Posted on 06/18/2004 9:13:40 PM PDT by wagglebee
June 17, 2004 -- The Big Apple could be called Dropout City — a staggering 350,000 public high-school students have quit or flunked out of school since 1986, Department of Education data show.
That means the number of New York City dropouts over this period exceeds the entire population of such cities as St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Buffalo, St. Paul, Minn., and Newark.
The number of dropouts was disclosed during testimony at a City Council hearing on the Bloomberg administration's plan to open 70 new small schools next fall with startup funds provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
"New York City's dropout rate remained constant at 30 percent for a decade. Indeed, since the Board of Education first kept track in 1986, over 250,000 students had dropped out of school by 2000," said Robert Hughes, president of New Visions for Public Schools, a nonprofit group that helps the city develop small schools.
In fact, it's about 300,000 dropouts over that period. The city measures the dropout rate by tracking students until they turn 21, when they're legally required to leave secondary school.
The final data is not in for the years 2001-2003, but the city already knows that 39,181 students in these three graduation classes had dropped out by the age of 18. If trends continue, another 20,000 to 25,000 students aged 19-21 still in the system will quit.
"That's pretty remarkable," said council Education Committee Chairwoman Eva Moskowitz (D-Manhattan).
A top adviser to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein also cited the high dropout rate and low graduation rate — only one of every two high school students obtains a diploma on time — as reason to overhaul the city high schools.
"Dropout rates have been increasing since 1998," said Michele Cahill, the chancellor's senior counselor on educational policy. "Even starker challenges characterize many of our traditionally large, comprehensive zoned high schools with graduation rates below 40 percent."
Mayor Bloomberg plans to open a total of 200 schools with 500 students or less over the next few years in an attempt to help struggling kids achieve.
Cahill pointed to some of the existing smaller high schools in low-income neighborhoods, which have higher graduation rates (58 percent to 37 percent) of similar students in high schools with thousands of students.
But Moskowitz said smaller is not necessarily better without a strong principal and dedicated staff. She pointed to the dreadful performance of several small high schools, including those located at the Erasmus HS campus in Brooklyn.
Most of the 70 new schools will be assigned to existing facilities with other schools.
Teachers union president Randi Weingarten, while backing the small-schools movement, complained that the Bloomberg administration's decision last year to cram new schools into buildings with existing schools worsened overcrowding and safety conditions. She said functioning large schools should not be sacrificed to make way for these smaller schools.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Just plant some Bush's and the yard will be the envy of the neighborhood!
Disagree. With outofwedlock births at 70%, the answer is the one Bill Cosby commented on recently. Two parents caring about their children's education, and encouraging them to do their homework, not dissing them for being whitey if they try to do well in school.
A black education specialist came into an affluent black neighborhood school system a year or two ago to find out why their kids weren't doing as well as white kids. And they wouldn't believe him after he studied the situation and then told them that it was because they didn't model valuing education and help the kids with their homework.
Money wouldn't help, vouchers wouldn't help, Bush can't help either. They need to get married before they have kids and both parents need to be involved with the kids' schools.
Randi Weingarten is sending her gay union thugs out after you and she knows where you live.......
"Just think, 1000 of those dropouts could possibly have been saved from their lives of ignorance,"
They would not be: it is the problem of values/character and culture, and by the time a pupil drops out (it is not elementary school dropouts here) these have pretty well been formed; actually, they start setting much earlier.
Alot of bright kids just trying to save themselves from a terrible school system.
Silver! On your haunches while I "lock and load"!
We have incoming. ; )
Nicollo:
"A good, vicious revolution in schooling is needed. But nobody is willing to put up with the casualties. Meanwhile, the students bleed dumb."
In 1530 Francesco Guicciardini, a perceptive thinker and observer of the education scene, wrote: "Learning inflicted upon weak minds does not improve them, and is frequently ruinous". Maybe he should be posthumously hired as the head of NYC education system.
