Tag Archive | "High School"

Why are So Many Highbridge Students Unprepared for College?

Josselin wants to go to college some day and her mother ,Maria Gama , is determined to help her, despite the odds. (VALENTINE PASQUESOONE/The Bronx Ink).

Maria Gama wants nothing more than to send her 15-year-old to college. The 34-year-old immigrant from Mexico was never able to complete high school herself, and she wanted something more for her daughter.  So Gama, who works as a housekeeper and a nanny in Manhattan, looked around her Highbridge neighborhood for advice.

She quickly realized help was hard to come by. It turns out that the neighborhood has one of the lowest rates of college graduates in the city. The U.S. Census reported that only 7.5 percent received a diploma from a four-year college, compared to 18 percent of around the Bronx.  About 19 percent of Highbridge’s residents enrolled in college at one time or another and never finished.

Even fewer–5.6 percent in Highbridge–received a community college diploma, a full 36 percentage points behind New York City’s average.

During her freshman year at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, Josselin was able to find a summer program for promising high school students in Westchester County. She spent weeks there surrounded by college bound kids, which helped open her eyes to the possibilities. “She saw the difference between people who study and people who don’t,” said Gama.

Still the hurdles are only beginning. In Highbridge, only 13 percent of Highbridge students are ready for college when they graduate. Many point to something called the opportunity gap. A new report from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University shows in statistical terms how living in a low-income neighborhood can affect high school students’ chances to go to college.

“The poorer you are, the worse your education is,” said Peg Tyre, author who works as a director of strategy at the Edwin Gould Foundation, a non profit dedicated to funding college readiness programs for underprivileged kids. “Education is probably the most powerful lever in reducing economic inequities.” In 2011, an adult with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $1,053 a week in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor. Someone with no college education earned $415 less every week.

Residents in the mostly low-income Highbridge section of the Bronx are now starting to worry about how few of its youth residents go to college —an issue that had remained under-addressed for years.

“Most people don’t even think about college here,” said Chauncy Young, 36, a community education organizer since 2004.

The initiative to finally tackle it came from the United Parents of Highbridge. A member of the parent organization, Young was among those to identify programs to prepare students for college as a key issue for the year, during one of the organizations’ monthly meetings at the Highbridge Library on August 29.

Gabriela Silverio, a community activist, writes down ideas to help prepare students for college in the neighborhood, at a United Parents of Highbridge meeting on Aug. 29. (VALENTINE PASQUESOONE/The Bronx Ink).

Community organizers and education advocates talked about college trips and college fairs, discussions about colleges between teachers, principals and students in the neighborhood’s schools. “And explain what it really takes to go to college,” Young said. “What are the financial resources available? What are the steps? Parents just don’t know the options.”

Maria Gama, who wasn’t at the meeting, moved from Morrissania to the neighborhood in February. She said many of her friends there send their children to the closest colleges like the Bronx Community College. “They don’t know about the greater opportunities they might have,” she said. Maria Gama wasn’t aware of college possibilities for her daughter until a friend told Josselin to search admissions’ requirement for a variety of colleges.

“My family was talking about college, and that’s about it,” said Brigitte Bermudez, a 20-year-old resident who grew up in Highbridge. “Children don’t care about college. But teachers should have pushed us, they should have given us the information.”

Brigitte Bermudez, 20, hopes to return to college next year. (VALENTINE PASQUESOONE/The Bronx Ink).

Bermudez went to Boricua College in Manhattan for a year, but she dropped out in June. She said she didn’t like it after a while. Her professors in the second semester were not as engaging, and she felt it was high school again. She is now trying to apply to other colleges for next year.

Bermudez’s grandmother, Aida Davis, has taken her to a few United Parents of Highbridge meetings to help her with college searches. Otherwise, Bermudez said, “there’s nobody to go through applications with here.”

Schools and community organizations have so far only taken small steps to raise college awareness in the neighborhood. Last May, two college representatives came to the library to introduce their universities. Leticia Rosario, the principal of P.S/I.S. 218, said on August 29 that her school would hold a college fair in December.

Sarah Gale, a 32-year-old business consultant and member of the United Parents of Highbridge, said the process of choosing a middle school for her son —and worrying about college ahead of time— was “nerve-wracking”. “Unless we do the research to get our youth into the right schools, there’s not much hope for them here,” she said.

Her son now goes to the Thurgood Marshall Academy, a college-preparatory school in Harlem. “He’s 13, and he knows where he wants to go to college,” Gale said. “Most of his friends don’t talk about it at all.”

Posted in Bronx Neighborhoods, Education, Featured, Southern BronxComments (0)

High school teacher arrested for second time at Occupy Wall Street, NY Daily News

A Bronx Regional High School teacher was arrested yesterday after allegedly using a shopping cart to knock an NYPD sergeant from his scooter, says the New York Daily News.  This is the second time this month  43-year-old David Suker, an army vet, was arrested during an Occupy Wall Street protest.

Posted in NewswireComments (0)

Bronx high school has highest rate of suspensions in the city, NY1

A principal at Lehman High School suspended 2,000 students last year, the most in the city, according NY1. Students say the principal, Janet Saraceno, who was replaced last summer after changing grades on report cards, suspended students for a number of trivial offenses, including being late to class. The school also received its second F on the annual Department of Education report card, so it will likely end up on a closure list.

Posted in NewswireComments (0)

Tyra Banks pays surprise visit to Bedford Park high school to encourage kids to keep up high attendance rates, NY Daily News

America’s next top student may have been among the 400 screaming, crying teens at the High School for Teaching and Professions, where former supermodel Tyra Banks made a surprise appearance Wednesday, the NY Daily News reported.

Banks strutted onstage to promote her new book, “Modelland,” answer questions and congratulate the students on beating 90 other schools so far in a nationwide competition to improve attendance rates. The Bedford Park school has raised its numbers by 4% as part of the Get Schooled Attendance Challenge.

“Any fiercely real, curvalicious girls in the audience?” Banks asked the teens, who leaped out of their seats to strike model poses, one h

Posted in NewswireComments (0)

Bronx school welcomes celebrity visitor, NY Daily News

Students from the Bronx’s High School for Teaching and Professions welcomed former supermodel Tyra Banks, who made a surprise visit to the school to promote her book, the NY Daily News reported.

The Bedford Park school has recently beaten 90 other schools so far in a nationwide competition to improve attendance rates, and Banks urged students to keep on working.

“It’s so important to understand your good attendance ups your chances of graduating,” she added. “Everybody has a dream, right?”

Posted in NewswireComments (0)

New details of tampering in standardized tests out, NYTimes

A report published in NYTimes revealed there have been 1,250 accusations of test tampering or grade changing across city schools since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took control of the public schools system.

Of that number, 14 cases had been substantiated including one against a teacher at Middle School 219 in the Bronx. The teacher received a 90-day suspension without pay after investigators claimed he had written answers on the back of paper rulers for the eighth-grade math examinees. The teacher has denied the allegations.

In another case a Bronx assistant principal at the High School for Contemporary Arts was found of tampering with student answers on the June 2008 algebra Regents exam. The assistant principal had been dismissed.

 

Posted in NewswireComments (0)