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New York's Pushout Crisis: Why Students Don't Graduate


pushed out
Photo by Clint McMahon

Luke was supposed to receive his high school diploma this year, but, like many others, he did not. A 16-year-old black student, he was placed in special education with a label of "emotional disturbance." Luke was attending a high school in District 75, the citywide district for special education, where students with disabilities are isolated from their peers without disabilities. It was not where Luke was supposed to be.

Luke's placement at the school set off a series of events that led to his being arrested and leaving school. While all students are different, Luke's experience reflects that of other students in New York City and across the nation who are pushed out of school by degrading learning environments, inadequate services and curriculum, and harsh suspensions, expulsions and arrests. Students are too often treated like criminals in a school environment that favors punishment and exclusion over providing the support and interventions needed to protect students' human rights to education and dignity.

The numbers give some indication of this. In New York City, for example, the number of zero-tolerance infractions in the Discipline Code has doubled since 2001, according to a report by the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the number of suspensions in a given school year has increased by more than 250 percent, reaching more than 73,000 in 2008-2009. Since 2000, the number of school safety officers, the report found, has increased from 3,200 to over 5,000, but there are still only 3,000 guidance counselors.

From High School to Hiding

Luke, according to the Individualized Education Program that all special education students have, should have attended an inclusive high school, where students with disabilities learn in classrooms with other students. Studies have found that this generally leads to better academic performance and behavior. But at the last minute, the Department of Education informed Luke's mother that the school he was slated to attend was too crowded. The department sent Luke to the District 75 school, South Richmond High School on Staten Island, where he faced many difficulties. Rather than receive counseling and support, Luke encountered school safety officers who were derogatory and judgmental, and teachers who escalated conflicts rather than mediated them.

 

On Jan. 15, 2010, Luke had a verbal dispute with a student in class, and his teacher asked him to leave the room. On his way out, another teacher told Luke he couldn’t be in the hallway. Luke explained that he wasn't allowed back in class and tried to push past the teacher. Luke and his mother have said that the teacher then pinned Luke against the wall prompting a school safety officer to physically restrain and arrest Luke, leaving visible marks in the process.

After waiting nine months for his case to be processed in court, Luke was put on probation. Then a year after his arrest, Luke tested positive for marijuana, violating his probation, and was placed in a residential treatment center where he and his mother say he did not receive adequate services and support. This spring he was supposed to return to court for the probation violation, but for fear of being re-arrested, he ran away. He was missing for over three weeks, during which time the police refused to file a missing person’s report. Although his mother has since made contact, Luke continues to hide in fear.

"The school system provides no alternatives, they just lock these kids up, and this is not a solution. You're dealing with kids who have other issues and need support," Luke's mother said.

Viewing Students as Criminals

Schools often target students they deem "problematic" and repeatedly suspend them, even for minor infractions. The student then misses school again and again for extended periods of time, and if the underlying needs and sources of conflict are not addressed, falls behind academically. He or she is ultimately pushed out. In some cases, students receive long-term suspensions for up to 90 days at alternative schools and never return to a regular setting. In other cases a student gets so far behind that he or she simply stops coming to school, or a counselor or other staff member tells the student he needs too many credits to graduate and should just leave or get a GED.

This approach has the greatest effect on students of color with special needs, like Luke. In New York City, students with disabilities are four times more likely to be suspended than students without disabilities, the civil liberties report found, and black students, who make up 33 percent of the population, received 53 percent of suspensions over the last decade. In some cases, like Luke's, schools skip suspensions altogether and resort to arresting a student.

Many of these suspensions arise from zero tolerance policies or practices, some of which are in the Discipline Code, and others that schools put into effect themselves.. In these cases, schools automatically suspend or expel students for certain infractions -- fighting or drug use for example. The student has no opportunity to explain extenuating circumstances or to have his or her overall record considered.

A recent study by the Council of State Governments on school disciplinary practices in Texas underscores just how detrimental suspension and expulsion can be. Over 60 percent of all students between grades 7 and 12 in Texas were suspended at least once. Students who are suspended or expelled are six times more likely to be held back at least one grade, and five times more likely to drop out than their peers, according to the report. This study is consistent with dozens of others demonstrating that punitive discipline disproportionally targets students of color, students with disabilities, and gay and lesbian students.

