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MONTROSE, N.Y. – Hendrick Hudson High School Principal James Mackin released his school’s annual “report card” during last week’s Hendrick Hudson School District meeting. The report, which Mackin implemented when he arrived at Hendrick Hudson High School nearly a decade ago, shows an above average graduation rate for New York State, but that special education students in the district continue to struggle.
“With this data, we’re able to set some goals,” said Mackin, while acknowledging, “We have some work to do with students with disabilities.”
“The goal was never to punish schools,” said Assistant Superintendent Dr. Alice Gottlieb about regents exams, “but to catch kids early that were falling behind.” According to Gottlieb, about 1,400 schools in New York were labeled “in need of improvement,” like one of the district’s elementary schools, Buchanan-Verplanck Elementary.
Special education students continue to struggle in the high school, in many cases their scores were isolated from general education students in the report card. Special education students failed regents at a rate of more than one in two in some cases.
Global Regents, for example, have a 14 percent failing rate in the total high school population. But when special education students are taken out of the equation, only three percent of general education students failed the test.
Special education students, on the other hand, failed the test at a rate of 52 percent, or 21 out of 40 students. Approximately the same failing rate among special education students, about 50 percent, was also found in chemistry regents.
According to “Trends in High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 1972–2008,” which was issued in December 2010 by the National Center for Education Statistics, a federal agency, New York’s average high school completion rate in 2008 was 70.8 percent. That puts Hendrick Hudson High School well above the average for the state, at 93 percent in the high school in 2011. Data from 2008 represents the most recent data available.
Graduation rates, in general, are highly debated among educators, because GED (General Education Diplomas) are counted as drop outs, which many contend devalues the work of many students’ achievements, as Mackin and other school officials explained.
“We are improving our graduation rate slowly, but surely,” said school board member, Charles Thompson. Read more about national graduation statistics here.
Comments (4)
I have never responded to a post online, but I felt compelled to say something. The fact that someone like Pointermama still has that "not in my backyard" mentality is disgusting!! The fact of the matter is that apparently the people, adults and children need to be educated about peoples differences! I wonder how this "person" would feel if their child or someone in their family suddenly became disabled, mentally or physically, guess what, they would need special education services! The problem is that the people who are so quick to judge others are truly the ones who are in need of an education!!! DISGUSTING POINTERMAMA!!
I agree with Pointermama that all of special ed students should not go to 1 school. That is the districts fault. I also agree that parents of children with disabilities need to get more involved and rely less on the district (who are clueless with helping special ed students).
The rest of her babble is just funny talk, but I guess we shouldn't expect anything more from an inbred Pointer!!!
Perhaps children with special needs should be separated from the general population of students since this little experiment has not been working. BV Elementary is only on this list of schools that need improvement because the special ed children's grades are dragging down the general student populations grades. B-V should not have to take on all of the special ed kids and low income famiies children. It has made parents very angry that good students are being lumped in with all the special ed kids. It is difficult for me to feel sorry for these kids when my children are doing the work and I am on top of their education and the special ed kids need extra help and most of their parents could be bothered sitting with them and giving them the extra help at home or they expect too much from the schools and don't feel it is up to them to give their own the extra help. This is what I see. They should be spread out amongst the three elementary schools not all tossed into BV. This school was built for Buchanan and Verplanck residents only but I see a whole lot of out of district children there. Send them back to Peekskill. How about checking out their parents addresses and not just taking their word for it!! Tired of this crap.
Wow - this is a really harsh comment - one I thoroughly disagree with. I sincerely hope that this is not a prevalent sentiment in Hen Hud or in any district for that matter.