The DoE and some principals use their own rubric to determine acts of violence. Obviously attacks on teachers don't make the cut, especially if the student has an IEP.
It serves their school report card well.
i thought that sounded too good to be true.
The Times doesn't mention that the state changed its method of calculating grad rates because it didn't. Conspiracy theories on an a blog filled with people who want to see schools fail under the current administration aren't always accurate (shockingly). You'd be better off getting your news from the actual State Education Department (all the grad rate into is online, right on their front page, including a powerpoint explaining their methadology). And the state did not, in fact, "back up" the city's numbers - last year the city reported a grad rate of about 58%; according to the state, it was 47%.
As for your issues with the way the city calculates its grad rates, you make some good points. But the city has calculated grad rates the same way for the last 20 years so that year-to-year comparisons are valid. If you tinker with the formula, you'll use a couple decades worth of historical comparisons.
Just to clarify, last sentence should say, "you'll LOSE a couple decades worth of historical comparisons." Apparently I can't type today.
Teachers are expected to endure outrageous abuse, including physical violence, from kids, and if they have the nerve and self-respect to protest, they are inviting vicious reprisals from their 20-something principals which the fascistic DOE will always sustain.
last year the city reported a grad rate of about 58%; according to the state, it was 47%.
And this year, as a result of negotiation, they agree. That was precisely my point, and I'm a little disappointed you choose not to get it. I regret you see fit to buttress your point, such as it is, with ad hominem nonsense.
Your mind-reading skills are sorely lacking. I most certainly do not wish to see schools fail under any administration, and I had high hopes for your boss before he revealed his true colors.
Thanks for posting a link to this article. I only wished the author had emphasized that the problem does not stop at high schools; kids drop out even from middle school (I have a number of 15 and even a few 16-year-old students), and a poor education in middle school is a big part of why so many students drop out of high school. The high schools get blamed for a lot that's out of their control.
The author of the original article, by the way, was a research at Harvard, not just some "blogger."
From a retired school secretary, on the malleability of data and also the issue of kids who may be dropping out before they even reach high school:
Based on my experience as a school secretary (I am now retired) I look very suspiciously at official statistics, including test scores (which go through a political process of re-norming between the time the raw scores are entered into the database to the time they are released many months later).
As you note there is a lot of room to play with discharge codes which distinguish between children who drop out and children who transfer out. There is one more set of questions that should be asked that concern children who never make it from middle school to high school.
Many of the at-risk eighth graders have already been held over, some of them several times. How many drop out before finishing eighth grade? How many don't apply to high school--in the old days they were automatically articulated to their zoned high schools, but what happens now? How do high schools account for "no shows" in their statistics?
If graduation rates improve by statistically eliminating a whole group of children who never set foot in high school, then these rates are masking a problem that is even more significant than the percentage of students who graduate in four years.
Posted on the NYCEducationNews listserv.
The anonymous Tweed official might also want to account for the thousands of missing children in the cohort - way higher numbers than existed previously.
And what were the negotiations about that led the state ed dept to revise upward the rate from 43%? Or was this naked political pressure with the new governor who just loves mayoral control and wants it to succeed?
We don't want to see the schools or kids fail. And it's not necessary to want to see you fail since you have established an entire culture of failure and incompetence. And yes, alienating 90% of the teaching staff or more is a complete sign of failure. And don't blame the UFT. Most teachers couldn't care less about the UFT - it is irrelevant to them. You have accomplished all this on your own.
If a student drops out of high school and then wants to get his GED, does he enroll in classes paid for by the school district?
Are there alternative routes of getting a GED other than taking a course offered by the school district?
Why can't they push the kids straight from GED to Community College?
My best friend's brother was a complete high school dropout, 18 in sophomore year of high school (and this in Massachusetts where they only held you back for poor attendance or for failing most of your classes). He got his GED with the goal of going straight to community college, which he did. A GED by itself is not worth much.
I suspect that a lot of kids aren't going to community college because they couldn't hack it. It's ridiculous how little literate or math-aware you can be after years in (some) NYC schools. My best friend's brother, also a minority/ELL, passed the GED without trying while many NYC teenagers struggle and fail repeatedly. We have a problem with failing to provide basic education in this city to many kids.
In 1975, a college recruiter came after my husband. They looked at his scholarship eligibility (son of a Teamster) and neglected to notice he didn't graduate from high school. He attended college for a year, then got his GED a few years later.
I think standards may be tighter now.
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