Tuesday, October 25, 2011

These kids will be fit only for government jobs.

U. gotta be kiddin’!


Just one out of every four students who started high school in 2007 went on to graduate in 2011 prepared for college under a first-ever city measure aligned with City University of New York entrance requirements.

The measure is marginally different from a state college-ready standard that was released earlier this year -- yet a comparison shows a slight improvement, from a rate of 21.4 percent college-ready students in 2010 to 25 percent this year.

The city standard requires students to score at least a 75 on the English Regents exam and an 80 or higher in math, or else a 480 out of 800 on each of the math and critical reading sections of the SAT.

It serves as the city’s best estimate of a student’s ability to succeed in college -- and it also shows a wide variance from school to school.

Among the largest gaps between graduation rates and college-ready rates was the Academy for Young Writers in Brooklyn -- where 85 percent of kids graduated but just 1.3 percent were deemed college-ready.

Still, the school was graded A for its overall performance.

Other schools with large divides between graduation and college-ready rates were Williamsburg HS for Architecture and Design and It Takes A Village Academy, both in Brooklyn.

It Takes A Village Academy Principal Marina Vinitskaya said her school’s college-ready rate of less than 10 percent wasn’t an accurate marker because 91 percent of her students graduated in four years -- and all of them were admitted to college.

She said many of her students didn’t fare well on the new measure because they’re still working on their English fluency.

“Our children were accepted to many private colleges and they aren’t taking remedial courses,” she said.

New school report card grades released yesterday showed more than 10 percent of city high schools rated with a D or F letter grade -- using a higher standard than in past years.

Overall, 32 schools got a D and 14 were slapped with an F -- scores that were low enough to put them at risk of closure.

An additional 14 schools that received a grade of C or lower for the third time are in the same troubled boat.

At the other end of the scale, 128 high schools were rated with an A, 124 schools received Bs and 94 got Cs -- based largely on year-to-year progress of their students’ Regents scores, graduation rates and course credits earned.

Among the F-rated schools were two of The Bronx’s few remaining large high schools -- DeWitt Clinton and Lehman -- and a new school that had never previously been rated, Gotham Professional Arts Academy in Brooklyn.

“Our message to schools is clear: students need to be meeting a higher bar and doing more rigorous work if they are going to be ready for life after high school,” said Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott.

The data at seven schools was so unusual it prompted the Department of Education to launch investigations -- including at Bronx Aerospace HS, Bushwick School for Social Justice and the FDNY HS in Brooklyn.

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