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College Readiness Is Lacking, City Reports Show

By FERNANDA SANTOS
New York Times
October 24, 2011

Only one in four students who enter high school in New York City are ready for college after four years, and less than half enroll, according to the A-through-F high school report cards released on Monday.

Those numbers, included for the first time in the report cards, confirmed what the state suggested several months ago: the city still has a long way to go to prepare students for successful experiences in college and beyond. And they were a signal that graduation rates, long used by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as a validation of his education policies, were not as meaningful as they seemed.

“There’s a huge change in life chances for kids who are successful in post-secondary education,” the city’s chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, said. “We really have a task to prepare kids for that, and the data is one of the most motivating tools.”

About half of the 363 schools that got report cards received the same grade as the previous year, and about one-third of them received a lower grade. Officials linked the decline to tougher standards: graduation rules were tightened, grading practices were revamped and documentation requirements were made stricter, leaving less room for schools to manipulate test scores and dropout rates.

Fifty-four schools, or 15 percent, received a higher grade.

The measures of college readiness are new, and did not factor into schools’ grades this year, but they will be part of the grades next year. For most schools, not much is likely to change. Those that received an A or B this year had the highest percentage of students who took college-level courses, did not need remediation classes upon graduation and went to college within four years of entering high school, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

There were, however, many exceptions among A schools. At It Takes a Village Academy in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, more than 90 percent of students graduate in four years, but only 9 percent meet the college readiness criteria. At South Bronx Preparatory, the graduation rate also topped 90 percent, but the college-readiness rate was closer to 15 percent. At All City Leadership Secondary School in Bushwick, Brooklyn, every student who entered in 2007 graduated, but less than a quarter met the new standard.

Over all, the college readiness rate was less than half the graduation rate in 299 of the schools that received their report cards, the analysis shows.

Mr. Polakow-Suransky said Monday that the level of instruction that students at all grade levels receive would not improve until the tests by which they were measured became better at assessing the skills they would need after graduation, like analytical writing, critical thinking and problem-solving.

“If I’m a teacher,” he said, “I’m going to look closely at what that exam is measuring and key my curriculum and my work to passing that exam. That is the reality of what high-stakes exams are designed to do.”

Over the summer, officials at the State Education Department reported that only 21 percent of city students who started high school in 2006 were prepared for college when they graduated four years later. That finding comes from community colleges’ discovery that by scoring a 75 on the English Regents and an 80 on the math Regents, students typically earn at least a C in college courses on the same subjects. Those who score lower are quite likely to require remediation, a path that reduces the likelihood that they will graduate.

The progress reports this year measured schools against that standard, as well as others. Looking at students who entered high school in fall 2007, they revealed the percentage who scored above a 3 on an Advanced Placement exam, above a 4 on the International Baccalaureate exam and above a 65 on the Regents exams in Algebra II, chemistry or physics. They also showed the percentage of students who earned a C or higher in a course they took for college credit.

Mr. Polakow-Suransky said it was unclear how much weight the college-readiness measures would have on the reports next year. Currently, 60 percent of a school’s grade is based on how much students progress from one year to the next, 25 percent of it is based on their performance on standardized tests and 15 percent is based on more subjective measures, like a school’s safety and environment.

To meet the graduation requirements set by the report cards released Monday, students had to score at least 65 on four of the five Regents exams they took last year, instead of 55; this year, they will have to achieve a 65 on all five exams. Unlike previous years, teachers were not allowed to rescore tests with scores just below a passing grade.

In addition, schools had to offer more evidence that students who left had gone to another school or program, and had not simply dropped out.

In the end, 32.7 percent of schools received an A on their progress reports, 31.6 percent got B’s, 24 percent C’s, 8.2 percent D’s and 3.6 percent F’s. Last year, the number of schools scoring D’s and F’s was about the same, while 38 percent of the schools received A’s, 29.7 percent earned B’s and 21.6 percent had C’s.

Staten Island posted the best results: 6 of its 11 high schools received A’s, and there were no D’s or F’s in the borough. Brooklyn logged the worst performance, with 28 percent of its 116 high schools scoring A’s and 14 percent of them receiving D’s and F’s. Among the schools in Manhattan, 38 percent had A’s, 27 percent scored B’s, 24 percent earned C’s, 6 percent received D’s and 4 percent F’s.

The city withheld the report cards for seven schools — Theatre Arts Production Company, Bronx Aerospace and Pulse in the Bronx, and School for International Studies, Bushwick School for Social Justice, Foundations Academy and the F.D.N.Y. High School for Fire and Life Safety in Brooklyn — because there were questions about the numbers they reported.

At the 11 city high schools that began receiving roughly $20 million in federal grant money last year to improve their results, the reports offered no clear conclusion as to whether the strategies they had adopted, like replacing the principal and lengthening the school day, were working.

Six of them received the same grades as last year, two saw drops in their scores and three of them improved. William E. Grady Career and Technical Education High School in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, which registered one of the city’s largest score increases, went to a B from a D in 2009-10. In 2011, Grady’s graduation rate was just over 50 percent; fewer than 5 percent of those students met the city’s standard for college readiness.

Its new principal, Geraldine Maione, said that because Grady was a vocational school, it attracted mostly students who were looking to move into trades, though some hoped to go to college. She also said the city’s expectations were, at times, unrealistic.

“We know what we’re dealing with,” Ms. Maione said. “Many of my kids are not going to be ready for college in four years, so isn’t it better they stay in high school?”