When we consider alternatives to such draconian discipline we are talking not just about reducing suspensions and student arrests, but also about combating the school push-out crisis, eliminating discrimination, giving students every opportunity to succeed academically, shifting school culture altogether, and focusing on our students as human beings. An array of approaches, known collectively as restorative practices, is beginning to catch on across the country as a positive alternative.

Restorative practices include "fairness committees" and "restorative circles" in which students and educators trained in conflict resolution bring all the parties involved in a dispute together to discuss how each person was affected by an incident and to work together to identify a solution that will prevent the conflict from happening again. Solutions can include community service, mediation or attending conflict resolution workshops. This offers students a chance to take responsibility for their actions, restore relationships and repair harm done to the school community.

Schools across the nation have found success using restorative practices and other positive approaches, including Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports, a process to improve the school environment. In Denver, for example, after the schools integrated restorative practices into the district-wide discipline code, suspensions fellby 40 percent, and police tickets issued to students dropped by 68 percent.

Recently, due to the organizing and advocacy of communities across the country through efforts like the Dignity in Schools Campaign, the federal Departments of Education and Justice announced the Supportive School Discipline Initiative, an inter-agency effort to address the "school-to-prison pipeline" and support positive alternatives. Just two weeks later in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his Young Men's Initiative to improve opportunities for young black and Latino men, who are disproportionately undereducated, incarcerated and unemployed.

There are certainly many factors to consider in the fight to end school pushout, but the bottom line is that the school community, student behavior and academic success are inextricably linked. We must reduce suspensions and student arrests, and implement positive alternatives so that students feel valued and are not removed from school for extended periods of time.

No students should avoid school because they are afraid of going to jail, but that's exactly what Luke and many others must do. For Luke, what started as a verbal argument with a fellow student in class escalated into arrest and pushout. If Luke's underlying academic and behavioral needs had been met, and a conflict with another student had been resolved through a restorative response, he could have completed the school year, attended summer school and earned his diploma.

Emily Shaw and Refat Shoshi Chowdhury are with the Dignity in Schools Campaign – New York. Liz Sullivan is with the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative.

Tuition Hikes, Aid Cuts Threaten to Put CUNY Out of Reach


BMCC
Photo by Aloucha
Many students and faculty at Borough of Manhattan Community College worry that plans to hike tuition there by $300 a year could make the school too costly for some people.

"Yeah, I know a few," said Louis Di Meglio, a former undergraduate and now graduate student at Brooklyn College. Without much pause he began talking about a fraternity brother who may need to drop out next year and another friend who had to delay her graduation because it was, as Di Meglio put it, "between her tuition and her brother's."

He spoke casually, and with graduation rates under 50 percent for most schools in the City University of New York, dropping out is common. Regardless of who one talks to -- a student, professor, sports coach or administrator -- chances are he or she knows at least one person who has left school without receiving a degree. And while the causes are many, chances are they will name money as the main reason. "I had a student who dropped out because her parents said it was going to be better if she worked in [the family] restaurant than if she went to school. They couldn’t afford it," said Kathleen Offenholley, an assistant professor of mathematics at Borough of Manhattan Community College. "She was getting straight A's. And I cried."

Now finances are likely to get even tighter for CUNY students. The state legislature approved a bill in July that authorized a tuition increase of $300 every year for the next five years, a plan expected to raise $50 million. With "the long-term trend in state support for higher education ... down for the last 40 years," Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council of Education, has called it "an extraordinarily important step" for CUNY.

But the legislation poses a catch-22 for students. While they hope more revenue will reduce ballooning class sizes, save school programs and enable CUNY to hire more full-time faculty, for many students studying at a CUNY school, paying more could mean not attending at all.

A Steady Rise

CUNY was founded in 1847 with the mission of making higher education accessible for New York residents, and until 1975 did not charge tuition. Almost 165 years later, CUNY continues to reflect its original mission: 54 percent of its student body lives in a household with an income of less than $30,000 a year; 74 percent are people of color; 44 percent are first-generation college students; and 47 percent work full or part time in addition to attending school.

The legislation follows a series of tuition increases at CUNY, beginning with a 15 percent increase in 2009. Two years later students faced another 5 percent increase effective spring 2011 and then a 2 percent hike for the fall 2011 semester. This brought CUNY tuition for full-time, in-state undergraduates to $4,920 at senior colleges and $3,360 at community colleges. Now, with five more years of tuition increases, higher education could become farther out of reach for New York's poorest students.

