I highly recommend this report on NY1 about jaihouse schooling for NYC students which is an indictment on the educational system and on society broadly speaking.

From the tv news report:

After being arrested for tampering with a jury, Avion David, 18, found herself sitting in a classroom within hours of arriving on Rikers Island. But it was the wrong class.

Only six credits and one exam shy of her high school diploma, Avion was placed in a GED-prep program. That’s where she remained for several weeks, until she finally decided to tell someone.

“I thought I was going to go home soon, but when I realized I’m not, I really settled in and started thinking about what I wanted to do,” David said. “I spoke to the guidance counselor. I didn’t think I wanted to get a GED. I don’t want to say I’m better than that, but I thought I deserved more than a GED. I wanted a high school diploma. So I spoke to her.”

Island Academy on Rikers was the country’s first high school in a jail, but it’s become primarily a GED program. Cami Anderson, the crusading superintendent of the city’s alternative school district, wants to change that.

“We had a group that had become very focused on the GED, not necessarily what we thought was best for kids,” said Anderson.

But former teachers say Anderson doesn’t understand the jailhouse school, where the average inmate reads at fifth grade level, stays just 28 days, and is under extreme emotional stress.

“As educators, we were being told they had to take these tests and there were certain goals they had to achieve by a certain time, but [the kids would say] we can’t do social studies right now, because they just had a search, there was just a big riot, a fire, or a kid was murdered in the cell,” said former Liza Peterson, a former teacher on Rikers Island. “These were things that were coming into our classrooms.”

This year, teachers filed countless complaints over violations ranging from safety issues to students not receiving mandated special education services to testing irregularities. Anderson downplays their claims, suggesting disgruntled teachers were just making excuses for a failing school.

But at least one student says said the problem wasn’t her teachers, but what courses and materials were available.

“If they want to work with more people getting their high school diplomas, we need to take Regents and they only have three subjects, and to graduate from high school you need five,” said David. “There was no U.S. history class, no global history class, so there wasn’t enough preparation for us to take the Regents. Like when I had to take mine, I just had to find books from everywhere to study.”

David earned her GED in jail, despite falling asleep during the test. She was recently released from Rikers Island and last NY1 heard, was still waiting to find out if she passed her final Regents exam and earned her high school diploma.

Click here to watch the actual video of the news report.