For 13 years, Adriana Aviles, a passionate education advocate and former NYPD officer, was deeply involved in New York City’s public-school system. As a prominent member of the Citywide Council on High Schools, she regularly promoted Queens District 26 as one of the city’s strongest districts. She knew the principals, worked with teachers and trusted the schools to provide her son with a solid education. His consistently strong grades — particularly in math — appeared to confirm that confidence throughout his K-8 years. Then, two weeks ago, Aviles sat down with her 14-year-old son to prepare for his second high-school math exam. What she discovered left her stunned and her son devastated, eventually leading her to confront Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels at a town hall the following week. She described her family’s experience to The Post’s David Spector.
Throughout middle school, my son appeared to be excellent at math. His report cards were filled with A’s, and the lowest grade he received was a B-plus. But after he earned a 78 on his first exam at one of Queens’ top high schools this fall, I sat down with him to help prepare for the next test.
I will never forget watching tears gather in my son’s eyes as he struggled to answer even the first few questions on a math review sheet.
He could not solve basic algebra problems. Geometry confused him. Even fractions taught in elementary school were beyond his grasp.
That was difficult to reconcile with his record at PS 221Q, North Hills Elementary School, where he routinely earned the highest math grade. At MS 67Q Louis Pasteur Middle School in Little Neck, his lowest math grade on an end-of-term report card was an 89 in seventh grade. He earned a 92 in sixth grade and a 93 in eighth grade — all grades that appeared to indicate A-level work.
When he was accepted into his first-choice high school, one of New York City’s highest-rated schools, we had every reason to expect that his academic success would continue.
Instead, what I saw when we began studying shook me to my core.
He stared at the page without understanding what he was seeing. Equations involving fractions completely overwhelmed him.
My initial disbelief quickly turned into heartbreak and then anger.
My son is intelligent, responsible and hardworking. He even runs an online apparel business. He is not someone who likes to reveal when he is struggling. Seeing tears in his eyes broke my heart. I told him that this was not his fault, that the system had failed him, and that we would do everything necessary to help him catch up.
I did not tell anyone about what happened that night — not even my husband.
After my son took the exam, his teacher called. I told her I already knew why she was reaching out.
She said he had answered only two of 10 multipart questions correctly and received a score of 10 out of 100.
His high school is now being forced to teach him the math skills he should have learned in elementary and middle school.
I have started buying math workbooks designed for first- through fourth-grade students so I can determine what he actually understands and identify the point at which his learning stopped.
He now gives up his lunch period for tutoring every Tuesday through Friday. Once baseball season ends, he will also receive tutoring on Saturdays.
I am the daughter of immigrants. My parents came to the United States from Colombia, and my mother instilled a powerful respect for education in my sisters and me. She monitored our schoolwork closely and repeatedly emphasized how important it was to earn a high school diploma.
The discipline and work ethic she taught me helped me become an NYPD officer. Those same principles guided me when I became a parent.
When I married my husband, who was also an NYPD officer, in 2005, I insisted that we move to District 26 in Douglaston because it was regarded as one of the best school districts in New York City.
If my son’s teachers had told me he was struggling, we could have intervened much earlier. He would have put in the effort. But no one alerted us, and his grades offered no indication that there was a serious problem.
I now understand that teachers grade according to a rubric and that, in my view, the DOE manipulates the numbers. I believe the city’s education system failed my son in order to present a better picture of its own performance.
That sense of betrayal is even more painful because I had spent years working alongside the teachers and administrators at his schools.
I have been a parent leader for years, serving as PTA president and CEC president, and I currently sit on the Citywide Council on High Schools. Along the way, I built close relationships with educators at every school my children attended.
I became involved in my children’s education because I believed active participation was the only way to understand how they were really doing. I thought I had a complete picture of my son’s progress.
I was wrong.
My son was in general education rather than advanced classes, and he did not take the Regents in middle school. I depended on his teachers to give me an honest assessment of his abilities.
I also bear responsibility. I did not examine his work carefully enough or review his state-test results because I assumed that strong report-card grades meant he was on track.
Only after realizing how far behind he was did I go back and review his records. That is when I learned he had been classified as “not proficient” in math on a seventh-grade state exam.
How could he be labeled not proficient in math while receiving A’s?
Why did his middle school never provide additional support?
I feel misled.
In hindsight, the warning signs were there. Teachers assigned very little homework. Students were allowed to change answers after tests had been graded and receive revised scores. Missed assignments were treated with a surprising lack of urgency.
Many working-class parents in New York City do not have the time to monitor every assignment or closely supervise their children’s schoolwork. They rely on teachers and grading systems to provide an accurate picture. The lack of academic rigor and the inflation of grades in city schools are, in my view, deeply misleading.
That is one reason so many families are abandoning the public-school system.
The DOE is allowing students in minority communities to fall behind by repeatedly lowering expectations instead of accurately evaluating children and working with families to address their needs. The system does not even adequately address chronic absenteeism. How can young people find jobs if they cannot read, perform basic math or understand the importance of showing up?
It did not take long for me to learn that my family was not alone.
After my son’s October exam, I contacted other parents at his school to ask whether their children were also struggling with algebra. The response was overwhelming. Many parents said their children were having similar difficulties and asked where they could find tutoring.
I spoke with the mother of an eighth-grade girl who was furious about her daughter’s math instruction. Her daughter, who also attends school in District 26, was receiving only a page of homework each day, and the mother was urgently trying to transfer her to a Catholic school.
That was when I realized I had to use my position in the public-school system to speak for families whose children had been failed.
I decided to raise the issue with Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels at a Citywide Council on High Schools town hall on Monday, Oct. 26.
The DOE is moving away from the Regents graduation requirement and toward a “Portrait of a Graduate” model. That approach is intended to evaluate students more holistically, but it also relies even more heavily on subjective judgments by teachers. If objective measures continue to disappear, I fear these problems will only intensify.
I had already planned to question Samuels about the proposed changes. After seeing what had happened to my son, however, I knew I also had to share my family’s story.
“This school system is failing our children. . . . I equate this to the childhood game ‘Kick the Can.’ My son is the can. Where did he land?” I said through tears while sitting on the dais at the Art and Design High School auditorium.
As I struggled to compose myself, I told the chancellor that the consequences of the system’s failure could affect my family for years.
“In high school, where they are supposed to help him graduate with the tools he needs to succeed, will they keep kicking the can all the way to college, where I will have to pay for a remedial course that does not count toward a degree?” I asked.
I also pressed Samuels about the coming Portrait of a Graduate changes. If evaluations become even more dependent on the subjective decisions of teachers and principals, I asked, how can we prevent thousands more students from experiencing what happened to my son?
Samuels appeared unprepared for my comments. His response left me disgusted. He did not directly address my question and seemed unsure of how to respond. What he said sounded like empty jargon. As a parent and longtime parent leader, I deserved a meaningful answer. I would even have preferred the polished nonresponse politicians often give, but I did not receive that.
Afterward, I had to leave the stage. I usually stay at these events to take photographs with DOE officials, but that night I went straight home.
I could not stand beside Samuels for pictures. If he cannot explain how we are going to educate our children, who can?