It is strictly values/ character/ culture problem. Give the kids who ARE WILLING TO LEARN even to the existing crop (or crap) of teachers - results will not be particularly spectacular, which is a shame, but still the results will be acceptable.
Discriminatory hiring practices, eh?
Did you even bother to quantify their self-esteem? I'd wager it was right off the charts.
You can't base hiring decisions on outdated metrics. Get with the program!
But, but, the well educated, deeply concerned, and unbiased judicial system through the mouthpiece of judges have, through their infinite wisdom and years of learning, convinced "the kids" that marriage, as with many other social aspects of life, isn't a firm and well adjusted mindset, for we as a society must maintain a gray (confused and muddled IMO) mindset to make sure everyone is happy with their take on life whether it be considered right or it be considered wrong.
Thus, the happiness and contentment can be distributed to all irregardless of one's mindset.
Now isn't that fair and just?
Why I bet the likes of Charles Manson would agree.
And that's after a federal judge forced the state and federal governments to spend BILLIONS (not a typo) on the school district, because it was "too segregated." After 25+ years, the district is still segregated, and test scores had dropped to the point where the district actually lost their state accreditation!
It's been a few years since then, and to the best of my knowledge, the district hasn't regained its accreditation. Which means that no college in the country has to accept a KCMO school district high school diploma.
Mark
And that's after a federal judge forced the state and federal governments to spend BILLIONS (not a typo) on the school district, because it was "too segregated." After 25+ years, the district is still segregated, and test scores had dropped to the point where the district actually lost their state accreditation!
It's been a few years since then, and to the best of my knowledge, the district hasn't regained its accreditation. Which means that no college in the country has to accept a KCMO school district high school diploma.
Mark
Any business in America is forced to give results at least once a year to the IRS. You would think something as basic as a Dropout rate would be able to be reported at the end of every MONTH, not three to four years later. These people are incompetent and need to be replaced with a system that has a chance of working.
HEY! is right. And the blissful paradise of Washington D.C. is the same utopia the UN wants to bring to Main Stree, USA.
DITTO
The radical left wing democrat Teacher's Union(s) and radical left wing democrat large urban city school boards have over $13,000 per student to educate NYC public school students and over $25,000 per "special ed" NYC public school student.
Yet the public school teachers themselves fail to teach these young NYC students and even fail to motivate these public school students to even stay in school to graduate with a high school diploma which would add for each student graduate over $600,000 gross personal income in their lifetime.
These teachers made their way thru high school and on to college and choose education as their "profession" yet if they worked in the private sector in they would be fired the first week for incompetence, fraud, and failure to fulfill their primary duty which is to teach public school students.
They work a short year and have a higher pay scale with better health benefits and pensions than an NYPD officer who works 12 months of the year under the gun never knowing if he or she will come home to their family after a long shift.
"Mo money!" the teachers and their union comrades scream.....
Throwing billions down a rathole is their demand or they will strike.
"I've got mine and I demand more!"
If the Teacher's Union(s) are 99.9% democrats, why are they so against or so unable to motivate and teach these NYC teenagers?
Why are they so against school vouchers so all of these kids can have a shot a the "Big Apple"?
We all know there are many more Colin Powell, and Condi Rice, and Clarence Thomas quality students out there.
Most of these democrat public school teachers and democrat politicians send their own little precious kiddies to private schools yet God help their students they "teach" and conspire to deny them the same basic rights for a shot a good private school thru voucher programs.
John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, Teddy Kennedy, and Hillary Clinton are against school vouchers for these kids in NYC and other public schools and are also fighting to stop "home schooling" of these youngsters by their own parents who obviously can teach these kids better than these "so-called professional teachers".
What does the democrat party have against allowing NYC's public school students having a quality education?
Thru vouchers and also by teaching these kids like their grandparents were taught in old non air-conditioned, no computer, dingy crowded old public schools!
