After reading a Newsday editorial admonishing Nassau Community College for their poor graduation rates, I wrote this letter.  They didn't publish it, so I am putting it up here.

I don't know anything about NCC but I work at a different Community College and see similarities in graduation rates.  I say kudos to both schools for keeping their standards and not giving diplomas to students who have not earned them.  

Not all, but many students come into class expecting to do nothing, and pass, just like they did in high school.  They want extra credit and seat credit time.  They expect review sheets where the teacher does every problem for them.  They are so used to the teacher being admonished if they fail, they expect this to continue in college.  They don't buy books and they don't do homework or study.  They can't sit in class for two hours without being on their cell phone, texting or using Facebook.  Aside from this, their skills are appalling.  They can barely multiply.  Division and fractions do not exist in their worlds and decoding is a lost skill.   

I am thrilled to work for an institution, that offers help to students, offers a softer path to college than four year institutions do, but doesn't give away anything.  A degree from this school means something.  I am sure NCC has the same population and the same policy.

Stop pushing the college to graduate more.  You will only end up creating college graduates prepared for nothing, similar to what the public schools do today.  Kudos to these institutions for keeping education real.

Mr. Arrogant chose a seat in the back of the room for the exam.  He saved the seat next to him for a smart, quiet girl, a girl he knew he could browbeat into letting him cheat.

Mr. Arrogant should know by now I see through him.  I moved the girl far away.  He sat alone in the back, turning red and struggled.  I enjoyed every minute of his pain.

Tell me again how so many more students are graduating high school than ever before.  Tell me again how great our kids did under NCLB, RTTT and of course Bloomberg and Walcott's administration.

I've been thinking and maybe I have been wrong.  Since Walcott became chancellor so many kids have walked through those college office doors, kids who never would have done so before.  True, they could barely read and write.  They knew no arithmetic.  They took bogus on line classes, had friends complete computer assignments and got rewarded with parties for just showing up.  They believed everyone owed them and that all they had to do was breathe to graduate, but they did graduate and go on to college.  Under Walcott, colleges are filled with remedial classes, more than ever before.  Few graduate, but hey, he was not a college chancellor so that as not his responsibility.

Under Walcott the college office has been turned into a joke.  Even bright kids are not prepared for university study because high school does nothing.  To get everyone to pass, courses were watered down to nothing.  Kids did not learn study and thinking skills.  Passing was a snap, no studying was required.  I know so many who flunked courses their freshman year because of this lack of preparedness (and don't forget the ones who failed because they had no business being in college in the first place.)

Then again, there could also be a Dennis Walcott Trailer Park of Education.  There is mold, faulty bathrooms, leaky ceilings and plenty of other unsavory conditions.  He also excelled in keeping up the quality of the education environment.

They are a nice bunch of kids.  For the most part, they work in class.  (Heads are only glued to cell phones part of the time.)  They don't study, they don't do homework and they don't own the textbook.  They don't bother going to the lab or library to use it there and they never go for extra help.

Their math skills are non existent as are their study skills.  Single digit test grades are not outliers.  I've spoken to others teaching the same subject.  We all have the same issues with our students.

The Queens School Of Inquiry asks their students not if they are going to college, but where they are going.  I hope the kids in this school are as good as the article says they are.  Looking at some of the students I see in college, I would ask, "Why are you going to college?"  They are wasting time and money.

The Post finally printed an op ed piece that got it right.  Improved graduation rates are nothing to be proud of.  The majority of students getting diplomas today are not ready for college or career.

My remedial class in the college started with 28 students.  We are down to 20.  Out of he 20, six own books and seven hand in homework.  Many come in late and leave early.  Attendance is atrocious.  They don't know multiplication tables and tell me they" don't do fractions or decimals."  They certainly don't study.  The last test I gave had grades ranging from 0 to 71 and 0 was not even an outlier.  The majority of the grades were below 50.  It is impossible to remediate in 4 months topics that should have been studied and learned in 12 years.  It is impossible to get through to kids who see no reason to ever open a book.

The college is trying to help these kids through a special mentoring program.  They are offered extra help and counselors.  At a recent pizza lunch, the students were asked how many hours a week outside of class were spent on school work.  The majority answered two to three hours.  Homework interefered with jobs, televison, Facebook and friends.  Most are taking 12 credits, some more.  The "freak" of this group admitted to studying eight hours had close to a 4.0 index.  The mentors tried to explain why studying worked.  The students either didn't get it or didn't care.  They survived elementary school, middle school and high school without doing any work and saw no reason to start now.  Most will be gone as soon as their financial aid is used up.

This editorial in the Post is only a small start, but it is a start.  If it is truly the goal of the government to keep our country strong, something has got to give.  We did better as a nation when not everyone was pushed into college.  Even drop outs did better than the kids we are turning out today.  At least they knew they didn't get something for nothing.

Lydia spends 2 hours a week in the math lab getting extra help but her tests don't show this at all.  I couldn't understand why someone who seemingly put in so much got so little in return so I asked her how many hours a week she studies at home. 

"Ms, I don't do anything at home.  I can't do this stuff alone and I shouldn't have to.  Sometimes I look at it in my car."

Lydia is a recent graduate from a NYC high school. 

"Mr. Education Mayor, you did a great job here.  Keep up the good work!"

While waiting on line to eat, my dad struck up a conversation with the mom behind us.  My dad tells everyone that I am a math teacher (fatherly pride) and the woman told me how happy she was that her son got a 75 on his algebra regents.  It hurt, but I had to do it.  I told her that the 75 meant the child only had about 42 out of 87 problems correct, which was less than 50% of the exam.  She looked crushed.  She had no idea the grade was so meaningless.

These inflated grades are hurting children, giving parents a  false sense of what their child knows and leaving them totally unprepared for college.  My students, some who got A's in high school, can barely squeak through an algebra-trig class in college.  They only want to do multiple choice questions, where guess and check is a skill they have perfected.  They only know how to regurgitate exactly what they have been taught, that which requires no thinking.

I don't know why I even bother writing this stuff.  No one seems to care enough to change anything.  When the kids don't do well, the test is just given again with more test prep and less teaching.  As Zulma just said: 

The relationship of course grades to regents scores is obvious to everyone except the principals, who want to keep their jobs, and the students who think that they have acquired the necessary skills. When they get to college, they see that their diploma can be used as scrap paper. Reparation from this damage will take longer than the damage from the 1974/75 lay off of 15,000 teachers.