered to attend college.

What happens to these students who struggle through high school, aided by bogus "credit recovery" courses, administrative pressure to pass them, and outright academic fraud?  The answer is that these students, lacking a real education, are destined to be the new under class of society.  Low wage jobs, unstable employment, and financial instability when it comes to the family. Sure there are occasional success stories, but for the majority of these struggling high school graduates the outlook is bleak.

We must stop kidding ourselves and realize that some students are not cut out to pass academic subjects and open up more vocational schools that will allow these students to enter the high paying trades like plumbers, nursing, electricians, and mechanics to name a few.  This nonsense that everybody can pass the Regents and be academically proficient is a fantasy and has resulted in far too many students being shortchanged educationally and unprepared for the adult world.  

The New York Post's Selective Memory When It Comes To The Bogus Graduation Rates.

I could only chuckle when the New York Post's Editorial Board criticized the rising graduation rate under Mayor Bill dr Blasio.  While the graduation rate does not reflect actual college and career readiness, that's always been the case  In fact, I ranked all unscreened Queens High Schools and found that the average graduation rate to college readiness was 3 to 1.  Schools with higher ratios were simply diploma mills and one could question whether the students actually received an education in these schools?

Interestingly, the New York Post never seemed to question the bogus graduation rates under Michael Bloomberg, despite the massive amount of phony credit recovery courses, academic fraud, and grade changing that occurred during his time as Mayor.  In fact, the New York Post Editorial Board hailed Michael Bloomberg's education policy as a success and pointed to the very same rising graduation rates they now criticize under Mayor Bill de Blasio.  This was, despite 77.6% of high school graduates needing remedial courses in college.

Unfortunately, Bill de Blasio has made no significant changes to the New York City schools.  He chose a Tweed insider, Carmen Farina, as Chancellor, who retained 80% of the Bloomberg policymakers and kept the destructive "fair student funding" which forced schools to hire "the cheapest and not best teachers" for their schools and even froze school funding at 86% of what it should be. In fact, things have become worse as he allowed cellphones in the schools and weakened the student discipline code, while keeping many of the Bloomberg policies in place like large class sizes, incompetent and vindictive principals, and the overall "education on the cheap" policies.

 Maybe the New York Post Editorial Board should investigate the bloated DOE budget and determine why the resources are not getting to the schools and more importantly, the students?  Now that would be a worthy editorial.

The Disconnect Between The Graduation Rate And College And Career Readiness.

  Regardless who the Mayor of New York City was and is, be it Rudolph Giuliani (Conservative), Michael Bloomberg (Centralist), or Bill de Blasio (Liberal).  They all point to the ever rising graduation rate as showing improvement of student academic achievement.  However, real education experts know better that the graduation rate is bogus and is based upon questionable methods such as "credit recovery", Principal pressure, and scholarship requirements.  Since the Giuliani administration the graduation rate has risen from 45% to over 70% last year. However, just ask employers or colleges what they see when these "high school graduates" cannot fill out an employment application or fail their remedial courses and drop out of college within the first year?

The disconnection between the rising graduation rate and college readiness rates clearly shows the questionable value of a new York City high school diploma and the academic achievement gap.  In 2015, the city showed that 70.5% of all high school students graduated in four years, while the college and career readiness metric of those graduates only inched up to 35%.  That mean that 2 out of 3 New York City's high school graduates are not ready for college or the adult workplace.  Think what that means to our economy?  I shudder at the thought that the majority of New York City's high school graduates will be relegated to low wage jobs and will require public assistance to support a family to pay the rent and food on the table. All because we fail to make the high school diploma contingent on academic excellence.  Just push them out the door with a bogus high school diploma and hope for the best.  That's what the DOE does to these unfortunate students.

Next time the Mayor and Chancellor hail the rising graduation rate, ask them how many of those high school graduates are really academically ready for higher learning and the adult work place?  See how quiet or evasive they become.  "Children last"....always.

One Renewal School's Bogus Rubric To Give Failing Students A Passing Grade.

I was contacted by a teacher who decided to blow the whistle on how his school makes it virtually impossible to fail the students at the renewal school he works in.  If a student shows up once and awhile to class, he cannot get a grade of below 55%.   Worse, they devalue subject area knowledge to 30% of their grade. That means students who are academically lacking can pass by simply obtaining points from the other four areas. Let's take a look at the renewal school's classroom grading policy,

Classroom Grading Policy

Habit......................................Weight

Personal Responsibility..............10%
Social Responsibility..................10%'
Critical Thinking........................20%
Communication........................20%
Academic Knowledge................30%

Notice it does not add up to 100% and affords the school the 10% "wiggle room" to raise a 55% grade to 65% and pass the academically undeserving student.

