Statewide Education Organizing Committee -

Parents and Communities United for Education (PCUE)

Mona

Blogspots | Leaders | Staff | Upcoming Events Accomplishments | Campaign Platform
Graduation For All Data-Based Analysis

Blogspots:

www.pcue-graduation4all.blogspot.com
www.pcueforhealthyschools.blogspot.com

Leaders:

Loyda Goldston: President
Roslyn Gibbs-Muse: 1st Vice-President
Debra Jordan: 2nd Vice-President/Treasurer
Judy Gaston: Secretary
Elroy Curry: Member-At-Large
Cathy Wade: Member-At-Large
Cheryl Fair: Member-At-Large Alternate

Staff:

Susan Curry
Cell: (201) 742-1196
s.curry@seocnj.org

Mona Brinson, Organizer
Cell: (201) 316-2309
brinson.seoc@gmail.com

Narciso Castillo
Español
(201) 772-1122
njaction21@verizon.net

Upcoming Events

Please contact our office for more info:
(201) 918-2918

PCUE's Past Accomplishments

*When 6 schools tested for unsafe levels of lead in the drinking water, the district did not go public with the information for 18 months, when national news sources publicized the information. Lead is particularly dangerous in children, where it can lead to cognitive development problems. PCUE successfully campaigned to get the district to test the rest of the schools' water for lead, mail results to the homes of parents in English and Spanish, and shut off the contaminated sources. The parents further got the district to promise to develop a remediation plan.

*PCUE collaborated with a UMDNJ-SPH (School of Public Health) Environmental Health scientist to develop an annual health-and-safety school report card and, through much effort at collaboration and community pressure, finally got the district to adopt the report-card in February of 2009! PCUE has continued its collaboration with UMDNJ-SPH to find innovative ways to involve parents and community members in school environmental health research.

*One elementary school, PS 20, got the district to allocate funds for an instrumental music program – in the form of an after-school program – that was eliminated over 10 years ago due to budget cuts.

PCUE's CURRENT CAMPAIGN:

GRADUATION FOR ALL

PCUE's current campaign focuses on needed improvements in the high schools to enable every child to graduate. The campaign platform identifies a true partnership between schools and parents, an effective support system for students, high-quality teaching, and updated technology as our central goals. Read below and check the campaign blogspot for more details.

CALL TO ACTION

We are parents and members of various communities in Jersey City. We come from all walks of life. We are alarmed by the continuing failure of our high schools in providing our children/youth a quality education that prepares them for college and the world of work. When our youth are underserved by our school district, our communities also suffer from its consequences. Youth are our future.

Under No Child Left Behind, four out of six high schools in Jersey City are failing our children.
According to official statistics, more than 450 students drop out of schools. The real number is even higher.
One out of every three high school students in Jersey City does not graduate on time from high school.
29% of high school students graduate through Special Review Assessment (SRA), an alternative route to graduation, which is in fact a second tier high school diploma. In Ferris High School this number is as high as 45%.
The average SAT (college entrance exam) score in Jersey City is 86 points below the state average in math, and 91 points below the state average in verbal. More than 30% of students in JC do not take SAT at all.

We are even more concerned now that our children and our schools are facing more challenging graduation requirements recently mandated by the State:

New rigorous courses in math, sciences, and English have raised the bar for graduation.
High-stake end of the course exams for graduation are other measures being developed by the NJ Dept. of Education.
New policies will restrict the procedure and administration of SRA, making it a challenging route for graduation.

Based on our review of data and information, we are certain that the business as usual approach employed by our school district will not bring any significant change in our high schools and in the education of our youth. Under the new requirements, our school district cannot even maintain the status quo. The academic performance of our high schools will deteriorate if bold and innovative measures are not implemented. In order to bring any real transformation in our high schools, we call for new policies and practices with high standards focusing on our youth and particularly those who are vulnerable and we call for building genuine partnership with parents without whom serious changes are inconceivable.

We URGENTLY CALL on Jersey City Board of Education and our School District Superintendent, Dr. Epps to consider and implement the following policies we are proposing. We are ready to fight for our youth and our communities, and we are willing to work with our school district to transform our high school and provide ALL our youth an education they well deserve.

