High school hustle: Find spots for stranded kids!
With all the attention focused on kindergarten overcrowding, it’s important not to forget the middle school students who have yet to be matched with a high school they want to attend. It’s time for the Department of Education to stop boasting about how many more students got their first choice and imagine for a few minutes what it must feel like to be graduating next month and assigned to a high school you don’t want to go to — or still be scrambling to appeal a placement.
This is not an outcome a city, where less than half of high schoolers earn a diploma on time, can find acceptable. And the Department of Education simply has to find a way to place students like those detailed in this week’s Daily News story. Students like Ostap Paviliv, an honor student from Sheepshead Bay, or Max Hellerstein, a high scoring 8th-grader who got assigned to a fashion high school. What sense does that make? And what about Phoebe, middle-schooler from Manhattan who scored in the top 2 percent of all 7th-grade students and got exactly zero of her six first-round choices?
It’s outrageous that high-achieving students who have worked hard and fully expect to graduate and go on to college are in this limbo. The DOE’s response — that only 9 percent of 8th-graders did not get a match — is wholly inadequate. There needs to be a system in place that helps each and every one of these students find a proper placement.
Over the summer, some students with high school seats will move or perhaps choose parochial or private schools instead. High school seats will open at desirable, strong schools. Unmatched or mismatched students, who in some cases are near the top of their class, must be a DOE priority. It’s wrong to leave them stranded. These are kids and parents who believe in public education. This city cannot and should not fail them.
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And, let’s not forget all of the 5th graders who are preparing to graduate and still do not know what middle school they will get. It is a mess all around.
Comment by Anonymous — May 8, 2009 @ 1:54 pm
Aaaaaand let’s not forget the _current_ high-schoolers at PS/MS/HS 27 in Red Hook, who have to scramble to find a new high school outside of their neighborhood after 27 closes down entirely next month. Unreal.
Comment by Warren B. — May 8, 2009 @ 11:50 pm
Tell it, Liz. Thanks for a great piece. Here’s another glaring problem: It is my understanding that this whole citywide high school choice process was implemented in 2005 to make the system more equitable, so that children in districts with no decent high schools would have have access to selective schools in other districts. Right? However, some districts, particularly D2, have a number of screened schools that give preference to students that reside in the district, effectively shutting out kids from the rest of the city. These kids have no recourse, because their districts have no schools that give them preference. So some kids get preference and others don’t, depending on their address. Something’s got to give or the whole citywide system is pointless, still favoring kids in certain districts.
Comment by Seventh grader's mom — May 11, 2009 @ 9:34 am
I can absolutely feel the pain of those parents of students who have worked hard and achieved good grades and now they have been hung out to dry by an application system that is too complicated for a high school admissions process.
However, having completed the Middle School Admissions process this year, I can tell you that we are also being made to jump through hoops with a process that should not be this complicated at this level of education. The Middle School application process is as convoluted as the High School process asking parents to make as many as 12 choices for Middle School with the promise of a “local school placement” if you don’t get any of your choices. There are magnet tests, citywide choices, region wide choices and district wide choices with the rules changing every time the applications are submitted.
To further the frustration, it is now 7-weeks before school ends and we still have no idea of when we will be recieving our placement notices. We were told it “should be” sometime in May. Well May is here and still no word on when the letters will go out! This is frustrating and an outrage considering that applications were due at the Department of Education the 9th of January.
It is time that the Department of Education takes a step back for a moment and listens to the frustrations of those of us who have children in the system and not just do things because it “sounds good,” or “looks good” on paper.
Here’s to hearing results sometime before school starts up again on September 8th.
Comment by Graduating 5th graders Mom — May 11, 2009 @ 3:15 pm
I agree with commenter #3. It’s outrageous that five or six schools in district two give preference to kids in the district but there are NO high schools in district three (where kids are coming out of some very good middle schools) that give preference. Beacon should give preference to District 3 or, let’s level the playing field, and have NO preference. However, there’s something to be said for not having to send one’s child on an hour and a half commute to go to HS that probably starts at 8AM. I have to laugh when I see those DOE subway ads touting how wonderful it is that NYC high schools managed to graduate 20% more students than X year. I’d like to add “but they can’t find HS matches for over 7,500 students.”
Comment by Another Seventh Grade Mom — May 12, 2009 @ 9:07 pm