In an interview, Fanta spoke confidently of a future in business.“If I have money, maybe I can send it back to Africa,” she said. “I canhelp my mother. I can come to school for that, too.” But aftera fall of perfect attendance, Fanta has not returned to school sinceNew Year’s. Ms. Vega says she has since learned that she is five monthspregnant.
Fanta Konneh is the first girl in her family to go to school. Not thefirst to go to college, or to graduate from high school. Fanta, 18, whogrew up in Guinea after her family fled Liberia, became the first towalk into a classroom of any kind last year.
“Just the boys go to school, so I always knew I was left out,” saidFanta, a student at Ellis Preparatory Academy in the South Bronx. “Buthere, I am trying. I can say many things I did not know before. I canlearn things more.”
New York City classrooms have long beenfilled with children from all over the world, and the educationchallenges they bring with them. But hidden among the nearly 150,000students across the city still struggling to learn English are anestimated 15,100 who, like Fanta, have had little or no formalschooling and are often illiterate in their native languages.
More than half of these arrive as older teenagers and land in thecity’s high schools, where they must learn how to learn even as theirpeers prepare for state subject exams required for a diploma.
“Theydon’t always have a notion of what it means to be a student,” saidStephanie Grasso, an English teacher at Ellis Prep, which opened thisfall and is New York’s first school devoted to this hard-to-educatepopulation. “Certain ideas are completely foreign to them. They have tolearn how to ask questions and understand things for themselves.”
Thelargest share of these students come from rural areas of the DominicanRepublic, where they did not attend school because it was too far awayor because they were working to support their families. Others fledreligious persecution in Tibet, civil wars in West Africa or extremepoverty in Central America, often missing years of class while inrefugee camps.
One of the 82 pupils at Ellis, Harunur Rashid,said he spent his first two years in the United States as an indenturedservant to a Bangladeshi family, finally escaping. School officialsbelieve that he was imprisoned, but have not pursued it because he doesnot know where he was held.
New York is one of the only statesto identify these difficult cases, classifying them as Students withInterrupted Formal Education, but state education officials do notoffer a suggested curriculum, provide any additional financing or tracktheir progress. Last year, New York City provided a total of $2.5million to 53 schools with large populations of these students — about$165 extra per person; they are entitled to the same extra services asothers who are still learning English, but nothing more.
Thenumber of students classified this way has swelled 50 percent from adecade ago. According to the city’s Department of Education, thegraduation rate of these students in 2007 was 29 percent, less thanhalf the city’s overall rate of 62 percent. (The 29 percent rate is forall students who enter the system lacking formal education, includingthose who start as early as third grade; the city does not separatelytrack dropouts and graduations among those like Fanta who arrived asolder teenagers.)