New Data Shows Only 1 in 5 NYC High School Graduates Are College-Ready

The State Education Department released its 2010 college readiness data on Tuesday, and the findings showed a dismal 21 percent of New York City public high school students in the 2010 graduating class were prepared for college and careers -- that’s one in five graduates who are ready for college, compared to almost two in five graduates (36.7 percent) statewide. 

The city’s graduation rate improved slightly – 61 percent for the Class of 2010, compared to 59 percent for the Class of 2009. However, education officials said a lot more work was needed to raise the standards of classroom instruction.

"This data underscores the urgency of our efforts to continue to raise standards, improve assessments and support the highest quality teaching in all of our classrooms," said New York State Board of Regent Chancellor Merryl Tisch.

For high schools, graduation rates are a key measure in a school's overall performance, and consistently low graduation rates are a fast-track to placing a school on the closure list. However, not all schools slated for closure have the city's worst graduation rates; some schools with low rates manage to remain open.

One example is Boys and Girls High School, where the graduation rate of 38.9 percent remained unchanged from 2009 to 2010. BGHS was on this year's list of schools on the chopping block, but it managed to avoid closure.

The school’s principal, Bernard Gassaway, and the city’s department of education are in discussions now about what life-sustaining measures to take to help turn the school’s poor academic performance around, improve graduation rates and get the students college-ready.

The city will be looking closely at BGHS’s performance this year on the Regents exams. Passing all four exams not only is a requirement for graduation, but also one of the strongest measures the state uses to determine college-readiness, which is based off of the percentage of students who graduate with a grade of 80 or higher on the math Regents exam and a grade of 75 or higher on the English Regents exam.

College readiness also is determined by the percentage of students graduating with an advanced Regents diploma, which requires more advanced coursework than the basic diploma.

In New York City, only 16.4 percent of its graduates earned the prestigious Regents diploma with Advanced Distinction, a figure that is significantly lower than the statewide average of 30.9 percent, according to the state data.

The new data also underscore a wider achievement gap between black students and white students: The 2010 graduation rate for black students is 56 percent, 20 percentage points lower than white students, which is 76 percent. And just seven percent of black students who started high school in 2006 graduated with an Advanced Regents diploma, while 32 percent of white students did.