Speakout Columns
City public schools’ Intel success on the de-Klein
Feb 5, 2009 2:45 PM
On Jan. 14, the Intel Science Talent Search, indisputably our country’s premier science project competition, announced its 300 semifinalists for the 2008-2009 school year. First, for the good news: New York City public high school students garnered 24 of those coveted spots, including 10 students from Stuyvesant HS, nine from Bronx HS of Science, two from Brooklyn Tech, and one each from Townsend Harris, Edward R. Murrow and Forest Hills HS. Three students from private high schools also captured semifinalist spots. Well-deserved congratulations to all 27 students and their respective teachers and mentors.
Now for the bad news. Once again, as has been the case every year since 2003 when Chancellor Joel Klein effectively began his “save the public schools” regime, the numbers for New York City are abysmal by the standards of the six years immediately preceding Klein and mayoral control. The average number of New York City public school Intel Semifinalists for the six years from 1997 to 2002 was 45.83 students; for the six years from 2003-2008, it was just 24.33 — a drop of 46.9 percent.
The numbers are down everywhere you look. Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and Staten Island Tech in the last six years are each substantially below their prior six-year averages. Combined, their semifinalist numbers are off by 34.9 percent in 2003-2008 compared to 1997-2002.
Even more shameful is the impact that Klein/Bloomberg has had on the balance of the city’s high schools, those not classified as science high schools. From 1997-2002, an average of 5.67 different schools per year chalked up an average of 18.2 Intel semifinalists. From 2003-2008, an average of 3.3 different schools have claimed just 6.3 semifinalists, a horrendous (and truly tragic) drop of 65.1 percent in the number of such award winners that constitutes nothing less than the virtual abandonment of high-level science research work outside of Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. In the last three years, non-science high schools have claimed 16.7 percent, 15 percent, and now just 12.5 percent of the city’s public high school Intel semifinalist pool; in no year before that, back at least to 1997, was their share ever less than 25 percent.
Lest anyone think that the New York City Intel “de-Klein” is reflective of a statewide phenomenon, think again. The six-year average number of Intel semifinalists in New York State went from 155.8 (1997-2002) to 133.5 (2003-2008), a drop of 22.3 that almost exactly matches the 21.5 average semifinalist drop in New York City public high schools across those same two time periods.
One might think that all this bad news might be worthy of note in our local press. Yet The New York Times barely bothered to write anything about Intel beyond a generic release in its business section that failed even to mention New York City schools or students, the Daily News took a complete pass on the Intel announcement, and the New York Post offered a minuscule article under the too-cute (and misleadingly feel-good) title “Kids Are All Bright” that simply cited the total number of New York City semifinalists and the numbers from Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.
How is it that a 50 percent decline in the number of Intel semifinalists in New York City public schools that corresponds precisely to the Bloomberg/Klein Department of Education does not attract both news reporting and alarm? Lacking another “happy news” press release emanating from the DOE public relations machine, did our media simply fail to notice? Or is another DOE performance failure simply too hot to touch in this decision year for mayoral control? Whatever the case, it seems that our local mainstream media have once again failed to inform the New York City public as to what mayoral control (and the No Child Left Behind law) has really meant to their schools.
Steve Koss is a former New York City public high school math teacher and the current Parents’ Association president at the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics. A version of this column first appeared as a post on the NYC Public School Parents blog, where he is a regular contributor.