"Many [CUNY students] hold a full-time job while also going to school full-time. They are at their maximum stress point in terms of finances, and even $300 can be extremely prohibitive," said Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress-CUNY, the union for CUNY faculty and staff.

"I have students, some of whom are living in shelters, who qualify for food stamps," said Francesco Crocco, an assistant professor of English at BMCC. "We're throwing the burden of public education on the people who are least able to pay."

The impact on CUNY's six community colleges may perhaps be the most significant. With lower costs, increased flexibility and an emphasis on vocational training, two-year community colleges are a "pathway out of poverty," according to the Center for an Urban Future. But with higher tuition, a critical avenue into the middle class may become out of reach for an increasing number of New York's young people.

In a series of rallies in May many CUNY student spoke out against continuing budget slashes, tuition hikes and, on a broader note, what they see as an increasingly inaccessible education system.

"Public education is under attack right now in the sense that it's headed toward privatization," said Domingo Estevez, a student at BMCC entering his third semester. "It's going from a right to a privilege."

A Cure for CUNY?

Many members of the New York State Assembly, however, hail the legislation as a resounding success. Speaker Sheldon Silver and Deborah Glick, chair of the higher education committee, have championed it as a means to bring stability to CUNY tuition.

"While it is unfortunate that tuition must be increased during these difficult economic times, this predictable tuition plan provides students and families the opportunity to plan for the costs of higher education," Silver said on June 24.

CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein originally conceived of the plan as a means to reduce the university system's reliance on outside funding.

"In an era when public support for public higher education is hemorrhaging, New York state has provided predictability. … It's a bold move that will pay dividends for years to come. This is good for institutions, it's good for the families, and it's good for the state," Goldstein said in a press statement after the legislature approved the measure.

To address affordability, the legislation created a tuition credit to be provided by CUNY for in-state financial aid students whose tuition costs exceed the $5,000 ceiling set by the Tuition Assistance Program, or TAP, New York state's financial aid grant program. The plan hopes aid this will enable aid to keep up with the increase in tuition. Students who received the maximum TAP award, would receive $5,300 after the $300 tuition hike -- with the extra $300 offset by CUNY. A student who received a $2,500 TAP award would receive $2,650 -- or $150 in tuition credit – after the increase.

'Falling Through the Cracks'

This provision, however, has not done much to dispel concerns for Estevez. Two of his acquaintances dropped out last year because they couldn't afford CUNY's 2010 tuition hikes.

"Financial aid is there, but not everybody qualifies for it. There are a lot of people being left out," he said.

According to Bowen, those most likely to be left out are part-time students, who must take a certain number of class credits to qualify, and students who technically are still their parents' dependent but do not receive financial support from their family. For students whose families make just above the $80,000 income ceiling for TAP, tuition increases could also prove overwhelming.

"Thousands of students already fall through the cracks in TAP, and many others may be discouraged from entering college by the escalating cost," Bowen said.

But students may not be the only ones dissatisfied with the new tuition credits. While the state pays for TAP, CUNY will have to cover the credits. This will force CUNY to funnel some of the money it gains from higher tuition into financial aid. With CUNY serving some of New York's poorest students, this could prove a substantial figure.

"If we need to increase tuition and then increase the amount we're giving in financial aid, I'm not sure what we're getting," said Cory Provost, chair of the CUNY Student Senate.

Goldstein, however, has remained optimistic, claiming that even after the tuition credits there will still be substantial revenue to invest in CUNY education.

Cuts and More Cuts

The tuition increase comes in amid deep federal, state and city cuts to financial aid programs. Many of the safety nets college students relied on to finance their educations simply are no longer available.

On the federal level, the Pell Grant program, considered the pillar of the nation's financial aid to low-income undergraduate students, has come under a series of attacks. Potentially devastating cuts -- including a budget resolution passed in the House of Representatives this February that would have slashed the current maximum award of $5,550 by over $2,000 -- have largely been avoided. But with shaky economic times, the Pell Grant program is on a very uncertain footing.

While funding was secured for the 2011-2012 academic year in this month's debt agreement, the Pell program remains unpopular among many Tea Party Republicans, such as Rep. Denny Rehberg, a Montana Republican who called it "the welfare of the 21st century." Any cuts will be amplified by the fact that funding for the program over the past two decades has not nearly kept up with the ballooning costs of attending college.