PLATFORM:

We want a true partnership between parents, teachers, and our schools. We call for a Parent Resource Center at each high school that genuinely serves as a welcoming and helpful place for parents in the school. We want regular systems of two-way communication between the school and parents about school quality. This includes an annual parents’ evaluation of the school, an annual school report-card sent home that includes the results of the parents’ evaluation, and record-keeping about parent involvement in schools and school outreach to parents. We also call for the school’s commitment to communicate with parents in the language spoken at home.

We want an effective student support system. Support activities must primarily target vulnerable students who are most likely to fall through the cracks. We call for a Student Success Center at each high school that is flexible and accessible to students after school. The Center should have a team of qualified support staff so it can serve as a site for one-stop-shopping. The Center would feature social support and individualized academic counseling. All students must have an Individualized Student Academic Portfolio (ISAP) that includes a four-year academic plan and college preparation counseling that helps students along each step towards graduating, college or training for living wage careers, and entering the world of work. The district needs to improve the current ratio of students to academic counselors to no more than 150 students per academic counselor. The Center would also house an effective after-school Tutoring Center. Beyond this, we call for mandatory extended day and summer school for students falling behind and/or in danger of not graduating on time. We want our school district to develop a scholarship fund specifically to assist undocumented immigrant children planning to go to college.

We need the very best teachers for our youth. We call for more school-based teacher coaches, adequate technology training, and other measures, including common planning time, that support teachers and help schools develop the best teaching staff possible. Hiring consultants for professional development should primarily serve to build district capacity, and it must be strictly based on student outcomes. We also call for measures to improve teacher understanding of the communities they’re working in, including a community orientation tour for new teachers, as well as measures to recruit more teachers from the community. We want all our teachers and school staff to be fairly compensated when they go above and beyond the call of duty.

We call for updated computer technology labs. We want one computer for every five students in every classroom and additional computer labs to accommodate ALL students even if they are not in magnet programs. We also call for regular maintenance and upgrading of computers in the classrooms and computer labs, as well as improved internet connection, so the computer technology can work as intended to improve teaching and learning.

DOWNLOAD PDF OF DATA-BASED ANALYSIS

GRADUATION FOR ALL

DATA-BASED ANALYSIS

A Report on the State of High School
Education in Jersey City
September 8, 2009

Danielle Farrie, PhD            Mahmood Ketabchi, Former Lead Organizer
Education Law Center         P.C.U.E. – S.E.O.C.
973-624-1815

Introduction

Parents and Communities United for Education (PCUE), the Jersey City chapter of the Statewide Education Organizing Committee (SEOC), is a grass root organization dedicated to organizing public school parents and community members to improve Jersey City school system. PCUE works for changes that will provide all the city’s children with a high quality of education, regardless of economic status, neighborhood environment, race, and ethnicity. Over the last year, PCUE launched a successful campaign to assure that school officials test all our schools for lead in the drinking water, notify parents and the community of the testing schedule and test results, and provide all public school children with safe water. Education Law Center (ELC) advocates on behalf of public school children for access to an equal and adequate education under state and federal laws, focusing especially on improving public education for disadvantaged children, and children with disabilities and other special needs.

The rally on September 8, 2009 is focused on highlighting the urgent call to graduate ALL our youth/children from high school and provide them a quality education that prepares them for college and the world of work. The State has implemented rigorous new requirements for high school graduation. The plan requires all students to complete a set of college prep courses, including advanced math and science courses, and to take new end-of-course exams currently under development. Changes are also being made to the process and administration of the Special Assessment Review (SRA). If the district does not address the reasons why Jersey City schools have performed so poorly in the past, these schools will never be able to adequately prepare students to meet the new graduation requirements. We are calling for new policies and practices to transform Jersey City high schools and to ensure that all students get the education they deserve.

We are providing data on the current state of Jersey City high schools to highlight the need for dramatic improvement.

High School Assessments: HSPA and SRA

Results of the 11th grade assessment demonstrate that far too few students are adequately educated in Jersey City high schools. In 2008, 64 percent of students passed the HSPA in language arts and 49 percent passed math. These rates vary dramatically by school, with nearly all students in McNair, a selective magnet school, passing both sections, while at Snyder, less than half of the students passed the language arts section and a dismal 22 percent passed the math section (see Figure 1).