The teacher's unions have an ultra high % of homosexuals just like the media and delight in shoving gay and lesbian lifestyle classes down these kids throats but toss out physical education, sports programs, math, English, American History, and vocational education classes.
Some of you reading this post out there at your computers go to these crummy public schools.
Beautiful schools, maybe.
Crummy teachers that cannot or will not teach for sure.
You are better than what your democrat teachers and school administrators and school board members restrict you to.
Grab your parents and talk to them and say you do not want a drop-out dead-end job or to end up in prison or dead by the time you are 26 years old.
Foreign nations do not have better quality or smarter young people than America does, they just care about really teaching and motivating young students so they can have the best education they can give them.
It's your life kids and kid's parents.
Why settle for a third rate education at at double to triple the price to your taxpaying parents as a private school is ready and willing and able to offer to you.
Note I did not say "give you" like a "progressive" (radical liberal) democrat-Socialist teacher or politician like John Kerry would say on TV.
Nothing is free in this life and you know it.
But you have the intelligence to know if you have good teachers and good classes you can make the grade.
Bigtime.
Condi Rice is our National Security Advisor; she went to school in the South, joined the service as a Private and rose to Lt. Colonel, became an expert on Russia and was chosen by George W Bush for the very highest US Aministration Cabinet position of any women in American history.
Randi Weingarten is a wealthy spoiled greedy union hack.
Why has Condi Rice gone further than Randi Weingarten?
Your life is literally in the hands of Condi Rice.
Randi Weingarten just has her hands in your parents pockets.
Which one do you trust?
Which one wants the best for you?
You know.
Talk to your parents and to other students.
You have a right to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.
No one will "give" it to you.
You must study for it under good caring teachers in good classes.
Aren't you as good as Condi Rice, Colin Powell, and Clarence Thomas?
They are not the smartest people in America, they just had good teachers and courses and studied hard and never settled or less than they knew was possible thru hard work.
America's universities are full of intelligent radical left wing Socialist/Communist/democrats who cannot cut it in the real world and just pollute the young minds of college students who listen to their garbage.
Remember, that late WWII's President Harry S Truman, mega-billionaire Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, and talk showhost Rush Limbaugh ($280,000,000 contract) all have no basic college degree, but lots of desire, sweat, and brains and they all fought thru failures and disappointments on their way to the very top.
But forget them and get your college degrees anyway!
You can go as far as your education and desire and study will take you.
You will all not become the National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, or US Supreme Court Justice.
But you have the right to be able to go as far as your good brains and studies and efforts will take you.
One of you needs to bump Randi Weingarten out of her cushy high paying job and give the young kids a shot too.
Aim high, work hard, do your best.
But you need good teachers and a valid high school diploma someone did not just hand you and wave good bye.
Life is a lifetime learning experience and you have the opportunity to teach others along the way as well as earn from others.
Don't sell yourselves short.
If you and your parents demand vouchers you will have your chance.
Don't let people tell you they are "teachers" when then cannot or will not teach.
There are millions of employers out here looking for smart, sharp, well educated young grads who will put in their best efforts.
The future is yours; reach for the brass ring; it will not just be handed to you to tarnish.
Study hard and learn and that ring will be golden when you reach it.
God Speed!
Let's see. I went to a city high school. Our freshman class was around 1300. Our graduating class was 361. That was in 1987 in Michigan.
imo
Well yes. Teachers are either boring the students to death, not teaching at all, or are having to deal with students that have never learned the basics. But I also think that part of the dropout problem might be because the differences in personality and interest are not taken into account. Some people like to study, some people like to work with their hands, some people like to create, some people like to grown things.
We used to have college prep and vocational high school that would allow different educational paths.
I like to study, my nose was stuck in a book every chance I got. My brother was the opposite. Books bored him silly. But he loved learning how to build things and put things together, he can paint and is very musical. Because we were both home schooled our higher education was tailored for our needs.
Once the basics of learning have been taught it might be wise to ask ourselves why we do not allow for differing vocations in high school as we do in college.
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