Abogados de Inmigracion

Since those days, I have obtained the support of two presidents of Latin America for my educational campaign (one making a major GED announcement on the two major Spanish TV networks and the other taking a picture, holding the Official Practice Test to urge his people to educate themselves), the National Association of Hispanic Publications, I have been in Hoy, the sister newspaper of Newsday, I have spoken at the LCLAA (representing 1.5 million Latino workers) Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and I have been on HITN-TV with the President Elect of the National Hispanic Bar Association talking about GED to people across our nation and around the world. What does it take to get a mayor to listen to an average person?

These points should be known across the great city of New York.

In each generation, more high school seniors fail the GED test, recently it rose from 40 percent to 43 percent. Standards have been raised and still more people fail the GED test. New York City has had much lower GED graduates for a decade than it should have had and this issue is not be tackled by Bloomberg-Klein. In other words, their productivity is actually low.

The litmus test of the work in the schools is what they take away with them at the end of their school days, not what they possess in the third or fourth grades. And a lot of students who fail the required tests could pass the next week, if they were retested since they fail by only one, two, or three in correct answers. Holding these students back in summer school is a waste of the tax payers’ money and puts unneeded stress on the family during vacation periods. It also gives too much credit to a school system when we know people can often do much better on a test the next day.

Mores students are failing in the eighth grade in New York City and the dropout is greater because of the raising of standards and problems that the schools are not addressing properly. Even poorly educated students who have dropped out and go into GED should not be there and better counseling has to be given to them and their parents during exit interviews or exit interviews should be required by the schools.

Teachers can teach to test and provide good overall instruction too, which is probably not happening, and I base my comment on the argument between the Chancellor of the Department of Education and the UFT Union President.
Alaska reaches 3.6 percent of the people who need a GED in a year and New York only reaches 1 percent in a year. New York City is probably lower than one percent. Many other states are making their people much more competitive in the 21st Century than New York. I have the plan to help New York catch up and that plan involved mobilizing the entire city and not just a thirty people in a classroom.

In a conversation with the Chairperson of the of the Chancellor’s Parents Council, the chairperson told me she would not advocate for the GED for the parents of the children. This type of thinking holds back progress for the most oppressed minorities and the poor in our city. We all have to work together!

Martin N. Danenberg
7 Blazer Drive
Islandia, NY 11749
631-348-1341
GEDHOTLINE@AOL.COM
WWW.GEOCITIES.COM/GEDHOTLINE