Deafening silence in NYDN op-ed on CUNY and NYC schools failure

The NY Daily News ran an op-ed piece this weekend on abysmal 28 percent graduation rates in CUNY's community colleges among New York City Department of Education high school graduates.
Yet, there is a deafening silence in Saturday, November 26, 2011's empty editorial.
First, the blame must be laid at our all-potent mayor. He staked his reputation on being an "education mayor." Poor performance in basic English and math skills in entrance exams and poor graduation rates indicate utter failure in the standards in the education system captained by mayoral control Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Where is the front page editorial in the News, Post, Times, as there should be, asking for his resignation for his abject failure on the education issue?
*School closures *Attack on and marginalization of experienced teachers
*Top-down imposed crackpot schemes such as "Everyday Math" or "Impact Math"
*No bid contracts on school texts, curricular packages, software, evaluators, consultants
*Derision of the notion of teaching. Dare not say teaching, say learning
*Top-down imposed scandals such as grouped seating or conference tables as seat set-ups, leaving no room for test security
*Thorough disregard for parent voice or transparency from the disbanding of the Board of Education down to the emasculating and irrelevance of parent voice in Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) at the school level
*Doubling of Math and English and the side-lining of science, social studies, arts, and thus the sidelining of students' having any notion of pleasure in school
*Collective classwork ("cooperative learning," groupwork)
*Growing tolerance for hall-roaming, skipping classes and truancy in general
*Endless test-prep ...what have I left out?

The media should say nothing in this matter, save for a total admission of guilt for their silence during this ten year fiasco.

Second, the essence of this problem comes down to the abrogation of the schools to chart proper scholastic habits among the school-children. Time was, students were expected to respect teachers, have good behavior towards each other, and a decent effort at attendance and classwork.
Accountability ... seems the only people subject to this are teachers, not the media, not the mayor. Not the students or the parents. Click over to Chaz and his column about Credit Recovery, "A Case Study On Why The "Credit Recovery System" And Online Learning Does Not Work In The Real World Of Employment." In life if you are a no-show, you are dropped, not only in work, but also in social relationships. Not so in the parallel universe of attending school in the NYC Department of Education under city-state Prince Michael.
In the regime of JPE, "Just Pass Everybody" what did Bloomberg and his aides and abettors expect?

Here is the shameful (for no context and no criticism of the mayor, who stewarded the development of no standards NYC diplomas) Saturday, November 26, 2011 New York Daily News editorial:

Unable to hack the coursework, students are dropping out from the city's community colleges in droves — clouding their economic futures and that of the city.
The numbers, revealed in a new report from the Center for an Urban Future, are a scathing indictment of the ability of New Yorks public schools to give young men and women the skills they need to succeed.
Nearly four of five high school graduates arrive at CUNYs six community colleges needing remedial coursework in reading, writing, math — or, increasingly, all three. And within six years, the study says, an eye popping 51% have dropped out from what are supposed to be two-year degree-granting institutions.
A mere 28% actually manage to get a degree six years after enrolling at Kingsborough, Queensborough, LaGuardia, Hostos, Bronx or Borough of Manhattan community colleges.
There’s a painful personal price to all this ill preparation. Earnings for a graduate with an associate’s degree in the city average $29,000; with a high school diploma, they’re a mere $17,000.
And work for applicants with less education is getting harder and harder to find. According to the report, the number of jobs requiring more than just high school doubled nationwide between 1973 and 2008, from 28% to 59%. City employers in fields such as transportation, health care and construction told the researchers they are increasingly looking for college credentials.
Fixing the problem would have a huge economic upside for the city. The report estimates that boosting the community college graduation rate 10 percentage points would mean a $28 million jump in economic activity in neighborhoods.
Left with no choice, CUNY has created intensive remediation programs. They help — 27% of those who participated in one such program earned a degree within two years, compared with just 7% of similar students who did not.
But for most, it’s too little, too late. CUNY says the number of “triple-lows” coming through the door — students who cannot handle college-level reading, writing or mathematics — has jumped steeply in the last two years. Meaning that across the board, the public schools are falling down on the job.
Total fail.

