For some Queens high school graduates this year, the commencement ceremony represents achieving the previously impossible.
But the special schools that made it happen often are tarred with bad marks due to federal standards that overlook their value, school administrators and education experts say.
Ryan Rodriguez, 19, of Corona, attributes his success to North Queens Community High School — what is known as a “transfer” school, which takes students who are at risk of aging out of regular high schools.
By the time Rodriguez was 17, he had collected only a paltry number of credits after three years at Flushing High School.
“At the rate I was going, I was going to end up getting discharged at 21,” said Rodriquez. “I lost hope at one point.”
Classmate Andrea Pereira, 17, of Jackson Heights, graduated after nearly being discharged from the Academy of American Studies in Long Island City.
At North Queens “I would slack but then my counselor would keep on me,” said Pereira.
North Queens, now in its fifth year with 200 students enrolled, is hitting its stride with a structure that emphasizes social services in addition to academics, said Lainey Collins, the school’s director of SCO Family of Services, a contractor that provides services to keep students on track at North Queens and two other transfer schools in the city.
Despite the success at North Queens, school administrators are worried that state report cards don’t reflect the gains.
The school does well in city progress reports, but no so well when measured according to federal “no child left behind” standards, which govern state report cards.
Principal Winston McCarthy called this an unavoidable product of the school’s mission.
“We take kids who are 16 years old and have zero credits,” said McCarthy. “That, as far as state expectations in schools, can put us in peril.”
The state Department of Education said the federal standards are out of their hands.
But the conflicting grading systems keep transfer schools on unsteady ground, said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College.
“That’s the problem when you have two different accountability systems — both of them matter,” said Pallas. “The state’s system … can make a school like [North Queens] look more vulnerable.”
On graduation day on June 26 at Queens College, Rodriguez and Pereira, both bound for city colleges, contended that the transfer school offered what was missing in their education.
“It was redemption,” said Rodriguez. “I’m actually going to miss school.”