Other federal programs have fared even poorly. This year the government eliminated the Academic Competitiveness Grant, the Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Grant and the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership program.

State funding has also been spiraling downward for the last 40 years. An indicative example is the Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge, or SEEK, program. The program, funded by New York state, supports disadvantaged students at CUNY through counseling, specialized academic courses, tutoring and limited financial aid. But SEEK, like College Discovery, Higher Education Opportunity Program, and a slew of other state programs, has for over 20 years seen its funding significantly outpaced by inflation. According to the 2008 state Commission on Higher Education Final Report, in real terms SEEK has faced a 19 percent reduction since 1994.

On the city level, this year's budget was set to slash a range of CUNY programs. While funding was at least partially restored for programs like the Black Male Initiative, the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing, and the Dominican Studies Institute, funding for the Peter Vallone Scholarship was not. The scholarship, which did not consider U.S. citizenship in student eligibility, was a major assistance for the more than 2,500 undocumented immigrants at CUNY schools. The scholarship was awarded to 14,000 students each year.

The shortfalls in funding show that the fight for public higher education is far from over," said Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez, who chairs the higher education committee.

There is, however, a silver lining. In light of tuition increases, the state government has agreed not to cut CUNY funding for the next five years unless facing the state faces a fiscal crisis. The city has made a similar pledge.

"The city is obligated to maintain the same budget [for CUNY schools] as last year or more," said Rodriguez. "For the first time the city made the commitment to bring responsibility, to put in the same amount of money."

But the budget crunch is far from over. According to Bowen, many CUNY schools lack the resources to provide "serious education." The consequences of decreased public funding have been overcrowded class sizes, out of date lab equipment, a shortage of computers and an overloaded faculty, she said.

"At a certain point it imperils the quality of education for the students," she said.

It seems likely that CUNY students will bear the burden of an ailing school system. And with scholarship and grant programs facing the ax, many worry that tuition could become a massive hurdle for accessibility in higher education.

"For my students, they can barely manage and here we are, in effect not giving them the opportunity they could have," said Offenholley from BMCC. 'We’re basically trying to fix New York City by taxing poor people more, by charging them more tuition. It's sad. It's wrong."

But Di Meglio remains surprisingly optimistic.

"You don’t need money, but you need to learn how to apply your resources as you have them… Brooklyn College has great resources, an alumni mentoring program, a lot of people here willing to help figure things out," he said. "The resources are there, you have to find them. That's how Brooklyn College is. That's how the world is."

For Parents Seeking School Choice, Boundaries Don't Apply


p.s. 11
Many parents who don't live in the area zoned for P.S. 11 take unusual steps so their children can attend the Clinton Hill school.

Kelley Williams-Bolar and Tanya McDowell, the two mothers prosecuted this year for sending their children to out-of-district public schools, have plenty of company in New York City. Public school parents here have long relied on lax school policies and the generosity of friends to help them bend the city’s rules and land their children in desirable schools.

For parents in District 13, which spans Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Brooklyn Heights and includes parts of Park Slope and Bedford-Stuyvesant, the Williams-Bolar case underscored an age-old debate over school choice. That conversation has focused mainly on a question of stay, or stray: Should parents stick to their zoned schools and help to improve them where they are lacking, or should they exploit all feasible options to get a seat in the ideal school?

Ms. Jones (her name has been changed to protect her identity), a long-time Clinton Hill resident and parent, ascribes to the latter philosophy. Over the years Jones has added fellow parents, generally from Bedford-Stuyvesant, to her lease and utility records so their children can attend P.S. 11, a highly desired elementary school in the neighborhood.

"If I even told you how many parents I have on my address, you would be shocked," said the mother of two.

Jones understands that she's taking a risk by fudging these documents, but her priorities are clear.

"The law is the law, but our children come first," she said.

Parents who favor school choice avidly defend their right to make their own decisions about their children's education, and many consider out-of-zone schools as reasonable an option as any other. The paperwork is merely a formality.

Elementary School Roulette

Over the past several years, the city Department of Education has sought to expand the choices available to elementary school parents. High-scoring youngsters can choose from a spread of magnet schools, with "gifted and talented" programs for those who meet the requirements and the deadline. For other students, the administration repeatedly states that its push to expand the number of charter schools in the city is part of its effort to offer more choices.