For example, a hypothetical student named Carmen takes a course in English and shows up when she feels like it.  Carmen refuses to do her homework but does take notes when she attends class.  Moreover, when she does show up she is relatively well-behaved and that she does exhibit some social responsibility by cooperating with classmates on tasks.  Finally, she communicates and has shown some basic critical thinking skills.  Before we look at Carmen's final grade let's see how many points she obtained without the academic component.


Personal Responsibility..............5%
Social Responsibility.................5%'
Critical Thinking......................20%
Communication.......................20%
Total...................................50%

Academically, Carmen constantly fails her tests and quizzes and after a curve, her average academic grade is 50%.  Therefore, when you add the 15% to the 50% from the other four habits, Carmen gets a passing grade of 65%.  Even if Carmen falls short, there is always the additional 10% "wiggle room" the school can award the student to ensure she passes the course.

Devaluing a diploma is academic fraud but at least one renewal school only cares about their credit accumulation and graduation rate and not the academic achievement for their students or the fact that they are pushing out students who are academically unprepared.

Note: in today's New York Post, ant-teacher Carl Campanile published an article that showed an increase in graduation rates for the renewal schools. However, as shown above, the graduation rate is not based upon academic achievement but a rubric that makes it difficult for teachers to fail students who bother to show up, while doing little actual work.
.

The Disconnect Between Graduation Rates And Being Academically Proficient.

It appears that no matter who is Mayor, be it Michael Bloomberg or Bill de Blasio, they only care about the graduation rate and not whether these graduates were academically proficient to make it in higher education or the business world. To make matters worse, high school report cards are geared to two major metrics, credit accumulation and graduation rate, on the other hand, the "college and career readiness" metric is only supplied for informational reasons.  While the "college and career readiness" metric may not be the best metric to use to determine academic achievement, its the only metric that principals and schools cannot easily manipulate.  Moreover, this metric is closely correlated with the need for students to take no-credit remedial courses in college.

The primary importance is to make the general public and especially parents of students that their schools are succeeding academically, the main emphasis by school administrators is to improve the graduation rate by any means possible.That includes "credit recovery",  online programs, blended learning, scholarship requirements, and administrative pressure on teachers to pass otherwise failing students.  In other words, teachers that fail too many students will be subject to poor observations and in a worst-case scenario, termination under 3020-a.

Listed below you can see how disconnected it is between the City's graduation rates when compare to the school's "college ready"for most of the Queens high schools..

School...........................Graduation Rate.....College Ready

Rockaway Park.........................54%.....................2%
August Martin...........................42%.....................2%
QIRT........................................55%.....................7%
Fredrick Douglas Academy VI....45%.....................8% 
Science, Research, and Tech......65%....................12%
Humanities and Arts.................76%.....................13%
Rockaway Collegiate.................53%....................14% 
Martin Van Buren......................55%....................14%
Richmond Hill...........................55%....................16%
Law Enforcement.....................74%....................17%
Newtown.................................59%....................18%
John Adams.............................62%....................20%
Academy of Medical Tech..........64%....................20% 
Pathways College....................70%....................21%
Flushing..................................58%....................21%
Cambria Heights Academy.......73%....................22%
Long Island City.......................65% ...................23%
Excelsior Prep.........................75%....................24%
Grover Cleveland.....................63%....................27%
Writer's Academy....................76%....................27%
Hillside Arts & Letters..............81%....................28%
Queens Prep...........................76%....................28%
George Washington Carver......74%....................28%
Channel View..........................85%....................28%
Information & Technology........78%....................29%
Community Leadership............84%....................31%
Hillcrest.................................76%....................32%
Queens Vocational..................80%....................33% 
Queens HS of Teaching............91%....................34%
Middle College HS...................66%.....................35%
William Cullen Bryant..............68%....................35% 
John Bowne............................70%....................37%
Applied Communications.........82%....................38%
Arts And Business...................90%....................39% 
Robert H. Goodard...................92%....................41%
Queens Collegiate...................78%....................46%
Metropolitan HS......................92%....................47%
Robert F. Kennedy...................84%....................47%
Maspeth HS............................97%....................50%
Forest Hills.............................88%....................56%
Bayside..................................92%...................58%
Cardozo..................................91%...................64%
Civic Leadership......................87%...................66%
Francis Lewis..........................88%...................71%
Finance & Enterprise...............94%...................76%

What is most obvious is the high ratio between the graduation rate and the "college ready" metric.  For example Rockaway Park and August Martin have the highest ratio being 27 and 21 respectively.  While the lowest is Francis Lewis and the Academy of Finance and Enterprise  at 1.2.   The average ratio for all the schools listed is 2.45.   Meaning that for every five students who graduate, only two are prepared academically.  Intentionally left out of this study were the screened and selective schools who cherry pick  only the high achieving students ( ratios close to 1) as well as the international schools since they attract recent immigrants do not have the same demographics as most Queens schools.  Just looking at the data, schools that have a graduation rate to college ready ratio of less than 2 are the schools that have a high priority in real academic achievement while schools with ratios higher than 3 seem to be more interested in pushing out failing students by graduating them academically unprepared for the adult world.

