By Profesor Martin Danenberg "El Quijote del GED"

I had planned to talk about the GED, but I pushed it aside, knowing that people who attended the conference in Dowling College could read my comments on ahorre.com. I plan to ask the Department of Justice for funds to bring my GED initiative to gangs in Brentwood and across the United States.

To be or not to be diversity. That is the question. If a computer program could replace all teachers and school personnel , educating students better than people, we could eliminate the problem of diversity in the schools. As long as we have problems from teachers of all races (as it was revealed by people there), we can only make slight gains in the system. The system, I told the audience , is very imperfect. Whether it is charter school or non-charter school, it will be the same. Students are often to blame, too, as well as the home life. The panelists are invited to participate in an educational conference that I hope to do. They were very educated and articulate, greatly appreciated. The idea hit me in the middle of the conference that we do not need diversity, if we could just educate students. I did not speak about this because it was more important to share with the moderators, panelists, and attendees that what is going on in Brentwood is the key to turning school districts around. The potential for community involvement is incredible as 2,100 people have joined the BRAVE on Facebook. The violence has to stop and new resources can finally be brought into this school district.

Bring the police cars into Brentwood, but give the Practice Test to all of the youth who have dropped out of school. Lock up the gang members? Lock 'em up with the GED.

Salvadorans met to discuss programs and bring forth their ideas and feelings about the violence and aftermath in Brentwood. I was really pleased to see Luis Mendez and Sergio Argueta at the meeting. Why? Mendez has an organization of 5,000 soccer players and Argueta is a gang specialist. A member of the Argueta team wants me to help his friend who has recently arrived from El Salvador. Mendez has been helping youth to be rescued by supporting them in the courts and providing society with that all important community service project that turns lives around. Sure culture and pride in community are important because everyone has to play his role in helping the community, but we are not going to change the community by positive words and only helping people one by one (or even two by two as it says in the Bible). We are going to mobilize the community thirty by thirty or fifty by fifty. The same thing happened in Harlem last year, people were talking about Princeton and poetry and then a youth talked about the violence, the poverty, and the other major problems. This is what I want to hear from the youth. The youth are speaking out about the fear and violence in their communities and the meeting in Brentwood was not a disappointment, especially since I was able to present information on the GED on Wheels project I want to launch and tell the Brentwood community that we can successfully mobilize the community to lower the dropout rate from high school, help parent and child accelerate in the acquisition of English, and cut down on the gangs through the GED and other opportunities.

GED=Adult Education=Education for Gang Members=Workforce Development. Yes GED happens to be education, essential education that helps parents eliminate their poverty, helping their children in school. This is a key to greater parental involvement and better communities. New York City and Brentwood-Central Islip need help badly and they will get it.

I personally thanked Yoav Gonen of the New York Post the other day for his articles on GED and education or is it education or GED or is it just education since GED is the orphan of education. Christine Quinn and everyone else can learn that this part of Gonen's article is critical and not the rest. The governor of Arizona is calling for the total elimination of adult education money and people fear this means eliminating the GED. I doubt that that will happen there since people pay $95 to take the GED. The good news for New York is that the system will stay afloat with the $2.4 million. There is lots of bad news. Brentwood is the home of several murders caused by gang violence. There were three stabbings the other day (George Washington H.S. and Newtown H.S. being accounting for two of the stabbings, and IS 302). Not all violence is caused by gang members inside and outside of the schools working together as gang members, but they are making things really bad throughout our nation. We need a "star search" to find the gap in GED funding and we are not going to find it on television. Now we can see what the city council is made up of. Can that city council work with state officials and find the funds from foundations and corporate America? Mayor Bloomberg allegedly put $20 million of his own money into fighting poverty in New York, working with the Robin Hood Foundation and others. Where is the private money for GED testing? Albany and New York City are both failing its people and there is never an end to this.

I want all of the community organizations that are hungry to get money to operate to do one thing. Bring a gang member or other youth hanging out on the streets into your program today and give that person the OPT or Official Practice Test for the GED. Show them that you care about them. Your community organizations have been as effective as the police, doing its job but not quite good enough. Where is the mention of the GED in Sergio Argueta's article? If the police themselves had administered the GED Practice Test to youth they arrested as part of their confinement process, we probably would not have had this great outburst of violence in Brentwood and other communities. I said probably not definitely. Why do people neglect to mention the GED for the youth in gangs and just focus on the youth in general in speaking to the community or writing articles? I do not get it except for this. It seems to be all about the money and the survival of organizations that people say are doing a great job when I know they are not. "Great" is a word we use too loosely. I, personally, have accomplished only a millionth of what I set out to do. Sergio, let us bring the GED to MS-13 members around the country and to their fellow gang members in El Salvador today. When I called for a youth conference about three years ago, where was the support for my idea from all of those community organizations?