Just see the latest on the on-going train-wreck of the NYC school system, recently publicized most at Queens Metro High School (south Rego Park/south Forest Hills) at Ed Notes: http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2011/11/wave-bob-turner-dont-know-much-bout.html.
and http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2011/11/nov-22-queens-metropolitan-hs-update.html.

Qns HS Students' Occupy-type Protest & Need for Parents & Students to Mobilize

On their front page today The Daily News ran a story on how students at Frederick Douglass VI High School co-located with Far Rockaway High School protested and got an administration pledge to get an English teacher.

Here's the synopsis with some decoding:
75 students did not have an English teacher. Instead, they had rotating substitutes that changed every week. Translation: the students had different absent teacher reserve (ATR) teachers every week.

"English class at Frederick Douglass Academy in Queens hasn't had a regular teacher in three months" told how parents called 311 and how the city gave them the brush off.

Well, of course the city or the Department of Education gave the parents the brush-off. The city is being spiteful. It is not interested in hiring an ATR. One can get a qualified, experienced English teacher in the form of an ATR. The ATR pool remains at 1,126; there must be some English teachers in that pool. But, no, they city is too spiteful to hire a qualified, experienced teacher.

Students at Frederick Douglass Academy VI High School don't have English teachers and protested in front of the school.
Seniors at a struggling Queens high school have gone the first three months of the school year with no English teacher, the Daily News has learned.
About 75 students at Frederick Douglass Academy VI in Far Rockaway have been warehoused in a bunk class with a different substitute each week and no coherent lesson plan, they say.
For weeks, students begged administrators at the C-rated school for a steady instructor, but their request was denied — until Friday, when they protested and refused to go to class until their demands were met.
“We deserve to have a proper English teacher, not just a bunch of subs,” said senior Dominique Boatwright, 17, of Far Rockaway.

Another egregious fact is that part of the problem was that the students were being "educated" by a computer program called iLearn. Quite unsettling is the news that this school is but one of 160 city schools that use automated education from the iZone initiative that uses such programs. This program is being used in Far Rockaway, a largely minority community. One wonders whether computer-driven education supplants accredited teachers in schools in whiter, middle class neighborhoods.

Education officials said that the school — where 27% of students graduated ready for college last year — is part of a citywide online learning initiative called the iZone.

Computer-based classes are a key component of the iZone program, which is used by more than 160 schools around the city.

But students said that they still need a teacher who’s familiar with the course work, even if they’re using computers to deliver instruction.

The fedup teens decided to take matters into their own hands and stage a protest outside the school on Friday morning to demand a teacher for their English classes.

Senior class president Shamia Heyliger of Far Rockaway organized the rally, which began at 7 a.m., before classes were scheduled to begin.

“We needed to get the message across that we need a teacher,” said Heyliger, who has a 93 average and wants to be a lawyer.

The spunky teen used Facebook to spread word about the rally, and about 40 kids turned out before class for the protest.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/english-class-frederick-douglass-academy-queens-a-regular-teacher-months-article-1.980188#ixzz1eKdg0zXh

Hats off to the students for refusing to go to class until they were given a proper teacher. This calamity of the spiteful city/ Department of Education shows the need for parents and student to organize and push the city to act in ways that respond to community's needs.

Arum on NPR cites lack of rigor at American colleges

Richard Arum of New York University, interviewed on National Public Radio, on the lack of academic rigor at American college campuses.
Her is the link to the audio archive file at NPR's site.

Arum emphasized the need for students to apply themselves. He cited studies showing that students did very little homework and avoided courses that required writing long papers. Students apply themselves? I thought that teachers'/instructors' jobs was to entertain students. Someone send the memo to college and school administrators!

Arum also negatively cited the practice of evaluating instructors by relying on student evaluations of teachers. Positive student evaluations college instructors are inevitably correlated with the grade that they anticipate receiving and their sense that the instructor is entertaining, rather than boring. Any wonder that there is grade inflation.

