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April 20, 2010
BILL PERKINS HAS TO TALK ABOUT EXPECTATIONS AND EXPECTATIONS
By Profesor Martin Danenberg "El Quijote del GED"
OUR SCHOOLS More students earning Regents diplomas, it says on the front page of New York Newsday and just a few years ago the Regents were worried about the dropout rate on Long Island. Senator Bill Perkins is in the middle of a hot charter school controversy in New York City, which may die down in a few days. It appears that it doesn't matter if Harlem residents send their children to charter schools in Harlem or public schools on Long Island. The results would probably be the same.
Regents diplomas for African-Americans rose from 80.3 percent to 84.1 percent.
Regents diplomas for Hispanics rose from 85 percent to 86.8 percent.
Regents diplomas for white students rose from 93.7 percent to 94.6 percent.
The top five districts on Long Island are Cold Spring Harbor, Fisher Island, both with 100 percent, and East Williston, Jericho, and Locust Valley, all with 99 percent. It would be great if someone would do a study of those districts to find out what Hispanic and African-American students are doing to succeed there, assuming that those districts are not segregated.
The problem really seems to be the following. Expectations and Expectations. Yes students can fail a regents and take it over. For students who pass the regents the first time, the students own expectation is based on his arrival into the school and how well he is expected to do based on reading scores, math scores, and prior knowledge. The other expectation is the expectation of school staff and how high they make students reach to progress. We really have to measure the progress of schools by the sum total of improvements and not simply by the percentages indicated above. What I have revealed is what will be done to fix "No Child Left Behind." The system was set up wrong from the beginning and that is one of the reasons why public schools and charter schools have had so much controversial material written about them.
In my last visit to Harlem, a youth was talking about the "gentrification" of Harlem which has improved the schools and resulted in other improvements. Harlem is not the Harlem of Geoffrey Canada's youth, a youth that was saved by Wyandanch. I have been to Harlem and walked its streets late at night. It is not even fair to compare Harlem to its past and the same thing is true about my old neighborhood which is the Lower East Side.
Check this out. I happened to pick up Sean Hannity's new book to see what he says about education and there is nothing of great value to me there, but on page 144 of his book ( I was skimming) he reports that the U.S. Census of 1990 showed that there was a great leap forward for all economic groups. Now amazingly, any child born that year would be about 17 years old and ready to graduate from high school between 2007-2009, which are Mayor Bloomberg's most successful years. The 1990's showed continued economic progress until the collapse of the market in 2000 and then again with the global collapse that we are facing now. If we go back to the formative years of the graduates mentioned there, into elementary and intermediate school, we should see similar gains in testing that the mayor was not responsible for. That same change resulting from 1990 is affecting Long Island's schools right now.
MARTIN N. DANENBERG
7 BLAZER DRIVE
ISLANDIA, NEW YORK 11749
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Profesor Martin Danenberg April 20, 2010 08:53 AM