Steve Lampert got up from his chair at Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn in mid-June, about two weeks before the final graduation in its history. He grabbed his cell phone and told his colleague Rachel Malabas that he was going to call a certain student. “I’m going to try to get him to graduate,” he said

Malabas warned Lampert that she’d already called and the student wouldn’t pick up. Lampert gave it a shot anyway.

Seconds later, Lampert, who, along with Malabas, acts as a supervisor and mentor of the credit-recovery program at Tilden, snapped his phone shut, smiled and admitted to his colleague that she was right. He was not particularly surprised.

In December 2006, the New York City Department of Education declared Tilden a failed school, because of its history of violence and low student achievement, and announced that it would be phased out and closed on June 30, 2010. Since then, three new mini-schools have opened within the Tilden building, with the remaining Tilden students occupying just a third of a floor.

Now, with Tilden’s demise only days away, teachers and administrators are scrambling to see that as many students as possible graduate. The staff is hoping that 60 percent of the 135 students will graduate before Tilden closes, which would be a substantial improvement from the 40 percent that graduated in 2009. (The New York City graduation rate in 2009 was 59 percent.) However, even by the school’s most optimistic calculations, at least 54 students will leave the school without a diploma. The reality is that many of those who do not finish Tilden by the end of the month likely will never graduate from high school.

Various programs have been adopted to help students make up classes, improve their grades and prepare for Regents exams. Credit-recovery is an online program that allows students to retake classes in which they’ve failed to earn credit. Tilden has also developed independent studies for students to make up work in classes in which they’ve struggled. Many Regents-prep courses are offered every week and one-on-one tutoring is arranged for students that have already failed their Regents exams.

“I think that the faculty is dedicated to getting the kids to graduate,” says Lampert. “But now that the school is closing and we’re under the gun, there are all these extra programs that they’re mounting. Everything that can be done to get them to graduate is being done.”

For the rest of the article, go to Tilden High School Offering Students Last Chance To Graduate