Minorities in New York attempting to enter college in the near future may face a daunting task. They will be caught in the grips of New York state’s newly adopted teacher evaluation system. The system will determine how teachers’ and principals’ performance will be assessed. The issue with this bill is that its creators are non-educators.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been steadfast in making it difficult for teachers to achieve the job protection of tenure. Quite simply, this evaluation process appraises employees by test scores, thus potentially leading the public schools in New York to become test-taking factories.
Avery Mullen
Take all of that and implement it into an already-challenged school system such as New York City and the result can potentially lead to an underprepared minority student with few options for college.
College preparedness is comprised of various factors. Those factors include, but are not limited to economic, educational and household resources. Poverty is perhaps the strongest predictor of college enrollment of minorities.
Minority students remain significantly underrepresented in the most selective colleges, according to a study by Stanford University in 2012. Recent data suggest that, although minority rates have been increasing, there is still a huge gap in regards to minority enrollment at these colleges. All that being said, 6 percent of enrollees at these “selective” institutions are minorities.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, when looking at community colleges, studies have found remediation rates surpassing 50 percent, meaning that almost half of the incoming students need some type of preparatory course to meet the minimum standards of a specific college discipline. To take that study even further, it’s important to not only look at the competencies of these incoming students, but the foundation of their academic success, or in this case, their lack thereof.
