NY schoolchildren can’t read — yet state leaders refuse to act

 Look what The New York Times finally discovered: New York school kids — in alarming numbers — can’t read.  

On Wednesday, the paper reported the state is behind the rest of the nation in fixing its reading program and that declines in fourth-grade reading scores here on last year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress test were twice the national average.

In large districts like Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, as many as eight in 10 kids fail annual reading tests; in Gotham, less than half pass.

This is old news to anyone paying attention, but the folks in charge of state education policy have other priorities.

Other states, and New York City under Mayor Eric Adams and Chancellor David Banks, have taken steps to fix the problem by re-emphasizing phonics instruction, which all the science now shows is the best way to help kids learn.

But the state Board of Regents and its minions at the State Education Department are more interested in protecting teachers from consequences for school failures and getting kids through the system as soon as possible, regardless of how little they’ve learned.

Look what The New York Times reported that New York state is behind the rest of the nation in fixing its reading program.

Denver Post via Getty Images

That fourth-grade reading stat, by the way, is critical: Kids who don’t acquire basic reading skills by that point are more likely to fare poorly in life: dropping out of school, in poverty, and in jail.

The chief problem: For years, educators (not just in New York but throughout the nation) bought into a teaching approach that shunned phonics (learning to “sound” out letters and words) for the far less effective “balanced literacy” approach long pushed by Columbia’s Lucy Calkins and other “experts.”

Countless numbers of kids failed to get a solid base early on.

New York City under Mayor Eric Adams and Chancellor David Banks has re-emphasized phonics instruction, which is one of the best ways to help kids learn.

Gabriella Bass

Then, with the outbreak of COVID in 2020, union-driven school closures and remote “learning” turned the tragedy into a full-blown catastrophe, with severe learning loss in reading and math.

In response, nearly every state passed laws or shifted their teaching programs to adapt.

But not New York — except the city, where Adams and Banks did announce a major return to phonics-based teaching and other measures to get kids to read.

Remote learning had its pros and cons during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Shutterstock / Aleksandra Suzi

Thanks to the regents’ other priorities — helping the teacher’s unions ensure that even ineffective teachers stay in classrooms, scrapping or dumbing down tests under the ridiculous banner of “anti-racism and equity” to hide the failures — virtually nothing has been done on the state level.

Many districts continue to use reading-instruction methods that are scientifically proven not to work.

Nor has Gov. Kathy Hochul lifted a finger: Instead, a spokeswoman points to hikes in school aid on the gov’s watch, as if spending more on failed methods will improve outcomes.

NY Governor Kathy Hochul delivered a speech at 633 Third Avenue in Manhattan.

Kevin C. Downs for NY Post

Typical: What matters most to the gov and pols like her is not whether kids learn but how much money the state is shelling out.

No wonder New York consistently spends more per student than any other state and with mediocre results.

We’ve been flagging all this for years. Cross your fingers that the Times stays awake to New York’s student-reading disaster, rather than reverting to its usual blithe ignorance: A full-on, across-the-spectrum push might force state leaders to admit the damage and finally focus on getting kids educated.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/05/ny-schoolchildren-cant-read-yet-state-leaders-refuse-to-act/

Kindergarten among highest enrollment declines as families flee NYC school system

 Kindergarten enrollment in city public schools is plummeting as parents reject the troubled system — and the hardest-hit districts could suffer for years to come, experts told The Post.

A staggering 33% fewer kindergarten students citywide enrolled last school year than in 2016-2017.

The numbers dropped from 82,517 to 55,288 over those seven school years, according to city Department of Education data obtained by The Post.

District 9 in The Bronx, which covers Morris Heights and Mount Eden, saw the largest decline — 29% — with 690 fewer kindergartners signing up.

It was among three other Bronx districts that saw enrollment declines of 25% or more.

In Manhattan’s District 5, which covers most of Central Harlem and parts of East and West Harlem, last year’s kindergarten enrollment dipped by almost a quarter.

Students there have begged for better schools and overwhelmingly attend publicly funded, privately-run charter schools instead of traditional public schools.

The data shows that 37,600 students transferred out of NYC and over 18,000 transferred to charters.

