One of the metrics the DOE and politicians love to use is the graduation rate. Every year the graduation inches up and everybody praises the heavens for the apparent improvement. However, when I looked at the snapshot of the Queens High Schools, I found that there was a real; disconnect between the graduation rate and the"college and career readiness"rate. Why is that important? Its important because it shows that far too many students are graduating unprepared for high education and for good paying jobs. A recent study shows that a college graduate makes 56% more money than a high school graduate and every year the gap widens, that's why the "college and career readiness" metric is an important metric for a student's financial success.
While disappointing Chancellor Carmen Farina may keep claiming how academically the schools are improving, her policies and the poor administrative quality at Tweed and in the schools suggest otherwise. In most of the high schools in the Bronx and the deep poverty communities in Southeast Queens and Eastern Brooklyn the"college and career readiness"rates are in single digits while graduating 70% or more of the students. In other words, these schools are graduating students unprepared for the adult world.
Previously, I came up with a simple ratio to determine if the high schools are giving their students a real education or simply an academic fraud factory. You can find the list for all unscreened Queens school Here. As one can see, looking at the list, the schools located in solidly middle class neighborhoods attract a racially diverse student body and has a stable and an experienced teaching staff. By contrast, the schools with the worst numbers have a nearly 100% minority student population, suffers from high teacher turnover, and an inexperienced teaching staff. Add that to the poor quality of the school administration and the many over-the-counter- students these schools must accept to keep their school afloat and you have a recipe for educational disaster.
With the present policies implemented by Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein still in place, like the school-based fair student funding, the ATR crisis, and student free choice at the high school level, I see little real change to our student educational needs as inequality between the haves and have nots will continue and students who are stuck in poorly performing high schools like the Renewal schools will have a dim future when it comes to financial success.