NY Board Of Regents: Only 10% Of Charter School Graduates Are College Ready

Buried in this NY Times article about the low percentage of NY State public school graduates who are "college ready" is the news that charter schools do not prepare students as well as traditional public schools:

New York State education officials released a new set of graduation statistics on Monday that show less than half of students in the state are leaving high school prepared for college and well-paying careers.

The new statistics, part of a push to realign state standards with college performance, show that only 23 percent of students in New York City graduated ready for college or careers in 2009, not counting special-education students. That is well under half the current graduation rate of 64 percent, a number often promoted by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as evidence that his education policies are working.

But New York City is still doing better than the state’s other large urban districts. In Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers, less than 17 percent of students met the proposed standards, including just 5 percent in Rochester.

The Board of Regents, which sets the state’s education policies, met on Monday to begin discussing what to do with this data, and will most likely issue a decision in March. One option is to make schools and districts place an asterisk next to the current graduation rate, or have them report both the current graduation rate and the college ready rate, said Merryl H. Tisch, the chancellor of the Board of Regents.

...

With President Obama making college readiness and international competitiveness a top national goal, and federal and philanthropic money pouring into finding ways to raise national education standards, that equation is changing, they said. “It is a national crisis,” Dr. Steiner said.

Statewide, 77 percent of students graduate from high school. Currently, a student needs to score a 65 on four of the state’s five required Regents exams to graduate, and beginning next year, they will need a 65 on all five.

Using data collected by state and community colleges, testing experts on a state committee determined last year that a 75 on the English Regents and a 80 on the math Regents roughly predicted that students would get at least a C in a college-level course in the same subject. Scores below that meant students had to often take remediation classes before they could do college-level work. Only 41 percent of New York State graduates in 2009 achieved those scores.

In the wealthier districts across the state, the news is better: 72 percent of students in “low need” districts are graduating ready for college or careers. But even that is well under the 95 percent of students in those districts who are now graduating.

The data also cast new doubt on the ability of charter schools to outperform their traditional school peers. Statewide, only 10 percent of students at charters graduated in 2009 at college-ready standards, though 49 percent received diplomas. The state has not yet calculated results for every district and school.

Interesting that the medicine that President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg, David Steiner, Meryl Tisch, Bill Gates and other education reformers have prescribed for this supposed "crisis" in college readiness - charter schools - doesn't cure the disease any better than traditional public schools.

Might it be that the strategy we have been pursuing - charter school expansion, additional testing in every subject at every level, regulated curricula written from Washington, closing schools and firing teachers - isn't actually working?

Might it be more prudent to look at alternative strategies that do seem to address the problems in education like teaching social and emotional skills and awareness to children in the very early grades so that they develop into more socially adept, well-adjusted middle school students with fewer propensities to act out and a better ability to focus, be attentive and pay attention?

There is some evidence that kind of thing works.

Ah, but there is no money in that kind of curricula, is there?

I mean, why would the powers that be want to help develop well-adjusted, emotionally aware children who will become well-adjusted, emotionally aware adults who just might to decide that the way that American society is currently constituted - with 85% of the wealth owned by just 10% of the country - isn't in their interests and it is time for REAL CHANGE?

The ed deformers like to say "We Know What Works" when they talk about reform - they mean KIPP-like charters with 6 day/70 hour work weeks, rigorous discipline and regimentation, and the like.

But that stuff only works with a small segment of the population.

REAL REFORM requires teaching skills and lessons beyond academics and it just isn't something that Bloomberg, Obama, Gates, Broad, et al. are going to want to do.

They would rather create KIPP factories that teach the three tenets of 21st century American society: WORK, SHOP, OBEY.

And then scapegoat schools and teachers for the "crisis" that they have created through economic inequity and that enriches them every day of their lives.