Testimony of Angela Reformato before Joint Oversight Hearing of the City Council Education and Juvenile Justice Committees on The Role of Education Officials and Staff in Early Identification of Juvenile Delinquency and Diverting Juveniles from the Juvenile Justice System December 5, 2006
Dec 7, 2006 12:00 AM
Good afternoon, Chairwoman Sara Gonzalez, Chairman Robert Jackson and the members of the City Council Education and Juvenile Justice Committees.
My name is Angela Reformato. I am chair of the Guidance Counselor Chapter of the UFT, representing almost 3,000 school guidance counselor members. I’m pleased to offer the views of the United Federation of Teachers to this joint oversight hearing on how we can provide the kind of schooling that can minimize drop-out rates, head off delinquency and keep juveniles out of the criminal justice system.
Dropping out and incarceration are causally linked. Some 75 percent of state prisoners in the United States are high school dropouts, according to U.S. Dept of Justice figures. Failure to graduate too often means a lifetime of minimum wage jobs in unstable work situations and all too frequently leads to brushes with the law and incarceration. To society it means lost tax revenues and increased welfare and law enforcement costs.
In New York City, the Mayor’s Management Report pegs the annual cost of housing a kid in “secure detention” at $170,820. Meanwhile, it costs just $13,500 a year to educate him or her.
The UFT would like to offer a dozen recommendations that we think would help the DOE expand and improve dropout prevention strategies in the city schools.
1. New York City has a proud record of creating effective, “second-chance” high schools for students in danger of dropping out. The transfer high schools, including Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day HS and South Brooklyn High School’s collaboration with Good Shepherd Services are national models. We need more like these citywide.
When Chancellor Klein first took over the school system, he closed, without consultation, adult literacy, evening high schools and YABC Centers and sharply downsized the alternative superintendency. In our view he threw the baby out with the bathwater, losing effective programs and experienced educators. One encouraging sign that the DOE does recognize that different school alternatives are needed for students most at risk is the year-long Multiple Pathways effort. Recently, as part of this initiative, DOE revived some Young Adult Borough Centers, and is in the process of revamping GED programs into fulltime offerings.
We’d recommend that the DOE seek out the advice of those who created the most effective alternative schools, and be cautious about further cutting successful programs for fear of losing experience and expertise that cannot be re-created.. Priority should be placed on expanding second-chance opportunities throughout the city.
2. The core of any program for at-risk youngsters must be support services. Unfortunately the DOE has moved in exactly the wrong direction! While such services are a component of some alternative school settings, they should be part of all GED programs and SAVE rooms, the in-school detention centers. In fact, they should be provided to many regular middle schools and high schools that serve at risk students.
3. Dropping out begins in middle school, even if it usually doesn’t manifest itself until later. Middle school should be the locus of dropout prevention strategies. That would mean middle school improvements, including significant reductions in class size for at risk students, guidance services and changes to curriculum like career exploration and learning to work and full offerings of arts, sciences and phys ed, the things that keep youngsters interested in school.
4. The first line of defense is the teacher. Teachers see changes in behavior early on. Test scores alone are not enough of an indicator. Teacher recommendations should be weighted heavily in decisions about promotion, school placement and needed interventions. They should have a number of options available for their students at risk. (Referring at-risk students to special ed is not a solution for students whose problems may be rooted in their personal situations or their detachment from school.)
5. Guidance counselors come next. But few counselors have time for guidance, especially preventive service, since their time is consumed by paperwork. At the school where I work, New Utrecht HS, we have begun a support program for at-risk students we identify in the ninth grade. Under the supervision of a guidance counselor who is dedicated exclusively to this program, we work closely with the youngsters in the following years, catching the first signs of trouble and providing immediate intervention. Once a student veers off track, it takes one-on-one work to restore him or her to the graduation path. Schools need more counselors, and counselors need smaller case loads.
6. Attendance teachers are in short supply. At-risk students need to be identified and brought back into school as soon as erratic attendance patterns begin, before they become everyday occurrences. There simply are not enough attendance teachers – only some 300 to serve a million students -- to do that job effectively.
` 7. The UFT is a strong supporter of small schools. But as reported in a recent study, small high schools do not accept non-English speakers or special ed students for at least their first couple of years and that rules out many of the kids we are talking about. The small schools must accept at-risk students and provide them with appropriate services. If that brings down their test score or attendance averages, they should not be penalized for it.
8. There need to be more positive and constructive approaches to school suspension. In-school suspension programs, called SAVE, fall far short of their legislative intent. Mandated to provide both instruction and support services, they often don’t exist, are staffed inappropriately (no teacher) or are nothing more than holding rooms. Similarly, attendance at DOE Suspension Centers is very low and these centers provide no support or clinical services. The most at risk students – many of whom are already in the juvenile justice system -- are simply warehoused, oftentimes for many months. They frequently don’t return to school.
. 9. Schools in poor neighborhoods should be opened as community centers after school hours, along the lines of the Beacon Schools model—offering use of the gym and full afterschool programs for kids. For adults there should be ESL and GED classes, job centers, immigration law clinics, etc. And health clinics (including dental and mental health) have been found to improve student performance. This kind of interagency coordination should have been one of the benefits of mayoral control of the schools.
10. It’s important to keep the networks of schools and social services small and manageable. The DOE dismantled the 32 Community Schools Districts and replaced them with ten regions, each with an SPYFSS (Student Placement, Youth and Family Support Services) office. Then they replaced those 10 offices with 5 Offices of Youth Development. Each Office of Youth Development is responsible for 250 schools. That’s too many.
Small networks of school guidance counselors, social workers, CBOs and youth service agencies should be in regular touch with each other. But under current DOE rules, they have no time to meet to coordinate strategies and services. Everybody talks about interagency coordination, but that doesn’t happen by osmosis..
11. The DOE should re reach out to the police, HRA, Corrections, community boards and other groups so that there is less of a gulf between schools and the other places that deal with youth facing hardships or family crises.
12. Learning to Work should be emphasized. This component probably requires a lot of development, as there are limited job resources for kids who haven’t graduated—in fact, that’s the whole point. Partnerships with local business, a pro-active referral process, and strengthening ties with other social service agencies that do this kind of work are some of the ways this invaluable part of the dropout-prevention process can be built. Career and technical high schools do a better job of this and should be supported and expanded to serve more students. Linking school with practical preparation helps kids see the connection between graduating and having a future.
Victor Hugo’s 19th century observation that “when you build a school, you close a prison,” is still true in the 21st century. But the school has to provide what kids need in the first place, and then a second and a third chance of targeted intensive services if that’s what it takes. Otherwise we all pay the price, not least of all the kids themselves.
