But the progress being made in the city's 300-odd high schools, while promising, is limited and might not be lasting, reports City Limits Investigates in the winter edition, Exit Strategy, released today.
Despite the real gains the mayor and chancellor reported, some 10,000 students dropped out of the class of 2006, and 17,000 remained enrolled after four years—which, experience indicates, means they’re more likely to eventually join the ranks of dropouts. Among those considered "graduates" were thousands of students who obtained not diplomas but GEDs, and thousands of others who obtained a "local diploma" that will soon be phased out in favor of a more demanding Regents diploma. Absent from the statistics altogether are thousands of students who were discharged from city schools—kids who left the system ostensibly to attend other schools, but in some cases are actually headed only to quietly drop out. There's reason to believe that the New York City Department of Education (DOE) is still failing to track discharged students as well as it should.
New York's efforts to improve graduation rates are part of a national movement to increase the number of students who obtain diplomas—an endeavor motivated by the individual and societal benefits linked to graduation. Statistics show that people with diplomas tend to have higher incomes and enjoy better health, and are more likely to avoid incarceration. High school graduates pay more in taxes and use fewer government-funded services such as welfare or prison. Graduation rates also are one of the yardsticks by which President Bush’s signature education program, the No Child Left Behind Act, measures schools.
Locally, graduation rates are also likely to play a part in the looming discussion over whether to renew mayoral control of schools, which lapses in 2009 if the New York state legislature doesn't renew it. They also will figure prominently in any discussion of Bloomberg and Klein's educational legacy, as the schools chancellor acknowledged in an interview. "I am clearly accountable," Klein told City Limits Investigates reporter Helen Zelon. "If the graduation rate goes down, if the city doesn't improve, I am accountable."
Klein's program for improving high school graduation is two-pronged. On one hand, the city—sometimes with outside nonprofit partners—is breaking large, traditional high schools into smaller ones, aiming to give kids more individual attention. Meanwhile, the DOE also has created new paths to graduation for kids who aren't succeeding in traditional high school settings. Among these are Young Adult Borough Centers, where students who are getting too old for high school can earn the credits they need to receive a diploma.
Some of the new, small schools are posting better graduation rates. But critics point out that many of the small schools are barred from enrolling special education students and non-English speakers—moves that improve the small schools' statistical performance, but deprive some students of options and saddle the remaining large schools with harder-to-serve kids.
