If this figure is legitimate – and I sincerely doubt it could be – then we have a disaster on our hands of major proportions because a huge proportion of the NYC family population is leaving town.

I think we should create a new disability classification, just for kids who attend NYCDOE high schools: NYCDOE_disabled. Meaning that there’s something so awful about NYCDOE high schools that a staggeringly high proportion of families flee NYC while their kids are in high school just to escape from our public school system. If the new, new small high schools are truly an important answer to the “how do we stop kids from dropping out question,” then releasing discharge data for each of these schools is very much in order, and quickly.

The US DOE’s Inspector General did a series of audits nationwide around 2000 and discovered that a huge proportion of kids reported as having moved out of district and transferred to another school system were, in fact, dropouts who had been misreported as movers – so they wouldn’t be counted as dropouts. What the NYC figures demonstrate, more than anything else, is that an audit of the legitimacy of the NYCDOE’s reported numbers for kids who allegedly left NYC high schools to attend school in another part of New York State, or the United States, is desperately needed.

Comptroller Liu recently announced he would audit to determine if the NYCDOE was judging schools properly, and on valid data, when deciding whether to close them or leave them open. He should start with a very hard look-see at the documentation on file showing that these “transfers” weren’t really pushed out or transferred to the streets.

There is also no reason to fail to count and report on those kids with mild to moderate disabilities who are in special ed. classes operated by districts, sited in regular mainstream high schools, in the graduation, dropout and discharge numbers. The NYCDOE has explicitly removed these kids from its reported numbers. These are kids who should all be able to earn local high school diplomas. They are not the severely disabled students in District 75. And there are a lot of them. To not report their data raises red flags of a profound nature. The Court of Appeals, in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity suit, found that RCT exams, which these disabled kids can all take, measure attainment at the 6th through 9th grade levels, depending on the test. The NYCDOE reportedly spends a huge amount of money providing what is supposed to be effective special education services and programs for this group of students. At best, the refusal to report their numbers makes one question where this money is really going – and what it’s really being spent for. Effective instructional and remedial services doesn’t appear to be part of the answer.

Bravo to those who raised a public stink and finally forced the NYCDOE to release some discharge numbers. Now … let’s have the rest.