MARTIN N. DANENBERG
7 BLAZER DRIVE
ISLANDIA, NEW YORK 11749
631-348-1341
GEDHOTLINE@AOL.COM
New:
www.mygedhotline.com

www.geocities.com/gedhotline
www.ahorre.com/ged
www.ahorre.com
www.aspira.org

By Profesor Martin Danenberg "El Quijote del GED"

The newspapers reported slight increases for high school graduation for minorities in New York City and Long Island. There is no mayoral control of the schools on Long Island. Wyandanch (50 percent), Central Islip (63 percent), Greenport (64 percent), and Brentwood (74 percent) are lowest in 5 year graduation rates in Suffolk County. In Nassau County, Hempstead (59 percent), Roosevelt (66 percent), and Freeport (73 percent) were the lowest. Hispanics were up 2.5 percent in Suffolk and 2.9 percent in Nassau. Nothing spectacular, right? With a lot of room to improve, the schools are not getting the job done. Hempstead, Wyandanch, and Roosevelt saw graduation rates drop since last year and the authorities are concerned about this. I have tried to help two of those schools in the last couple of years and I tried to help Roosevelt years ago, but I was not invited in. Hispanic improvement resulted in New York City, jumping from 48.8 percent to 51.8 percent. Still way lower than both Suffolk and Nassau. I would love to measure the "Obama Effect" for African-Americans.

I met people in Albany that I had never met before. It started as a met UFT President Michael Mullgrew. My information has been going to the office of the President of the UFT for years. Then I met Senator John Sampson of Brooklyn, telling him that I am partnering with the Sean Bell Foundation and hoping to bring the French GED to Haiti. Speaker Sheldon Silver was next, shaking hands with him and telling him that I am the other Danenberg. It was a great day, meeting Romel Viel who is helping me with my GED for Committee for Haiti efforts. With a lot of room to improve, the schools are not getting the job done.

Haiti is seeking money to get students back into school, it was reported in New York Newsday today. President Preval said jobs have to be brought to the provinces and that requires roads, electricity, education, and health. The United States, facing a great disaster called World War II, rose to the challenge by creating the GED for American youth who could not finish school as they chose to fight in that war. Adults who never had a chance to finish school did the same test to earn diplomas that improved there lives. I am told that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger earned a GED. It is imperative that we bring the GED to Haiti with the total cooperation of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama. Funds can be set aside to pay the costs of testing. We have had more than fifteen million graduates of the GED and I do not believe that Haiti has been participating at all in worldwide GED testing in English.

The GED Testing Center in the Sonderling was closed years ago. Does anyone in the community care about the GED, dropout prevention, and English language acquisition for the immigrants? Do you feel these initiatives are needed? As the school year winds down at Brentwood High School and it is clear that many students are not going to return to school to complete the high school diploma, is this community going to rest knowing that youth without a diploma may express themselves through violence? Don't you think the school should have a real dropout prevention program to bring those students back into high school and make the streets safer? Don't you want the youth to obtain the GED at nineteen instead of 29 or 39? What do you want? What do your elected officials want? What do Steve Levy and other county officials want? You are being shocked by the fact that there are not 200 more police to patrol Brentwood. Is that shock going to prevent you from making the commitment to educate every youth in your community?

By Profesor Martin Danenberg "El Quijote del GED"

Brentwood is ready to stop the violence. Please see my new website which is www.mygedhotline.com. My work is much more respected in New York City and around the country than in the communities where I live and eat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Jsdh2qlpo See the NYPD-Hip Hop Anti-Violence event in Andrew Jackson High School in Queens.

The crowd kept pouring in from the Brentwood Public Library parking lot and instead of sending the overflow home, the organizers opened up two additional rooms. Violence resulting from gangs and children bullying other children were discussed. There were around 600 people who came out and only 50 were expected. I told the audience that the White House is going to hear about this. This was, without a doubt , the most amazing meeting I have ever attended anywhere. Families of victims spoke out and they were supported by residents and business people demanding immediate results.

If you need a GED program for yourself or someone you love, simply click on the ahorre page to the right of "America's GED Hotline and click where it says "clic aquí" in red letters. That takes you to my website and then go to the page that says "services" and you can order the program by pay pal.

