Posted on 08/21/2007 9:54:28 PM PDT by neverdem
Faced with 70,000 students or more who are years behind in obtaining the credits needed to graduate from high school, New York City is at the forefront of a movement to recognize that for a significant number, high school might stretch into five, six, even seven years.
In an effort that has expanded across Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s second term, the city has spent nearly $37 million to identify and cater to students who are at the biggest risk of dropping out and has already contracted for $31 million more in programs.
The staggering numbers of those who are far behind cover almost a quarter of the city’s public high school population — students like Sunil Ragoonath, who at 18 had passed barely enough courses at John Adams High School in Queens to be considered a sophomore. He routinely skipped school. “All I had to do was walk out the door,” Mr. Ragoonath said recently.
To get younger students who have failed many classes back on track, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein has created more than two dozen “transfer schools,” and plans to open as many as 30 more over the next five years. The city also offers them intensive remedial courses.
For students past the traditional graduation age, the city has established special centers to provide counseling, night classes and an environment designed to avoid the stigma of being college age but in class with 14-year-olds. Some students also earn credits through summer school and community college classes.
When the programs began in 2004, they were serving roughly 2,000 students. That number has since ballooned to more than 7,000. Many students will graduate this week, after spending the summer earning final credits...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Maybe they should have vocational programs for folks like Mr. Ragoonath and just let them work.
We did four years of high school in three with my oldest and she still had enough time on her hands to complain about being bored.
Fer crying out loud. Hold these kids accountable and quit babying them. Tell them is they can't do it in 12 years and want an education so bad, they can get it at the local community college. The right program will get you a NYS high school diploma, and not a GED either.
Sad thing is, vocational training is not acceptable anymore. The whole concept seems to be to have everyone go to college but what the educrats don’t realize is that not everyone is college material. They claim to be so concerned about the underachievers but they’re really short changing those who need the help the most.
Good God. In my day it was called “failing”. In my day if you were stupid enough to put yourself into a Darwin situation you died. In my day kids had respect and a work ethic.
There’s a reason this whole world, and especially this country is going to hell in a handbasket and it’s because of the endless coddling and handholding of the detriment of society that in better years would’ve died off and avoided being recirculated into the otherwise healthy gene pool.
Let them live in an alley in a box and beg on the street corner for God’s sake.
And to ice the cake, guess who’s going to foot the bill for their prolonged schooling? Yep, that’s right, Mr and Mrs Taxpayer-the suckers. What the heck, we pay for everything else the vengeful sociopaths can dream up in an attempt to kill the goose, so that they can just control us all.
Rephrasing an old internet joke (that was all too true to begin with)
How gov’t schools treat the dead horse
Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in gov’t schools we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Say things like, “This is the way we have always ridden this horse.”
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horses in todays environment.
10. Change the requirements declaring that “This horse is not dead.”
11. Hire more teachers to ride the dead horse.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that “No horse is too dead to beat.”
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse’s performance.
15. Do a Cost Analysis study to see if unionized teachers can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare the horse is “better, faster and cheaper” dead.
18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
20. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
With this push to extend “school” to younger and younger ages, and at the other end, of older and older, will there be a time soon when they are telling us we need school the rest of our lives? Talk about womb to the tomb.
The government wants us all under their control ALL OF THE TIME. This is just the beginning. Get out of the public schools now.
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