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.

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.