9/11/2012
By Ivan Pereira
The city’s teens are graduating high school in larger numbers, the mayor announced yesterday, but the teacher’s union says not all the news is good.
The four-year graduation rate for the city’s public school students last year was 65%, marking a 19% surge since 2005, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
“Through our strategies to improve education, we’ve steadily improved graduation rates and student achievement for the 10th consecutive year,” the mayor said in a statement.
Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Denis Walcott attributed the improvement in matriculation rates to the replacement of failing schools with newer, smaller institutions.
Overall, the graduation rate at the schools that were transformed increased from 35.7% in 2002 to 68% in 2011, the mayor said.
The United Federation of Teachers, which has fought the school closures, said Bloomberg is not giving New Yorkers the full picture.
Michael Mulgrew, the union’s president, said Bloomberg didn’t mention that the four-year graduation rate among special education students was 27% or that only 39% of non-native English speakers get their diploma on time.
The mayor’s office declined to respond to Mulgrew.
