Since the election of Donald Trump as President, "fake news", is the news. Be it from Trump himself , the Democrats, or the media, "fake news" is all the rage. However, at the DOE, fake news has or misinformation has been the name of the game since the Bloomberg era and continues with Bill de Blasio.
What do I mean by fake news? The graduation rate which is easily manipulated and fails to show real student academic achievement is what I call fake news.. Every year the City tells the world that the graduation rate increases from the previous year The latest is 72%. However, ask any business or institution of higher learning what they think of the academic proficiency of the New York City graduates and you get a near universal response of how deficient academically these graduates are. In fact, 78% of all New York City high school graduates must take no-credit remedial courses in college. Furthermore, the average New York City high school averages 37% "college and career readiness" of the high school graduates. Not an encouraging statistic if you ask me. Exclude the 45 top performing high schools, most of them screened or specialized and the remainder of the high schools average closer to 22% for "college and career readiness". A study by StudentsFirst lists the lowest 72 high schools in the City, based on the 2014-15 school year. While I usually ignore the education deformer group, their numbers show how bogus the graduation rate is when compared to real academic proficiency. I also wrote about the "diploma mill" high schools Here and Here.
The City high schools are full of easy credit "credit recovery courses", online instruction without a certified teacher instructing students such as APEX or PLATO, and administrative pressure on teachers to pass undeserving students by imposing scholarship requirements. The result is that these "diploma mill" schools with there phony graduation rates is a disservice to the students.
When you read in the newspapers that the City is improving the academic ability of their student population, remember its all "fake news"!