Students upgrades mostly a mirage
Sept. 17, 2006

City lacks the space to favilitate transfers out of floundering schools

By Yoav Gonen, Staten Island Advance

A federal law may be on the books to help more than 200,000 city public school students transfer from poor-performing schools or obtain free tutoring sessions, but very few students on Staten Island and the rest of the city are actually taking advantage of its options.

Watchdog education advocates say it's not the students' fault; instead, they claim the city lacks the space to move students from a floundering school to a better-performing one. They also say many parents of students nationally are not even told about special services and options.

"New York City has struggled significantly with the NCLB transfer issue," said Elisa Hyman, executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, who cited overcrowding at successful schools as a significant obstacle.

"At the end of the day, the city does not appear willing to expand transfer options to most of the eligible students."

Howie Schaffer, public outreach director for the Public Education Network, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, cited a lack of communication about the options.

"The reason why the transfer provision is not being activated is largely ignorance about it, and the responsibility for that falls at the feet of the Department of Education and local school districts," he said. "There are parent involvement provisions within the law itself that are not being enforced by the Department of Education."

The number of students transferring out of failing city schools more than doubled from last year to nearly 3,500 this year, but the figure represents less than 2 percent of those eligible under provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Additionally, more than 4,400 students who applied for transfers this year were denied - largely due to lack of seats, or as a spokesman for the Department of Education put it, because of a "supply-and-demand imbalance at the middle and high school level."

MORE CHOICES, FEW TRANSFERS
On Staten Island, Advance records show that only 76 students transferred over the past two academic years from schools that hadn't met state progress markers for two consecutive years. That's in a borough with nearly 59,000 students and where about 1 in 6, or nearly 10,000 students, were eligible to transfer this past academic year.

The city's rate of providing tutoring under the law is close to twice the national average - at 40 percent of those eligible versus 19 percent nationally, in 2004-05 - but that figure still means that more than 130,000 students who could have benefited from the program last year did not.

On Staten Island, just 1,400 of 3,200 students eligible for Supplemental Education Services (SES) tutoring - at PS 16 in Tompkinsville, PS 20 in Port Richmond, Dreyfus Intermediate in Stapleton and PS 57 in Clifton - enrolled in the program last year.

That rate of participation was slightly higher than the citywide average (close to 44 percent), but a policy brief issued in June by Advocates for Children of New York found that only two of three students enrolled in SES tutoring on Staten Island and citywide in 2004-05 actually completed the programs.

"While on the surface the city [tutoring] rate appears to be higher than the national rate, the rate of dropout from the tutoring, and non-completion, is still extremely high," Ms. Hyman said.

TRANSPORTATION IS KEY
Education watchdogs said that while some students don't transfer because their parents prefer to keep them in a school close to home, large urban centers such as New York City simply don't have the capacity to orchestrate or monitor a larger shifting of students. And on Staten Island, in particular, transportation is a prominent issue.

"Your children are in one location and now you'd have to find a different mode of getting them to school," said Joann Gentsch, who has two children at Curtis High School, one of 10 Island schools offering transfers this year.

"And it's not like you can pick the school you necessarily want. What you're left with is the same alternatives, only in a different neighborhood." She added that she was notified clearly about the transfer options, but that her sons were doing well at their current school.

Department of Education officials would not provide statistics for the current school year's transfer numbers or for the total number of students eligible on Staten Island, citing the fact that NCLB reporting did not require results to be broken down by district.

But spokesman Andrew Jacob acknowledged the challenge of meeting the transfer requests of all students.

"We always try to implement the law faithfully, and we try to improve this program each year by learning from our experience in previous years," he said.

He noted the doubling of transfer approvals this year from last, and said that parents of students in Title I schools - which are federally funded - are notified directly at least twice by the Department of Education about students' rights to transfer out of failing schools. He added that students who were unable to transfer prior to the current school year will be given another option in the spring.

As for tutoring, the Department of Education is conducting a citywide advertising campaign this year to notify parents that they can choose from more than 90 SES providers in New York. Enrollment forms are due by Oct. 16, but, as with transfers, a mid-year enrollment will also be offered.

Yoav Gonen covers education news for the Advance. He may be reached at gonen@siadvance.com.