Report: Sham HS diplomas in New York City & State, weak college readiness

It's official:
the diplomas that New York (especially New York City) gives out are sham diplomas. Despite the fact that some zealous young principals love to bandy about the cliche, "college readiness," New York City schools are not preparing students for college level work.
It's official: a New York State Department of Education report says as much. See the full discussion in Sharon Otterman's article, "Most New York Students Are Not College-Ready" on the front page of Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2011's New York Times.
Commissioner David Steiner and other high officials in the New York State Department of Education are cited in the article.

Shame of the City III: city schools are not preparing NYC students for college

As it has been put before, the key question is:
"Is Our Children Learning?" [har, har] and the answer is No. Read on.

WNYC's Beth Fertig has an important story today on the station's website:

NYC students are ill-prepared for real college life.

NEW YORK, NY September 24, 2009 —A new study finds too many New York City high school students aren't prepared for college, and urges the state and city to take action. WNYC's Beth Fertig has more.

REPORTER: The study by the Annenberg Institute for School reform looked at students at the City University. More students are entering CUNY and fewer need remedial classes. But most students in community colleges still need remedial math or English; and the six-year graduation rate for an associate degree is less than 29 percent. Researchers say the problem lies in the lack of college readiness. They say state standards aren't well aligned to what students need to succeed. And too many students don't take four full years of math and science. The report urges public schools and colleges to collaborate in guiding students, so they'll know what they need in college. It also says students often don't aim higher on their Regents exams because they don't understand that they need a score of at least 75 to avoid remedial classes later. For WNYC I'm Beth Fertig.

A major crux of the problem is that high enough math standards are not being pursued with the students. Students' actual grade level in math and English lag at least two grade levels, throughout their careers, particularly as the tween years transition to adolescent years, i.e., in fifth grade. This lag is really not acceptable if the city expects students to have "on-par" literacy and "numeracy" by the college freshman year.
Let's look at how the basic skills are not honed in English and math. The city denigrates the focus on the fundamental ability to construct clear, grammatically sentences or spelling skills. The city subscribes --far more aggressively under Klein-- progressive education ideologies. It has allowed those ideologies to elide the development of the basic skills of written expression. In the crucial years of fifth through nine, when this skills should be refined in students, the city dogmatically avoids addressing these skills.
Regarding math, Klein's administration gullibly bought, hook, line and sinker, the constructivist dictates that students learn math best by developing theories and trying some experimentation. The city wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on worthless textbooks on the discredited "Everyday Math" and "Impact Math" series specializing in this avant garde nonsense. California experimented with this New New Math nuttiness almost two decades ago, and it rejected it with passion. Yet, the city has ruined the basic math skills of nearly a generation of students by using these approaches since 2002. (For more analysis of these discredited trends, visit the website of the venerable Thomas B. Fordham Institute.)
For those unfamiliar with graduation routines from New York State schools, final summation tests in the various academic subjects are administered in high school, mainly in ninth through eleventh grades. The bar is ridiculously lowered for the most commonly taken Math A Regents exam. Just try this January 2009 version of the test on your own, without any preparation. Most of it appears on the level of sixth or seventh grade math.

The education analysts that responded to the aforementioned reporter said that more years of math are needed in high school. Yes, maybe, but prior to that goal, they need to master pre-algebra fundamentals.

To boot, the state has lowered the passing score for one Regents exam, to make the question of judging passing scores, as the New York Times reports, even more suspicious, particularly when we are in the era of Bloomberg/Klein reform.

Further, the city schools have adopted the progressive education dictum that school must be fun and cooperative, well into high school. Thus, they coddle impulses of informality and they withhold the development of skills, mental and behavioral attitudes upon which high performance in the college level depnds. Walking around the classroom is sought as part of the lesson. Group-work is mandated.
Are these the modes of rigor in college? Are these habits that are constructive for working alone, and concentrating for long periods, on a test at the college level? No, no, no. Yet, Bloomberg/Klein have adopted and enforced this silliness that is doubtless not used in Singapore or Denmark.