Is there a difference in NYC?
Posted on 10/24/2011 7:20:15 AM PDT by reaganaut1
In June, Desiree Smith was graduated from Murry Bergtraum High. Her grades were in the 90s, she said, and she had passed the four state Regents exams. Since enrolling last month at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, Ms. Smith, 19, has come to realize that graduating from a New York City public high school is not the same as learning.
She failed all three placement tests for LaGuardia and is now taking remediation in reading, writing and math. So are Nikita Thomas, of Bedford Stuyvesant Prep; Sade Washington, of the Young Women’s Leadership School in East Harlem; Stacey Sumulong, of Queens Vocational and Technical; Lucrecia Woolford of John Adams High; and Juan Rodriguez of Grover Cleveland High. “Passing the Regents don’t mean nothing,” Ms. Thomas said. “The main focus in high school is to get you to graduate; it makes the school look good. They get you in and get you out.”
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has made the rising graduation rate — to 61 percent in June, from 46.5 percent in 2005 — the No. 1 symbol of his educational accomplishments. But that rate is less impressive when paired with the percentage of graduates who need remediation in all three subjects when they enter LaGuardia or other City University of New York community colleges: 22.6 percent in 2010 (2,812 students), up from 15.4 percent in 2005 (1,085).
“A few years ago, we noticed the numbers really jump,” said John Mogulescu, the senior university dean for CUNY. Over all, 74 percent of city high school graduates enrolled at the system’s six community colleges take remediation in at least one subject, but those needing all three are at the highest risk of dropping out.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I think the moral of this story is closer to: Stop pretending that NY public high schools actually teach anything.
Only a foolish liberal would be surprised by this result.
Is there a difference in NYC?
Not everyone is capable of college level study, and that is why the college degree USED TO be worth more in the economy, because of the relative scarcity.
And, yes, the schools are not preparing students to be thinkers or learners, but to be cogs in the socialist system.
I’m reading “A Well-Trained Mind”, and the main point of it is that kids need to be trained in “the trivium” of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. A student that is classically trained will be able to learn and discern.
Discernment is the enemy of socialism, so this is intentionally NOT taught.
Must disagree with you a bit.
“Smart” implies intellectual capability - I don’t think the article was condemning these students as being incapable of mastering the material presented at the collegel level. The High Schools are lowering the bar, such that the dumbest (most intellectually challenged) can graduate with a minimum of effort. This handicaps everyone, because those who are intellectually gifted never get to ‘push themselves’ to see what they truly can accomplish.
As a result, because everyone in High School must trudge along at the rate of the lowest denominator; when they get to the college level - they are woefully behind what the average college student is expected to know.
I experienced this first hand; my High School’s qualifications for our Math Department was a strong background in Physical Education (pronounced “Football”). Our Math teacher did not comprehend basic Algebra - we would spend many sessions of school each week going back and correcting lessons in which he had been babbling about a lesson he did not understand. So, despite getting an ‘A’ in Algebra in the late 70’s; I had to take remedial math in college (Pre-Calculus). And that was many years ago. I’m sure it’s even worse now
Two errors -
1. redundant -
2. They aren’t liberal - they are leftists.
I am liberal. And I’m three steps to the right of any Democrat in the country.
First we should stop pretending that public schools are primarily for education rather than what they are: a lavish support system for unionized public employees. Then we’ll need to stop pretending that the cirriculum is designed to prepare children for the real world rather than what it does: advances children regardless of achievement in order to protect the public employee system, while imparting just enough ‘instruction’ to inculcate the kids into unthinking secular progressivism.
Let’s see... hmm... hire public school teachers out of the bottom 5% of college graduates. Use affirmative action hiring policies to ensure that even that level gets lowered. Give teachers union-protected tenure after three years which means they can never be fired no matter how bad they are. Then add the Lake Woebegon idea that all children are above average and gee, high school graduates that don’t know anything (I teach college freshman, so I know).
But we need to give these teachers more money so they can continue to vote for Democrats who promise to give them even more money.
Nope, don’t see anything wrong with that picture.
I graduated from a rural high school back in 1983. When I finally started college about 10 years later, I, too, had to take remedial math. Quite a bit of it. I’m terrible at math and barely squeaked by. Time to quit pretending that college is just the next level. College is harder than high school; it’s supposed to be. Unless you are really quite bright, it’s going to be a struggle. The only reason I got through is because I am naturally good at reading and writing. But math just kills me.
Dumbing down the Regents: This year's American history exams are nearly flunk-proof
>>“Passing the Regents don’t mean nothing,” Ms. Thomas said.<<
Perfect example of a) not teaching and b) not learning. This country was better off without mandatory education. Thomas Edison never finished high school. Neither did George Washington, Luther Burbank, Robert Fulto nor Booker T. Washington.
Fulto s/b Fulton
This problem has existed for decades.
With the advent of junior/community colleges in the 70s and 80s, many secondary schools pushed their students through because they knew the junior/community college would be the interim step to the senior college/university.
In the 60s, nearly 1/3 of freshmen entering state universities were ‘tested’ into remedial classes. The junior/community colleges took much of that burder off the universities in the later decades.
==
When testing is the predominate factor, teachers teach to the tests.
Or even Trade School. Nikita needs to make another run at learning how to use the English Language correctly as well.
Not everyone is college material and there have to become consequences for failing to learn and perform.
You want to succeed in life? Work for it. If you don’t work for it and don’t succeed in something there have to be consequences, it is a choice. These people need to find something that can make them a living. Fear of failure and the consequences of failure have been a great motivator in life for me.
You want to have masses of babies, feed them, there have to be consequences. How do you deal with the moral issue of the babies who didn’t choose to be born? How do you make real consequences for the cretins who choose to become baby factories? How is this problem solved without starving children who did not do anything wrong? How do we protect the rights of those who do right? Why has it ever been right for the innocent to bear the burden of the guilty?
One of the most important things I’ve always believed in learning was the etymology of words, getting an appreciation of the history and just how our language evolved over time.
I recall a story a few yrs back about a school in NYC. One of the test questions was "What's 2+2?" And, some students wrote 3. The test came back from the teacher and said "No, it's 4...but if you feeeeeel good about your answer, it's correct.
Lovely.
This is disgraceful. Abolish the Dept. of Education - it is a farce. Return control of schools to the local level. And parents - be involved. Where my kids went to middle school, they didn’t even have a PTA. I tried to start one but no one, including teachers, seemed interested. Looking back, I wish I had been more involved in my children’s educations. I wish I could have home-schooled, at least for a few years.
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