Helayne Seidman

“The same opportunities just aren’t there,” said Donald Niang, a Harlem father of two, who chose Global Community Charter School in Harlem over a District 5 school for his kindergartener last year.

“These charter schools, they introduce kids to things that broaden their horizons and open their minds, and that means a lot to me,” Niang said.

Harlem mom Marsha Taylor told The Post back in May that she was “mortified” to see the state test results for local DOE schools and ultimately enrolled her two kids at Global Community.

“I made the switch and I’m glad that I did. I have not regretted my decision,” she said. 

Marsha Taylor sent her two children to a charter school instead of a public school in Harlem.

J.C. Rice

While charters saw significant enrollment gains, growing by over 20,000 students, about 18%, traditional public school enrollment for grades K-12 cratered by 14%, nearly 150,000 kids, over the past five years, according to the latest June records obtained by The Post.

Total 3K-12th grade enrollment is now at 859,124.

The data also shows that 37,600 students transferred out of NYC and over 18,000 transferred to charters.

Analysis of test results shows that NYC charter students perform among the best in the country and outpace their local public school peers, less than half of whom passed English and math standardized tests in grades 3-8 last year.

“Parents don’t think a general-ed public school will meet their child’s needs,” said Alina Adams, author of “Getting into NYC Kindergarten.” “The fact is, the bar in New York is so low, all children could do a higher level of work.”

Declining birth rates are partially to blame for enrollment drops, said Adams, but pervasive concerns about plunging public school standards are pushing parents out.

The city also has one of the latest birthday cutoffs in the country, requiring many kids to start kindergarten at age 4, which some say is too young and could have long-term consequences, Adams said. 

https://nypost.com/2023/08/05/families-fleeing-public-schools-starting-with-kindergarten/

'End of an era': Zoom tells employees to return to office for work

 Zoom is asking all of its employees to return to the office for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, when the tech company blew up as one of the main means of communication for people forced to work from home.

Zoom, which remains a leader in the post-pandemic remote work trend, is now asking all employees within 50 miles of a company office to go in at least two days a week on a hybrid schedule.

“We believe that a structured hybrid approach – meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams – is most effective for Zoom,” a spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement. “As a company, we are in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate, and support our global customers.”

Eric Yuan, founder of Zoom Video Communications, which is now asking all employees within 50 miles of a company office to go in at least two days a week on a hybrid schedule.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

The San Jose-based company’s shares skyrocketed six-fold in 2020 when the pandemic left millions of employees who needed to connect with coworkers online stranded in their homes, according to the outlet. Zoom quickly emerged as the go-to video conferencing service.

Towards the end of 2021, however, Zoom’s stock plummeted and the company has since lost at least $100 billion in market value.

The stock stagnated again this year as workers have returned to their offices across the country, cutting the reliance on video communications, Business Insider reported.

The San Jose-based company’s shares skyrocketed six-fold in 2020 when the pandemic forced employees to use Zoom as their main means of communication.

Justin Sullivan

In January 2022, Zoom said only 2% of its employees worked on-site.

Zoom has two United States offices in San Jose, California and Denver, Colorado as well as numerous international sites, according to the company’s website. The company employs more than 8,400 people worldwide, per Fortune.

“We’ll continue to leverage the entire Zoom platform to keep our employees and dispersed teams connected and working efficiently,” the spokesperson said.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/05/zoom-tells-employees-to-return-to-office-for-work/

Simple and accessible method creates potency-increasing structure in drugs

 Chemical structures called cyclopropanes can increase the potency and fine-tune the properties of many drugs, but traditional methods to create this structure only work with certain molecules and require highly reactive -- potentially explosive -- ingredients. Now, a team of researchers from Penn State has identified and demonstrated a safe, efficient and practical way to create cyclopropanes on a wide variety of molecules using a previously undescribed chemical process. With additional development, the new method -- described in a paper publishing Aug. 4 in the journal Science -- could transform how this important process occurs during drug development and creation.

Cyclopropanes are a key feature in many drugs currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, including those used to treat COVID-19, asthma, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDs. These structures can increase a drug's potency, alter its ability to dissolve in the body, minimize its interactions with unintended targets, and otherwise fine-tune performance. Cyclopropanes are a ring of three connected carbon atoms, with one carbon attached to the rest of the drug molecule and the other two each attached to two hydrogen atoms.

