The First Story

Here is the first of the three-part series. Meet Destinee Rivera, a 16-year-old eighth-grader who is trying to break the cycle of overage middle schoolers.

Overage Middle Schoolers Struggle to Pass

Education in the News

First Impressions Can Create Unrealistic Expectations for Recruits

While some middle school students are behind, others are soaring ahead. A New York Times article discusses Kendall Marshall, a 6-foot-3, 175-pound junior guard at Bishop O'Connell high school in Columbia, S.C. But years ago, when Marshall was just 5-foot-2 and 90 pounds, he was ranked the No. 1 sixth-grade basketball prospect in the country by analyst Clark Francis. The story discusses how Marshall is still a good player but is no longer the best. Perhaps ranking children at a young age sets them up for failure, the NYT says.

Rewards for Children Under a Microscope

What are they, dogs? High school students have been getting paid to perform well on standardized tests. Now, it might be backfiring. Lisa Guernsey, of the New York Times, writes, "Reward programs that pay students are under way in many cities. In some places, students can bring home hundreds of dollars for, say, taking an Advanced Placement course and scoring well on the exam."

2 Schools Bloomberg Started Cited for Poor Performance

The Schools Under Registration Review is a list of state schools that comes out every year to show what schools are doing so poorly that they are in danger of being shut down. The Bloomberg administration created several smaller high schools in hopes of replacing "large, abysmal high schools." This year, two of Bloomberg's schools made the cut and appeared on the state list.

FOIL/FOIA Request

Below is a draft of my FOIL/FOIA request letter that I plan to send to the NYC Department of Education. I am requesting the number of overage middle school students in New York City organized by both school and borough. In order to show how evident the problem of overage middle school students is in NYC, I need these statistics in my story.


March 2, 2009

Ms. Christine Kicinski
Records Access Officer
New York City Department of Education
(212) 374-6888
FOIL@schools.nyc.gov

Dear Ms. Kicinski:

Under the Freedom of Information Law, N.Y. Public Officers Law Section 87 et seq., I am requesting documents showing the following statistics:

- The number of overage middle school students in New York City organized by borough (overage middle school students are students who are in grades six through eight and have been held back one or more times.)

- The number of overage middle school students in New York City organized by school

I am a freelance reporter and graduate journalism student at New York University writing a story about overage middle school students in New York City. Please telephone me at 443-812-2241 if you have any further questions.

Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,


Sarah R. Kaufman
Graduate Student
Department of Journalism
New York University
(443) 812-2241
SarahRKaufman@gmail.com

"Why Should Educators Assess Student Learning?"

Sometimes, when a student is way overage for her grade, teachers will still pass her to the next grade because, if she gets even further behind, it's not likely that she will graduate high school. This means a student moves on, regardless of how she does on an exam, class assignments, participation and, as a whole, how well she understands the material. In a section of Alan J. Singer's book Social Studies for Secondary Schools, he examines the question: Why should educators assess learning?

"According to the [National Council for Social Studies] (1991)," he writes, "'the overriding purpose of testing in social studies classrooms is to improve learning.' Unfortunately, that is not always the case."

There are various ways to excite students about taking tests and, more importantly, desiring high grades when taking them. Singer recites a few he experienced as an education student in college: encourage competition between students for higher grades (so that everyone would study), make all of the choices on multiple-choice tests the same length, avoid making "B" the right answer too often (because it is the most popular "wild guess" answer) -- among other tips. But, Singer returns to his main question as to why educators assess students using tests and grading. He is quite critical of the concept and argues that "testing and grading are only indirectly related to instruction and the assessment of learning. Additionally, the assumption here is that education is a series of contests between students and teachers."

The chief purposes of attending school are to (1) learn academic material and (2) use that material to become academically prepared for the following grade (or, year in school). But singer argues that:

"The purpose of testing was to assignment grades. Tests and grades were weapons to control classes and make students do the work through extrinsic rewards and punishments. Students who tried, but who did not do very well, we offered extra help, but ultimately put in 'slower' classes where they would 'experience success.' Those who failed the tests because they did not seem to care were cajoled with threats, calls or letters home, low grades, or failure for the course."

