‘Far too many – if not most -big-city kids are presented to thepublic-school system at the age of 5or so wholly unprepared toparticipate in their own education.’
ONLY Rudy Crew could find a bright ray of sunshine in one of the darkest public-policy clouds ever to pass over New York City – those new state tests showing that two of every three fourth-graders here can’t read.
It’s not that they can’t read well enough to have a fighting chance of someday earning a high-school diploma.
Or that they can’t read ”at grade level” (whatever that means).
It’s that 67.23 percent of New York City’s fourth graders can’t read!
Period.
So here’s Crew’s spin.
”I believe these data demonstrate that we’re closing the gap. New York state, as a whole, didn’t do a dramatically better job,” says the schools chancellor.
”I’m not embarrassed by these numbers at all.”
No doubt. Rudy Crew is beyond embarrassment. Plus he has a very difficult time with the truth – both telling it and, it’s now clear, coping with it.
At issue is the reading test administered last January to all fourth-graders in the state. It was mandated by Albany in an effort to toughen public-school performance standards.
There appear to be some legitimate questions as to whether the new test really is tougher than the third-grade exams that it superseded – but, for the moment, it is the only statewide benchmark available for the measurement of elementary-school outcomes.
And New York City did horribly: Just 32.7 percent of the city’s 75,400 fourth-graders performed to minimum standards.
Statewide, only 48.1 percent made the grade.
But that number is freighted with Gotham’s horrendous performance. Remove the city from the statewide mix, and guess what: Fully 57 percent of the 135,000 kids who took the test passed.
No, no, no, says Crew.
It’s only fair to measure city kids against city kids, he says. And, by that standard, we’re ”holding our own” – against, he says, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers.
Think of this as the ”We ain’t Buffalo” defense.
Well, we sure ain’t.
No offense to our country cousins, but – unlike New York City – hardly anybody lives in Bufallo who doesn’t have to. Nor in Rochester, Syracuse, Albany or Yonkers, either. If you doubt it, travel upstate and count the ”For Sale” signs on all the neatly trimmed lawns.
Why’s everybody bailing out? There are many reasons, but most trace right back to rotten big-city public education: Only 29.1 percent of Buffalo’s fourth-graders passed the reading test; 35 percent of Albany’s; 33.6 percent of Yonkers’ – and so on.
This is the standard that Crew would hold the city to? When does he mean for New York City’s exodus to begin?
But never mind the chancellor. He was once full of promise, but he was captured by the system he came here to conquer – and in the process he developed Stockholm Syndrome.
Besides, the clock’s ticking on Crew – quietly, but ticking nonetheless.
So the relevant question becomes this: Does New York have the collective will to do what these tests demand?
For sure, there’s more that needs doing than putting a political squeeze on Rudy Crew and hoping the next fellow can make it all work.
Know this, and know it well: It will never work until there has been an open and frank discussion of the worst-kept secret in urban public education.
This ”secret” has nothing at all to do with public-school spending, per se.
It has nothing to do with social promotion, although that’s an element.
And it has nothing to do with overcrowded classrooms, inadequate school maintenance and aging infrastructure.
It is, in fact, this: Far too many – if not most – big-city kids are presented to the public-school system at the age of 5 or so wholly unprepared to participate in their own education.
Many have never been read to. They may never have seen reading material of any type in their homes at any time in their entire lives. And maybe they never will.
Many have parents – or, usually, one parent – who will be only peripherally involved in their schooling, if at all.
Many proceed from social environments that will in time construct impermeable barriers to learning.
And, when they grow older, far too many will dedicate their time in school not to learning – far from it – but to seeing to it that nobody else learns anything worthwhile, either.
Nobody knows how to reach these kids.
Nobody.
It is, in fact, asking quite a great deal of individual teachers to expect them to confront such pathologies. Most do indeed try (or, at least, it must be hoped that most try), but only the most remarkable are equipped to make any difference.
It is Crew’s particular failing – and that of the various unions, oversight agencies, lawmakers and other interested parties – that there has been no frank public discussion of the warped social circumstances that cripple so many children in this city.
So the spotlight shifts to Albany.
State Education Commissioner Richard Mills is the man who forced the tests now at issue on a reluctant establishment. But even Mills can’t bring himself to speak the truth openly.
”Where do we go from here?” he asks. ”Obviously, we have to go up.”
Obviously. Now Mills needs to tell New York just where ”up” is – and how best to get there.
There’s no time left to do otherwise.