But many New York City parents still feel stifled by their local options. Their children may not qualify for the gifted programs, or the neighborhood may not offer one due to a low number of children qualifying. Some areas don't have any charter schools, and in those that do, competition for a space is fierce. And the problems can be more abstract. In both local zoned and charter schools, everything from curricula, to disciplinary styles to school hours and dismissal procedure can create a school culture that certain parents reject. They may view a school outside their district as more in keeping with their attitudes.

These frustrated parents feel that the choices touted by the Department of Education do not offer them or their children an equal opportunity sort: Options are one thing, but access to them is quite another.

Admissions Pressure

Ms. Lawrence (also not her real name), a Clinton Hill mother who used a friend's address to enroll her son in P.S. 11, said she felt guilty about lying, but considered it her only option. Her local school was considered sub-par, she said, and she couldn't stomach the thought of missing out on a better option.

"You really do get caught up in this hysteria, and you feel like all your chances will be ruined if you don't get in where you want to be," she said. "The quality of schools is so unfair in New York that parents really feel like they have to do this."

Attending play dates at the homes of P.S. 11 she came away with the clear impression that hers was not the only family cheating the system; some of the other children's homes, too, were outside the school's zone. But, she said, "It's definitely not talked about."

Leidy Diaz, a Bedford-Stuyvesant mother, was zoned for P.S. 3, a middle-of-the-pack elementary school on Jefferson Avenue. She was less concerned with her daughter's academic prospects than the route she would walk to and from school -- a walk that would take her daughter past a busy train stop on Fulton Street, a site sometimes abuzz with teenagers and adults shouting, swearing and drinking, Diaz said.

Meanwhile, the family lived only a few blocks from the better-rated P.S. 56 located on a residential street in Clinton Hill. Diaz wanted her daughter to attend that school, so she took matters into her own hands.

To enroll her daughter in P.S. 56, Diaz had to provide a lease and an electric bill, both of which her friend amended to include Diaz as a tenant. When the shared address sparked suspicion, Diaz's friend visited the school to confirm the documents' validity.

"She had to go with me in order for them to really take my word for it," Diaz said of the leaseholder.

Facing the Penalty

Easy enough. In fact, the process was so easy and the practice so widespread among her friends and acquaintances, that it never occurred to Diaz to fear punishment for falsifying her daughter's records. She was shocked to hear that Williams-Bolar, an Ohio mother, was convicted of a felony and served nine days in prison for faking records to allow her two daughters to attend a better school.

"I never thought about the fact that they could do something if they found out that I was lying," Diaz said. "I never heard of the Department of Education taking action against someone that lied about their address."

But the Department of Education has taken action before. One of the most public cases involved Lee McCaskill, the former principal of Brooklyn Technical High School who was investigated by the department for sending his daughter to a Brooklyn public school when the family lived in New Jersey. McCaskill resigned days before the investigation could be completed, but reached a settlement with the city in which he agreed to pay $19,441 for four years of tuition.

Transgressions within the city or state don't generally have such a high price tag. In those cases, students found ineligible for enrollment are transferred to their zoned school, according to the city's regulations.

"Our goal is to make this process easy and accessible for the vast majority of families providing true information, but to create barriers and requirements for the small handful that try to cheat the system," said Department of Education spokesperson Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld.

"When you have a zoned school that's really popular, the families and children in those zones have first rights to those schools," Zarin-Rosenfeld said. "It wouldn't be right for someone to lie about their address in order to access those seats."

When suspicion arises about a student's address, the rules state, responsibility falls on the individual school to investigate, and not on the Department of Education.

Pamela Wheaton, a project director for the popular reference website Insideschools.com, said that such investigations are highly uncommon in most parts of New York; they happen almost exclusively at a few highly competitive schools in Manhattan. In those case, investigator "go to your listed apartment and check to see if you have toys there, if you're living there,"Wheaton said. "They ask the doorman."

No Regrets

Despite the potential consequences, parents who have lied on leases said they would do the same all over again.

"I'll do anything to get my daughter in the school where I want her to be," said Diaz. "If I have to lie again, I'll lie again. I don't feel embarrassed about that."

And Ms. Jones will continue to usher parents into her neighborhood school by way of her own home.

"Ultimately, we are not loyal to the principals or to our schools," Jones said. "We are loyal to our children. It's about giving them a choice."</P



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