Again, Singer provides examples as to why tests and grading do not directly related to their jobs of helping students to learn the academic materials and preparing students for the next school year. Finally, he uses a specific example of one student who was quite charismatic about school and usually performed well but only in class -- never on tests. The student loved social studies and was very vocal in class, but he refused to do homework assignments and failed miserably on the tests. After retaking tests -- even after studying, but only upon Singer's request -- he still failed. Eventually, one day during lunch, Singer read aloud to him multiple choice questions and the students fed back the answers. He answered 80 percent of them correctly. Singer describes the student:

"He understood what we were studying in class, but he did not know how to read well enough to do the homework assignments or distinguish between the choices on the multiple-choice tests."

Ultimately, the student passed the class, enabling him to move on to high school. But, that was only because he was already overage for middle school. Singer explained that this case might be one of extremity but argued that it common to have students like him -- students who are excited about the information and about the classes but continue to perform poorly on tests because of poor literacy skills. "Unfortunately, in teaching, as in life," Singer said, "there are few fairy tale endings."

"Stuck in the Middle"

Here is the overage middle school students report (the top link) by the Out of Youth Coalition and written by the Advocates for Children in NYC. The introduction of the report states:

"New York City does not have a good record of being able to prepare all middle school students to succeed in high school. Leading education advocacy groups in the city, such as the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice, have documented that middle schools have largely been a place of failure for blacks and Latinos with "twice as many White and Asian eighth-graders meetin[ing] the New York State standard in ELA [English Language Arts] than African American and Latino students." Research demonstrates that middle grade achievement is strongly connected with achievement in, and ultimately graduation from, high school. Given that only one in four black and Latino students can expect to receive a Regent's diploma, New York City must make a serious commitment to improving middle school performance."

The report documents specific cases of students who have been held back in middle school for various reasons, as well as statistics seen in my previous blog entry.

The Opposite Side

Remember that many over-age middle schools students do not advance to high school for three specific reasons -- (1) Schooling is interrupted, (2) students need to change schools but have nowhere to go and (3) appropriate academic supports are not provided -- according to the reported published by Advocates for Children of New York City.

But what about the opposite end of the spectrum? The New York City public school admissions process has grown to be competitive and overwhelming. The New York Times published an article in December about the struggles of one mother and daughter to show the tedious steps for families who have children getting ready for high school. Reporter Jennifer Medina writes:

Ms. [Clara] Hemphill, who is a senior editor at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, has skipped at least two full days of work this fall, and has come in late or left early many other times to attend campus tours. She spent much of November on the phone with parents of children enrolled in the schools Allison was interested in. This weekend, her daughter had an 8 a.m. audition at Professional on Saturday and a 1:30 p.m. interview at Beacon on Sunday.

“I’m about as well-equipped as I can be, and I find it to be incredibly exhausting and frustrating,” she said. “You have to keep track of which application has to come with an essay, which has to be hand delivered, which requires a tour. It can be a full-time job.”


When they are in eighth grade, more than 80,000 NYC students must rank the city's 400 high schools in order from their top to bottom choices. When spring arrives, each student is assigned to a high school, usually the student's top choice. But the process is demanding and confusing because public schools do not have an admissions staffs like private schools do.

In this particular case, eighth grader Allison Snyder and her mother, Clara Hempill, make the time and have the motivation to trek through the tiresome high school admissions process. But what about those who don't? As mentioned in last week's posting, a new policy in New York City will make it so that students now must pass standardized tests to advance to high school. This -- in addition to the already demanding process of high school admissions, in addition to those listed by the Advocates for Children -- may only increase the number of over-age middle school students and might, in fact, fuel the problem even further.

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.