"Cyclopropanes are an essential component of many drugs and adding them to drug candidates can be an important part of the drug discovery process," said Ramesh Giri, professor of chemistry in the Eberly College of Science at Penn State and leader of the research team. "Previous efforts to improve the creation of cyclopropanes have focused on altering a mechanistic pathway devolved more than 60 years ago. We approached this from a different angle and identified a completely new pathway that is a simple, practical, and broadly applicable."

The new method transforms a specific chemical structure on compounds called alkenes -- used in the synthesis of many molecules -- into cyclopropanes. The method takes advantage of "radical chemistry," where intermediate steps of reactions leave some carbon atoms with unpaired electrons called free radicals that propel the reaction forward. This specific method uses visible light to initiate the reaction and uses common chemical ingredients, including oxygen.

Traditional methods to create cyclopropanes require highly reactive and difficult-to-acquire ingredients and must be conducted under controlled conditions, and the resulting compounds often have a very short shelf life. These unstable ingredients are critical to producing an intermediate compound in the process called a carbene -- a highly reactive carbon atom with two unpaired electrons. The new method completely bypasses the carbene intermediate, producing the unpaired electrons one at a time as radicals.

"All of the ingredients used in this pathway are commercially available or easy to create in the lab and do not require any special safety precautions, and the end product can be stored for prolonged periods," Giri said. "We can add all the ingredients together in one mixture while exposed to air with as little as 10% oxygen, and it proceeds in one step. The reaction is simple and safe enough that we are even planning to include it as part of an undergraduate chemistry lab."

Another shortcoming of traditional methods is that they generally do not work with complex molecules. For this reason, cyclopropanes are typically installed early in the synthesis when the molecule is less complex, but following steps can cause the ring to open up, and later attempts to make derivatives of the molecule would require backtracking to those early steps. Using the new method, the researchers successfully transformed a variety of alkenes with a wide range of complexities into cyclopropanes, including pharmaceutically relevant compounds such as the steroid estrone, penicillin and vitamin B.

"We explored the entire range of molecule complexity that people might encounter during drug synthesis," Giri said. "In some cases, traditional methods might be able to develop the same end product but in many more steps. In other cases, traditional methods would be unable to create these products, because the starting alkenes are too sensitive or too complex. The new method is not only safer, more efficient and more practical, but has a wider range of applications than traditional methods."

Some of the ingredients in the reaction can also be swapped out to add additional chemical groups to the final product to achieve various therapeutic goals. One of the reaction's ingredients is as a type of compound called a methylene. There are hundreds of different methylenes that are commercially available, each with a specific chemical group that makes it a methylene as well as other groups that differ and could theoretically be added to the alkene as a cyclopropane Is created. The researchers demonstrated the breadth of the new method using 19 different methylene compounds.

"The idea of using a visible light-based reaction and radical chemistry to transform alkenes into cyclopropanes using methylenes at first seems counterintuitive, which is why it was so important for us to thoroughly demonstrate this new catalytic method," Giri said. "The key insight was introducing oxygen into the reaction, which helps create a radical that then interacts with the alkene. My lab has been studying other reactions that use alkenes to create a radical and wondered if the same idea could be applied to creating cyclopropanes."

Next, Giri and his lab plan to scale up the method so that it is industrially viable.

"With future development and scaling up, this method has the potential to transform the way alkenes are cyclopropanated, which could have important implications for drug discovery, development, and creation," he said.

In addition to Giri, the research team at Penn State includes postdoctoral researcher Dhruba Poudel, postdoctoral researcher at the time of the research Amrit Pokhrel, postdoctoral researcher at the time of the research Raj Kumar Tak, and postdoctoral research Majji Shankar. The U.S. National Institute of General Medical Sciences and Penn State supported this research.

Journal Reference:

1. Dhruba P. Poudel, Amrit Pokhrel, Raj Kumar Tak, Majji Shankar, Ramesh Giri. Photosensitized O 2 enables intermolecular alkene cyclopropanation by active methylene compounds. Science, 2023; 381 (6657): 545 DOI: 10.1126/science.adg3209

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230803141658.htm