The New York Times recently published a two-part series on the newly discovered problem of "push-outs" in the New York City public schools. The articles charged that principals were pushing out low-performing students in order to protect their school's performance scores and attendance rates. This practice, the reporters suggested, was the result of high-stakes testing mandated by the state and the federal government. Administrators were reacting to the testing pressure by dumping low-performing and disruptive students into the streets or into ineffective GED programs.
Since the two articles appeared, there has been a follow-up editorial in the Washington Times, as well as op-ed articles in New York City tabloids. The city chancellor, Joel Klein, has promised to put a halt to the practice of "pushing" kids out.
The trouble with this story is that its logic is wrong. The practice of pushing low-performing and disruptive students out is not new. Teachers and principals know that it has been occurring for many years. The mega-high schools, the ones with enrollments of 3,000 or 4,000 kids, have a long history of dumping recalcitrant students into alternative schools or onto the streets. In confidence, principals will say that they do this in order to protect the learning environment for the students who come to class and want to learn. Also in confidence, they will tell you that the kids who were transferred elsewhere (anywhere) were not coming to school, and when they did show up, they hung out in the hallways and didn't go to class, and if they did go to class, they prevented others from learning.
The bottom line in New York City is that the four-year graduation rate has been consistent for at least the past decade at about 50 percent. Sometimes it is up a few points, sometimes it is down a few, but that's what it is. There is no new data to support the Times' claim that the problem of pushouts has suddenly escalated to new heights.
Now, a 50 percent graduation rate is nothing to boast about. In fact, it is abysmal. But the point of the Times' series was not to draw attention to this longstanding and deplorable situation. It was to blame the No Child Left Behind act and testing in general for the problem of push-outs. It seems that testing has now become the all-purpose punching bag in education, which will now take the blame for all the ills of the schools. Whatever goes wrong, even if it went wrong many years ago, can be attributed to the demands of NCLB. If only we could get rid of tests, then all would be well.
Diane Ravitch, research professor of education at New York University and the Brown chair in education at the Brookings Institution, is a trustee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