Jersey City has made little progress in improving test scores over time. Jersey City students drastically under-perform compared to the rest of the state, and this performance gap remains wide and persistent. In 2008, Jersey City students performed 21 percentage points below the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) benchmarks in language arts, and 25 percentage points below AYP in math (see Figures 2 and 3).

Passing the HSPA is a requirement for graduation. With pass rates so low in Jersey City, many students use an alternative assessment to receive their high school diplomas. In the class of 2008, nearly 400 seniors, roughly one-third of the graduating class, used the Special Review Assessment (SRA) after they failed to pass the HSPA. The high schools in Jersey City vary widely in the extent to which the SRA is used. While all graduating students at McNair were able to pass the HSPA, nearly half of the graduates at Ferris did not and graduated through SRA. While the SRA is a useful alternative for some students, the relatively large proportion of students using this route in Jersey City suggests that the process is being overused. Jersey City schools should be doing a better job of adequately educating students and providing them with the skills necessary to pass the HSPA (see Figure 4).

Graduation Rates and Attrition

According to the Department of Education’s (DOE) method for measuring graduation rates, one in four Jersey City students fail to graduate (see Figure 5). The method used by the DOE does not distinguish how long it takes students to graduate. The students graduating in 2008 may have taken four, five, or even six years to complete high school. In order to get a precise estimate of the graduation rate, the method used by the DOE requires accurate accounting of the number of students who dropout of school. Because many students ‘disappear’ from the system, but are never officially counted as dropouts, the graduation rate may actually be overestimated. For example, while Jersey City reported that 108 10th graders dropped out of school in 2006-07 (the last year for which data is available), there were 289 fewer 11th graders enrolled in 2007-08 than 10th graders in 2006-07. While some of this discrepancy can be explained by out of district moves or retention policies, it is likely that schools are under-reporting the number of students who dropout.

Figure 6 shows attrition rates between 9th and 12th grades for each high school. In Jersey City overall, there were 2,161 9th graders enrolled in the fall of 2004-05 school year. Four years later, this size of the 12th grade class shrank to 1,461, a 32% drop. While this data should be interpreted with caution (many high schools have a 9th grade ‘bulge’ as a result of high levels of retention, and it is possible that students leave Jersey City high schools but enroll elsewhere), the district clearly needs to address high levels of attrition and dropout from schools.

Preparation for College and Work: SAT

While there is no data available to tell us how Jersey City students fare once they leave high school, their performance on the SAT exams can tell us how prepared they are for college work. Figure 7 shows the SAT scores and participation rates for Jersey City schools compared to the state. Because the SAT is required for admission at many colleges and universities, the participation rate can signify the extent to which students are considering post-secondary education. While overall participation rates for the district are not that much lower than the state (70 percent v. 74 percent respectively), students at some schools are clearly more college focused than other. For example, all McNair students took the SAT while only 60 percent of Lincoln students did. Average SAT scores show that Jersey City students are not performing well. All schools except McNair have average scores far below the state average on both the math and verbal sections of the test. The average scores at Snyder and Lincoln are between 140 and 160 points below the state average.

A Call to Action

The data presented demonstrate the current failings of the education system in Jersey City. With so few students able to pass the relatively low bar set by the HSPA, the district seems poised for failure when expectations are raised under the secondary redesign initiative unless significant changes are made. How will the students pass rigorous courses and high-stakes end of course exams when schools are not currently preparing them to pass the HSPA?

P.C.U.E. is calling for the district to implement bold and innovative policies to ensure that all students in Jersey City graduate high school well prepared for college or work. To that end, P.C.U.E.'s proposals call on district officials to build genuine partnership with parents and the community, to provide effective student support programs, to support our teachers and school staff, and to upgrade computer technology labs and make them accessible to all students. These proposals have been developed over the course of a few months through discussions and fact finding with parents, students, teachers, and district administrators. Our proposals are also informed by best policies and practices advocated by parent organizations, youth groups, and educators, or they are implemented by other schools districts.