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Close to Half of NYC Public School Grads Enrolled at CUNY Need Remedial Classes
By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
Chronic absenteeism and lower the bar of standards are doing their part to leave New York City public school graduates ill equipped for college.
As reported by the NY Post, troubling new data shows that close to half of all NYC public high school graduates who head to local community colleges are forced to take remedial classes to make it through their first semester. “Most of the kids we get from New York City schools are underprepared for college,” said Mohammad Alam, assistant dean of enrollment at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Experts blame chronic absenteeism as well as widespread grade inflation, as part of the rhetoric which allows students to graduate without truly learning the required materials.
In Fall 2022, at the City University of New York’s seven community colleges, some 5,046 students formerly from Department of Education were enrolled in a remedial math course. Similarly, 4,250 of NYC public school students were forced to take remedial English. That figure represents 47 percent of all new DOE high school graduates, a CUNY spokesperson said.
Students and parents expressed their frustration over their lack of preparedness for college. “I don’t think high schools, especially public schools in The Bronx, prepared me enough” for college, said Priscilla Walker, who is trying to earn an associate’s degree from BMCC. “That’s how the public school system runs: ‘These are not my kids, I just don’t care.’”
Sáleenal Butler, told the Post that teachers at her former high school, Millennium Art Academy in the Bronx, “got annoyed when people asked questions”. She noted that she had to start off her studies at Bronx Community College by taking a remedial math class. “Most (teachers) are just overwhelmed by how many students they have,” Butler added.
As per the Post, the problems in public school education are not limited just to high school. In K-8 public schools across NYC, post-pandemic test scores are down, and chronic absenteeism hit an all-time high of 40% in 2022. This means that some 352,919 students missed 18 or more days of class, or 10% of the year. Among seniors at Bronx high schools, chronic absenteeism reached an appalling 58.2%, as per the DOE. Despite this, somehow, graduation rates for high schools grew modestly again last year, to nearly 84 percent–compared to 73 percent four years earlier.
Many say public schools are just lowering the standards, per the Post. “Dumb it down until everybody passes,” said Wai Wah Chin, founder of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York. Chin added that lowering the bar in the name of “equity”, harms not just the students but society as a whole in the long run. The COVID-19 pandemic was another excuse to further reduce educational standards at more public school, with state Regents tests being canceled altogether in 2020. Moving forward, the new rules say, students are considered to “pass” the Regents tests with a score of 50%.
This all has left students unprepared for college. A 2022 audit of students sampled by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli revealed that just 57% of DOEgrads were “college ready”. Further, of those who went on to higher education, a whopping 37% dropped out in the first semester. “The kids who come out of high school unprepared end up in the community colleges,” said the Manhattan Institute’s education maven Ray Domanico. “And those two-year colleges have awful graduation rates – like in the 20s. A lot of those kids don’t make it past that first year.”
