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Parents blindsided as stellar students are now failing state exams, as funding for tutoring slashed BY Meredith Kolodner DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Sunday, December 5th 2010, 4:00 AM Lanzilote for News Yanette Rojas sits with her daughter Judith who failed the state exams after years of good grades. Many parents have been blindsided by poor test scores. After years of good grades, Makelah Elliott and her family were shocked to find out she failed the fifth-grade state reading exam this summer. Determined not to let Makelah, 11, fall farther behind in her first year of middle school, her mom is shelling out $120 a month for private tutoring. "I'm trying my best to find any other ways to help her," said her mom, Marsha Elliott. "I don't think the school was providing enough. I had to go on the outside to put her in the program to get her the help she needed." More than 100,000 extra children failed state exams this year after the state acknowledged the tests were too easy and raised the bar. At 369 schools, two out of three students are not reading at grade level, up from just five schools in 2009, stats show. Parents of these struggling children complain they were blindsided since they thought their kids were on track to graduate but are now classified as "failing." At the same time, budget cuts are forcing schools to ax after-school and tutoring programs aimed at helping struggling students. "When I get home from work, it's so late. How much can I sit and read with her?" said Makelah's mom, Marsha Elliott, a correction officer. "I really depend on the school." Elliott may have reason to worry. Only 28% of students at Makelah's school, Intermediate School 211 in Canarsie, were reading at grade level last year. Judith Rojas, 9, got top grades in math when she was in third grade last year at PS 89 in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. She earned the highest score possible on the practice test for the state exam, but on the spring day she took the real test, she knew something was wrong. "She came home and she said the test was totally different from what she was prepared for," Judith's mom, Yanette, said. "'They had many problems I never practiced, new things I never was taught.' When she said that, I said, 'Oh my goodness.'" Judith was right. She scored a 2 - a failing grade. "I said, 'I must not be preparing her the way I prepared my older daughter,'" said Rojas, whose older daughter is in fifth grade at Achievement First Endeavor charter school and earned the highest score on the exam. "I said, 'OK, everything is going to change.'" Rojas said not much has changed at the school, though. Judith stays an extra 37-1/2 minutes for the school's extended day program, but the time is devoted to art and sports, not tutoring in math and reading. Rojas was a teacher in her home country of Peru for 15 years, so she has taken matters into her own hands - something, she notes, not all parents can do. "Because the school is not providing anything extra, at home every day I work with her, division, fractions, things that I know at this age children have to know," said Rojas. "I'm a kind of extra teacher that she has every day." She is taking no chances with her youngest daughter Daniela, 8, who will take the state exams for the first time this year as a third grader. Rojas has gotten permission from the school to act as a tutor to her daughter every morning - during class. PS 89, like so many schools, no longer has the budget to pay teachers' aides to provide the extra help. Rojas is frustrated that Judith, who is a disciplined student, has fallen so far behind. "This is her beginning," she said. "What happens for her in the school means everything for what will happen in her life." mkolodner@nydailynews.com Read more at www.nydailynews.com

 

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