Summer School Hooky Over 10,000 Queens Students Cut Classes

Bowing to peer pressure and the lure of summer fun, more than 10,400 Queens students per day were cutting their summer school classes last week, according to attendance records posted by the Board of Education.
Failure to regularly attend summer school may cause nearly 2,300 of these youngsters to repeat these classes and delay their graduation, said School Chancellor Harold O. Levy.
"Children in grades 3-8 can no longer be promoted to the next grade without clear demonstration that grade level standards are either met or surpassed," he declared.
However, Board records show that local students had better attendance records than the rest of the city: one of five Queens students cut required classes, while, in the rest of the city, one of four played hooky.
The report also revealed that Queens youngsters have a far higher rate of voluntary school attendance than kids in the rest of the city: seven of every 10 Queens schoolgoers are attending non-mandated classes, while kids in the other boroughs are attending at a 10 percent lower rate.
Highest local attendance records were scored by the boroughs traditional leaders: S.D. 26 (Bayside, Douglaston), followed by S.D. 25 (Flushing, Whitestone). Bringing up the rear, and below the citys attendance average, was S.D. 24 (Glendale, Middle Village, Maspeth).
Hoping to end this educational gap, Levy has publicly called for the end of "social promotion," or promotion of unqualified students. One key to this program, said the Chancellor, is extension of the compulsory education law that makes summer school education compulsory for failing students.
Without this attendance law, he wrote to Governor George Pataki, and the heads of the state legislature, "the job of getting academically needy students into classrooms becomes all the more difficult."