New York City School Graduations: 7,000 Students Wrongly Blocked From Walking
More than 7,000 New York City elementary and middle school school students were wrongly banned from attending their graduation ceremonies after education officials mistakenly thought the students had failed state exams, the New York Post reports.
The city's Department of Education had overestimated the number of failing students, but only caught their mistake after the graduation ceremonies had already taken place. The 7,034 students were notified last week -- after they had taken just over a week of summer school and missed their graduations -- that it was all a mistake. They were among 30,000 city students who were told they would be held back unless they went to summer school and passed another exam in August.
"When they told me I wasn't graduating, I was very sad. I felt like such a failure," Bell Academy MS eighth grader Megan Marrera told the Post. "The day of the graduation, I was crying in bed."
Her mother is even more upset now that Marrera was "robbed of seeing a milestone in her life" by missing a graduation ceremony she deserved.
The city blunder stems from a state change in testing schedule that pushed back exam dates and thus delaying the official determination of a student's passing status. While the city grades its own students' exams and have the raw scores before graduation dates, they don't know whether a student's scale score actually passes the state's standards until the state sets the cut-off score.
As a result, the city has been forced to use rough estimates to determine who passed -- and who could graduate based on those estimates.
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Mabel Pantaleon Found: Missing 'Dexter' And 'Mystery ER' NYC Actress Safe
Mabel Pantaleon, the 31-year old actress who was reported missing earlier this week, was found safe at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City on Thursday.
According to reports, Pantaleon was at the airport attempting to purchase a plane ticket when her name appeared on a police database. The alert prompted authorities to arrive and take Pantaleon to a psychiatric emergency room.
Upon news of her safety, Pantaleon's mother told ABC, "Everything is over, thank God. She's OK, and she is in the hospital. Thank god for everything.. that this is over now."
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