Brentwood, New York has had, what police feel are, a series of gang related shootings and now there was a stabbing on the streets. Farmingville became infamous, then Patchogue-Medford for violence against immigrants. Brentwood is becoming infamous for its gang related activities. The GED Testing Center in Brentwood was closed down almost three years ago and nobody did a thing about it. The Central Islip Recreation Center nearby was asked to get my GED program for the youth in the community and that died. Over two years ago, I called for a youth conference, knowing that the violence happening in Europe would spread here. There are far fewer opportunities now on Long Island and the youth in gangs and around gangs are doing things that were predictable to me. That is one of the reasons that I agreed to become the vice-chairman of Operation SNUG, the anti-gun task force. Communities around the country can learn from the mistakes of Brentwood now. In Far Rockaway, recently, the focus at a meeting was on gangs and revitalizing the community through new GED initiatives.

Christine Quinn has done what I urged Fernando Ferrer and William Thompson to do. This has been a long road to wake up elected officials. There are about three million adults affected by the GED in New York City alone. We just have to make sure that Christine Quinn gets the rest right. I thank Speaker Quinn for the comments in her speech.
I have been knocking my head against the wall in New York City since the Gifford Miller days and I am tired of most of the City Council. They have not done a good job at all. From political corruption to corruption of their minds, they have held New York City back. It is time for a change, but the Council needs to be better informed in order to make that change. I am not known as "Mr. GED for nothing!

Alaska is much more interesting, even though its number have fallen from record breaking numbers. Alaska mobilizes 5.1 percent of its population toward the GED and Iowa mobilizes only 2.1 percent. The completion rate for each 3.6 percent and 1.4 percent. Iowa is mediocre compared to Alaska and at 32 percent its incompletion is comparable to Iowa's incompletion. All the news that's fit to print? Huh? I think not.

Here it is again for the entire NAACP to read. Teddy Pendergrast is gone, but the work needed is not, unfortunately.
Wake up everybody no more sleepin in bed
No more backward thinkin time for thinkin ahead
The world has changed so very much
From what it used to be so
there is so much hatred war an' poverty
Wake up all the teachers time to teach a new way
Maybe then they'll listen to whatcha have to say
Cause they're the ones who's coming up and the world is in their hands
when you teach the children teach em the very best you can.

You can view three of my videos on You Tube (simply go to You Tube and type mygedhotline in the search area). Go to You Tube and view the Jackie Wilson video, the Hip-Hop-NYPD video, and the Sean Bell's father's pain video.

Sean Bell's father, William Bell, and I met with people attending the NAACP meetings in New York City on Friday. We loved the support that we were given there. The announcement was made that there is a new Chairperson and that person is Roslyn M. Brock who is 44 years old. She will be working with Benjamin Todd Jealous, who is 37, in leading the 500,000 member organization.

The old Board of Education may be responsible for many of the success shown below.

First the good news. There were 1,400 more Advanced Placement exams passed in 2009 than in 2008.
New York State students who passed made New York State number two in the country behind Maryland.
Black youth saw an increase in one year from 4,560 to 4,933. This number is way up from 2002 when it was 2,902.

New York City has a much higher percent of students taking at least one Advanced Placement exam in science and math. The figures are 14.5 percent in science and 13 percent in math compared to 8.8 percent in science and 9.7 percent in math across the nation.

Unfortunately people in power make decisions based on limited knowledge and faulty information. Florida decided to give, what they call, a high school diploma to GED graduates who earned a minimum score overall and a 45 on each part of the test (their minimum passing score). New York only gave a GED to all of the those who achieved those scores and much higher scores. Offsite Educational Services was allowing students in GED programs to graduate with people who passed the GED test, people who never actually passed the test. The people of New York deserve more expanded programs, but the DOE is just giving us the same...same...same...with slight changes. Yes the 19 schools slated for closing should have expanded vocational training programs and stay open.

A Haitian friend asked me how will the GED help people in Haiti. I am calling for all universities in the United States to open their doors to Haitians who want to study in the United States and Puerto Rico. France and other countries can do the same thing. Are we going to help Haiti long term or abandon it soon? Five seats in each university and community college can produce a different leadership and a different future for Haiti. The GED is so badly needed in Haiti because intelligent people have ended their formal education long before their high school years. Intelligent people, des gens intelligents, mounn inteligent! There is great governmental, corporate, and private support for Haiti. The GED plan really cannot fail and there will be no corruption tolerated in achieving the goals to help the people. There are many other applications for the GED in Haiti. Trust me on it!