Reflection on City Year, NCLB and Camden Public Schools

Under strict No Child Left Behind (NCLB) testing requirements, students are forced to spend months of classroom time studying for under-performing schools to achieve 'yearly adequate progress'. If the schools do not get good test results, then funding is cut and students can transfer between schools. However, schools make it very difficult for these transfers to happen leaving students no other options. According to Jonathan Kozol, "Less than a fifteen-minute bus ride often separates our wealthiest and poorest schooling systems." I've often heard people negatively comment about seeing 'students crossing the bridge' into the Camden suburbs that want to go to a better school.

In Camden, public high school dropout rates have been increasing since 2002. Statistics from NJ Department of Education, School Report Cards, show that in 9th grade, approximately 1,000 students are enrolled but then by 12th grade more than 50% are left. These staggering statistics suggest that kids are learning nothing. However, there are Camden schools that try to capture these kids early before they slide so far behind that they can't even read or write.

For instance, the Freedom Academy Charter school enrolls students into its program starting at the 5th grade. Then teaching focuses on helping students reach 5th grade level academic skills. Students go to school year-round from around 8 AM to 5 PM everyday. The school's mission is to help students get prepared for high school. Because by high school, most students from public schools are ill-prepared to enter with such poor academic abilities.

I think the No Child Left Behind is not helping urban public schools. It cannot address dropout rates nor fix poor academic achievement. Despite the Act, the lack of parent involvement and the degrading PTAs is a huge factor in contributing to worsening public schools. Many parents have pointed that out to me in and outside the classroom. Notable is that Camden City has a very high young population that is under the age of 18, highest among groups of age distribution. This large, uneducated population will have a significant difficulty achieving a good life in Camden or anywhere else.

So there are bigger existing problems that are affecting the public schools in Camden. Why are organizations like City Year or Teach For America absent from this city?

I would love to see the Camden Board of Education allow community groups like Fairview Main Street into the schools.

more to come...

Urban Design and Security

Can you just google security products to help businesses make decisions and purchases to help protect their businesses? more to come...

Creating an Urban Forest in Camden

I organized a tree planting with the Mid-Atlantic Health Corps of VISTAs to assist our design committee with this activity. It had a fantastic turnout with over fifty volunteers and community residents helping to plant several varieties of trees and learning how to maintain them. Kids came out bursting with curiosity and wanted to get involved.

Back in December, I forwarded grant information to the New Jersey Tree Foundation and here is the response I got.

Hi Nikki--
Thanks for thinking of us! I have already submitted my application for the Home Depot Award and am crossing my fingers this time around! We applied the first year and did not get it. I think the problem is that we have a lack of support from the City. In that I mean that while they support what we do and they definitely appreciate that we are there to plant trees, they don't go out of their way to help us out and they certainly don't have any sort of long-term goal for their community trees. I've been trying to work with them on this for the past year and a half so hopefully Home Depot will see that and give us a better chance this year!