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Okay let us get back to important matters. In 2002, when there was a Department of Education and fewer charter schools, 54.1 percent of the students (who took the Advanced Placement exams) passed as opposed to 51.1 percent of students (who took the Advanced Placement exams) in 2002. Yoav Gonen does not provide the numbers for 2002 and it is important to have the numbers (because it is possible that most students did not take the exams who were expected to take them). There was no mention of statistics, at all in his article, for Hispanic students, although education officials applauded their improvement. Usually when there is an increase in something, the percentage should go up. So there is something fishy here going on that has to be cleared up. Based on what I read, I cannot conclude that things are A-OK. I have been saying that our high school students may be less prepared than they were in 2002 or 1992 and the low percentage may be an indicator of that.
Education officials, it says (I repeat), applauded the increases, but we also know that 20 schools were slated to be closed and perhaps those schools had substantial increases in students passing the placement exams, but did not meet up to other standards that appear to determine their future status. I wonder what the improvement rate in those schools was on the Advanced Placement exams. What was the increase among their students who took Advanced Placement courses? If those schools did not promote taking the Advanced Placement exams and bring up their numbers, doesn't the Department of Education have a role in that.

Education officials seem to always applaud the increased numbers and spread the word across the city to boost the perception of their performance. There are time when there are most students graduating, for example, but the dropout rate has gone up at the same time. This is the caveat that the public has to pay attention to. Things may seem to be getting better and not A-OK at all. It is also essential to look at the years before 2002 and see what kind of growth was taking place at that time, too. Was the old Board of Education making the same kind of progress without teaching to the test or were things stagnant. I would love to see what was going on. So you see we need all kinds of numbers to tell us just how effective the system really is. Take into account how many English Language learners were moving into the city at that time, too, and the level of poverty they were at compared with previous generations. Also take into account just where they started out as a true indicator of progress made by the schools. Many children come here well advanced in math and science and fall behind in their individual progress in New York City and tell me if that was calculated at all. A few years ago, the head of ASPRIRA told me that seventy-percent of Puerto Ricans were dropping out of school in Cleveland, Ohio. What would the impact be on New York City's school results if it had to deal with a huge problem like that? The growth in Hispanics taking the Advanced Placement exams may be largely an outgrowth of increasing Hispanic immigrants and newly arrived Puerto Ricans, who were better prepared from the start to move up the ladder to Advanced Placement exams, where previously there was a slight increase or even a decline. Are these children as economically disadvantaged as previous generations have been? We talk about the third grade reading results leading to the pipeline to prison and I am sure that third grade reading results could lead us to conclude who will take the Advanced Placement exams. If that is true, the Board of Education is as much responsible as the Department of Education because the Board of Education started many of those youth on the right track about ten years ago. As you can see much more research is needed to come to the "right" conclusions. A comparison of the reading scores from low to high and the passing of Advanced Placement exams could be assessed based on that information.

Look for a moment at the GED picture which is controlled by the same Department of Education. GED students in GED ACCESS are arbitrarily held back from taking the GED. This is being done by the leadership of the Department of Education. A practice test score of 2.400 is being used to hold young people back from passing a test where the passing score is 2,250. If the parents found out that the same thing were going on with their children and the advanced placement exams, they would be up in arms about this matter and I do not care what kind of support those schools were providing in terms of other things going on in the school. I wonder if students are being kept back from taking the Advanced Placement exams by the administrators of the schools? The school system does not want to look bad ever, but it is doing bad things that are not being addressed properly and that hurts its success rate.

ONLY A FEW YEARS AGO THE DROPOUT NUMBER WAS AROUND 21,000. WHAT IS THAT NUMBER FOR 2008?

MARTIN N. DANENBERG
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