The Core Knowledge Blog
Failure to Launch
by Robert PondiscioAugust 27th, 2010
This summer, I have made an informal project of trying to track down as many of my first class of South Bronx students as possible. My 5th graders in the 2002-2003 school year should have graduated from high school in June, and I was curious to see how many of them had in fact done so. Plus, I simply wanted to see how they were doing.
The exercise has been a bit dispiriting but not entirely surprising. Too many of the girls in my first class are already mothers. One has two children and a “husband” (it’s unclear if there’s a legal marriage in place) at Riker’s Island. I’ve heard lots of talk of getting GEDs, not always attached to concrete plans for doing so. On the plus side, I’ve so far found three students – two boys and a girl – who were accepted into four-year colleges. In a small world coincidence one of the young men was accepted to SUNY Oswego, where I began my college career in 1980; the other to Pace University, where I taught grad school as an adjunct for a few years. The girl, I’ll confess, is a special case and one of my
