GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

In a school sweatshirt, Chancellor Dennis Walcott congratulates WHEELS seniors as they approach the local post office.

When William Taveras approached the Washington Bridge Post Office on West 180th Street, college applications in hand, with whoops and applause from hundreds of classmates in the background, it was a step toward a goal he set five years ago.

As a member of the first class of sixth-graders at the Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School, Taversas said he often heard founding principal Brett Kimmel tell students his main objective was to get everyone into college.

Kimmel brought Taveras’s cohort a few steps closer to that goal today, when all 76 seniors marched the three blocks from their Upper Manhattan school to the post office that would mail their transcripts and applications to universities.

Each student was required to apply to CUNY and SUNY colleges, and some said they were applying to other schools as well. WHEELS — which lists “high-dose” tutoring as one of its strategies to build college readiness — required each student to apply to a minimum of six colleges. (more…)

Graduates of Washington Irving High School toss their caps

The 89-year-old nave of Riverside Church reverberated with Bulldog spirit on Monday, as Manhattan’s Washington Irving High School held its graduation exercises.

The graduates, who filled the vast space with a unified toss of their caps at the ceremony’s conclusion, represented just a fraction of the students who started at Washington Irving four years ago. While graduation data for this year’s class is not yet available, last year Washington Irving’s 4-year graduation rate was just 55 percent, which was an increase from 2009, when its rate was the lowest in the city among traditional high schools. The city has dramatically reduced the school’s size in recent years in an effort to turn performance around.

But the school’s struggles barely registered at graduation, where a handful of top students were recognized for their achievements. (more…)

Donette Newyear, student body president at the Bronx School for Law and Finance, scored a coup when Chancellor Dennis Walcott accepted her invitation to speak at the school’s graduation today.

But the main attraction might as well have been graduating senior Karina Melendez, who overcame cancer, homelessness, and years in foster care to rise to the top of her class at Law and Finance.

GothamSchools profiled Melendez last year when she was one of five students nationally to win a prestigious scholarship that covers four years at any college.

Today, Melendez graduated as the school’s co-salutorian, and in the fall, she heads to Columbia University.

The master of ceremonies, Richard Kavesh, a teacher who was once mayor of Nyack, N.Y., called Melendez one of the most remarkable students he’d ever encountered. (more…)

Elected officials and Department of Education deputies are the most common graduation speakers at city schools this year.

Novelists will take the stages of two elite schools known for their prowess in math and science, according to a list of graduation speakers the DOE has distributed. (The list is posted below.) E.L. Doctorow will speak at Bronx High School of Science, which he attended, and Stuyvesant graduates will hear from alumnus Gary Shteyngart.

The graduation speaker with the most packed schedule is Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, who is scheduled to speak at 15 schools over eight days. The schools include his alma mater, Francis Lewis High School; a school for students with severe disabilities; transfer schools; and two low-performing high schools that aren’t set for closure, Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn and Washington Irving High School in Manhattan.

Notably absent from the list: Ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner, who had been set to speak at his alma mater, Brooklyn Technical High School, before resigning amid scandal this week. The New York Times reports that Public Advocate Bill deBlasio will replace Weiner at Brooklyn Tech. DeBlasio is also the featured speaker at MS 51, a selective middle school in his own neighborhood of Park Slope.

The city also released statistics about high schools’ top graduates:

For the Class of 2011, there are 375 valedictorians. Of these students, 65 percent are female, 49 percent speak a language other than English at home and 66 percent are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

Those breakdowns are virtually identical to last year, when there were only 339 valedictorians because fewer schools had graduating classes. (more…)

As students shimmied and wobbled on perilously high heels across the stage at Bayard Rustin High School’s graduation today, teachers commented on what a difficult year it had been.

The Chelsea high school began phasing out last fall when it opened without a new ninth grade, and it will close for good in 2012. In October four Bayard Rustin students attended a Harvard Black Alumni Society panel on the dropout crisis and confronted Chancellor Joel Klein about his decision to close their school.

At the time, Klein made the students a bet: if they graduated, and would like him to, he would speak at their graduation.

The four students did graduate and Klein did speak today, but it was another panel member, New York University sociologist Dr. Pedro Noguera, who the students asked to be their graduation speaker. Noguera has been critical of Klein’s decisions to phase out struggling schools. Here’s some of what he said:

Part of what attracted me to coming was what the students said. Students said they were worried about what it means to graduate from a school that’s being phased out. (more…)

The city’s list of graduation speakers this year includes Obama advisor David Axelrod (Stuyvesant High School), singer Mary J. Blige (Women’s Academy of Excellence), and news anchor Katie Couric (Edward R. Murrow High School).

But the most interesting information comes at the very end of the list, where Department of Education officials have included some information on this year’s high school valedictorians:

Additionally, the Department of Education for the first time collected data about the valedictorians at the City’s public high schools. Of the 339 valedictorians, 63 percent are female, 49 percent speak languages other than English at home, and 66 percent are eligible to receive free or reduced-price school meals

(more…)

More than half of the New York City’s Hispanic students graduated from high school last year, the first time the city has reached that bar since it began tracking graduation rates in the 1980s.

That statistic stood out among several gains reported in graduation rate data trumpeted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein today. The city has nearly halved its drop-out rate over the past five years, and the number of students earning Regents and Advanced Regents diplomas rose, according to data released today by the city and state education departments.

“The results for New York City are historic,” said Bloomberg, speaking to reporters at the city Department of Education’s Tweed Courthouse headquarters this afternoon.

The city’s four-year graduation rates for students who entered high school in 2005 was 59 percent, up three percentage points from students the year before. (more…)

Mayor Bloomberg announced today that New York’s graduation rates are on the rise for the seventh consecutive year.

According to Department of Education data the city’s four-year graduation rate climbed from nearly 53 percent in 2007 to over 56 percent in 2008. The nearly 4-percentage point jump refers to students who started ninth grade in 2004 and graduated in 2008.

The percentage of students graduating from the city’s public schools fell short of the statewide average of roughly 71 percent. But New York City’s rates were higher compared to those in major cities like Buffalo and Syracuse.

Calling the rate increase “dramatic,” Mayor Bloomberg declared it a victory for the 2002 law that centralized the city’s school governance. The law is set to sunset on June 30.

“The bottom line is, all signs are pointing in the right direction,” Bloomberg said. “And I think everybody understands that mayoral control really has been the key to all of this.” (more…)