The Actual Introduction

“A 16-year-old eighth grader has a 16 percent chance of walking away with a high school diploma once she reaches high school.”

--Stuck in the Middle: The Problem of Overage Middle School Students in New York City, a report by the Out of School Youth Coalition and written by Advocates for Children of New York

MY INVESTIGATIVE SERIES

New York City recently proposed a policy that will not let middle school students graduate if they get failing grades on standardized tests that are required to advance to high school.

The problem here is that there are already too many students being held back for other reasons. If this new policy is implemented, those numbers will continue to rise. Clearly, 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds should not have to be placed in the same classes as 11-, 12- and 13-year-old students. So, I'll examine why so many students are being held back and what NYC middle schools are doing in response to this.

Other questions: Are there particular schools that have a lot of these failing students? How are the schools helping the students? Or, are they even helping at all? How do the teachers feel about the new policy, and what are their struggles?

THE PROBLEM

In July 2008, Advocates for Children released a report revealing shocking statistics of overage children in middle schools.

IMPORTANT DEFINITIONS

Overage middle school student: A student in grades six through eight who has been held back one or more times. Although a student is technically overage once she or he has been held back once, the examples and figures in the previously mentioned report will focus on those students who have been held over two or more times, as school districts, including New York City, commonly use this definition to categorize overage students.*

Middle school: Middle schools for the purposes of the AFC study are defined as schools with grades six through eight, and they usually serve students between the ages of 11 and 14.*

STATISTICS*

Overage Middle School Students in the Bronx
Out of 6,052 students:

• 1,592 students or 26.3 percent of population of the nine schools are overage
• 1,103 students or 18.2 percent are one year overage
• 397 students or 6.6 percent are two years overage
• 92 students or 1.5 percent are three years overage

THE POSSIBLE CAUSES*

1. Schooling is interrupted.
2. Students need to change schools but have nowhere to go.
3. Appropriate academic supports are not provided.

THE POSSIBLE EFFECTS*

As the number of years a student is overage increases, the student’s average attendance rate decreases:

• Non-overage students have a 92 percent attendance rate
• Students who are one year overage have an 88 percent attendance rate
• Students who are two years overage have an 82 percent attendance rate
• Students who are three years overage have a 67 percent attendance rate

* Information taken from Advocates for Children Report

WHY MIDDLE SCHOOLS ARE "A MESS"

Middle schools in New York City have been in trouble for a long time.

In 2007, The New York Times published The Critical Years, a series of stories challenging teaching methods in middle schools and altering communication techniques with adolescents.

In March 2007, nine of the city’s schools were at risk of shutting down because of academic failure. Of those nine, eight were middle schools.

Later that year, the Times wrote a story about a NYC middle school where students committed intolerable acts — such as throwing books out the window and writing hateful messages using vulgar language on the blackboard—and yet the school received an A from the city’s Education Department.

The Intro to the Intro...

Welcome to my first blog. Ever.

I am literally two days into the second semester in the graduate journalism department at New York University. For my Investigations in Depth class, I will spend the next 15 weeks completing a three-part series about problems in the New York City middle school system. Specifically, I will focus on the issue of overage students: students that are ages 16 through 18 and still taking seventh- and eighth-grade courses. Each week, I will post relevant notes, thoughts, photographs and other findings that will help me with the stories.

This week, my goal is to learn everything I can about the NYC school system: Laws, policies, possible sources, problems, funding issues, etc. Please stay tuned.