In conclusion, good schools have low graduation to college ready rates, the closer to 1.0, the better the school is, while schools that have a ratio over 3 should be avoided at all costs.

What Does The 70% Graduation Rate Really Mean?

With great fanfare and little scrutiny, the DOE reported that for the first time he City students reached the 70% graduation rate level.  If you read the newspapers that means the education reform that started with Michael Bloomberg and continues with Bill de Blasio is working.  However, let's dig deeper and see why the graduation rate is increasing every year?

First, lets look at the good.  The increased amount of transfer schools  that opened in the last decade for over aged and under credited students (must be 16 years old) was a real godsend and students that would have normally dropped out are  given a second chance to graduate.  These schools offer a tri-semester year, allowing students to get additional credits and graduate with a diploma rather than get a GED or no diploma at all.   I have been to these schools and while the majority of the students will stop coming and eventually drop out, a good  many of the remaining students accumulated real classroom credits and graduate.

Now the bad,  as many teachers will tell you, far too many students are being given credit for courses they had no business passing but do anyway.  For example despite the DOE claiming that starting in 2012 the credit recovery programs will be more rigorous and that seat time must be part of the credit recovery determination, the truth is far different.   Most schools require online courses (APEX) and the students can take the test as many times as necessary to pass the course or have a smart peer to take it for them.

Furthermore, since the school's "Quality Review" is a function of the graduation rate, reported violations, and student suspensions, the new breed of Principal (20% from the Leadership Academy) cares more about their statistics then real academic achievement and will pressure teachers to pass students by going over their class passing rate (scholarship)'.  Combine that with the greater percentage of untenured teachers being hired and who are unwilling to fail students because it would piss off the Principal, the result is an artificial improvement in the graduation rate.

Finally, the lax student discipline code means less reported violations and suspensions along with greater teacher accountability.  For example, if little Johnny fails his tests, is regularly late to class, does little or no homework, and does not complete assignments, the teacher must document everything and show the outreach he or she did.  If you can't prove you did this, you better pass Johnny or face the consequences.  Just read the Pissed Off blog and read about the massive remedial (no credit) courses these students take at her Community College and how many drop out.

Bill de Blasio and Carmen Farina may crow about the 70% graduation rate but we teachers in the trenches know better.

Closing Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein Showed Lower Regents Passing Rates And More Credit Recovery. What Else Is New?

In a too little, too late report.  The City's Independent Budget Office (IBO) released a damming report on the quality of student education at six closing schools in Brooklyn and Manhattan back in the mid 2000's, during the heyday of the Bloomberg/Klein administration.  The IBO report shows that students at these six closing schools were less likely to receive a Regents diploma, took massive amount of credit recovery courses, and when tested for the Regents or the RCT received the minimum passing grades of 55% or 65% to earn credit to meet the academic standards for graduation.

We educators didn't need to IBO study to tell us the obvious.  I have been writing about the phony academic standards for almost a decade now and listed at the bottom of this article  are some of those posts. What I find most interesting is that the IBO study waited two years after Mayor Bloomberg left office to publish a study that uses data that is almost a decade old.  It appears to me the the IBO knew all along that the students of these targeted schools for closing were getting an inferior education and had the IBO dug further, they would have found that the Bloomberg administration was dumping the "high needs" and low achieving students into these schools to ensure the high schools fair and be forced to close due to poor academic statistics.

It''s no secret that the Bloomberg/Klein administration wanted to close the large comprehensive high schools and replaced by them with the Bloomberg small schools.  Just read the JD2715 blog and see the article by ex- UFT Bronx Representative, Lynn Winderbaum who wrote how the Bloomberg Administration made sure the small schools would have superior stats by exempting them from taking Special Education and English Language Learners, for the first two years and received wavers for more years thereafter to exclude "high needs" and "self-contained" students, while dumping them into the remaining large comprehensive schools to expide their eventual closure.  Most interestingly was how complicit UFT leadership was with the DOE in helping with the transition, especially Leo Casey.

While the IBO report is not a surprise, this report, hopefully is the first of many future studies showing that Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein did not care about the students.  It was all about their ideology and that was what was most important to them.

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