NEW YORK – Hundreds of students and parents gathered in front of New York City Hall last week to decry the $63 million “Remediation Tax” they were forced to pay after their public schools failed to prepare them for college.

“This ‘Remediation Tax’ affects 21,000 New York City college students who have graduated from city high schools but are unprepared for college-level coursework,” according to the StudentsFirstNY website.

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“The $63 million Remediation Tax refers to the cost of remedial courses that college students are forced to take before they can enroll in classes that earn credit towards a degree. This undue burden is imposed disproportionately on low- and middle-income New Yorkers who attend K-12 schools that fail to provide their graduates with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in college.”

The pro-charter school StudentsFirstNY published a report Thursday that shows the city school graduates spent an average of $3,000 a year to gain the basic knowledge they should have learned in high school.

“Students are forced to pick up the slack for a K-12 system that failed them — depleting whatever grants, scholarships, loans or personal resources they had planned to use to pay for college,” according to the report.

“I’m getting financial aid, but I know that won’t last forever. With all the remedial courses I have to take, I’m not earning any credit and I don’t know if I’ll have enough left to finish my degree,” LaGuardia Community College Student Janai Huff said.

“The Remediation Tax is real, it’s regressive, and it’s being levied on the poorest New Yorkers. Once again, it’s poor kids who are forced to bear the burden of a system that is failing them. Unfortunately, Mayor de Blasio is not doing anything to help and is even making it worse,” said Executive Director of NYCAN Derrell Bradford.

The New York Post reports:

Mayor de Blasio has cited the city’s 72 percent graduation rate as tangible evidence of improvement, but the city’s overall college readiness rate languished at 37 percent last year.

The college readiness threshold is met when students get minimum scores on standardized tests or pass certain courses before graduating. According to CUNY standards, students who meet these requirements won’t need remedial classes.

“It’s just really disappointing to learn that the high school diploma I just received does me no good in college,” Bronx International High School graduate Cristian Cruz told the Post at the rally on Thursday.

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The StudentsFirstNY report is aimed squarely at de Blasio, who has sided with his political backers in the city’s teachers union to halt the expansion of the city’s successful charter schools.

“While not unique to New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio refuses to address the problem and his education policies threaten to exacerbate it,” according to StudentsFirstNY. “That’s why students and parents are demanding that the Mayor take action immediately to improve K-12 education in all neighborhoods, especially those in longtime struggling districts like Harlem, the South Bronx, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Jamaica, Queens.”

City officials, of course, attacked the report as inaccurate and alleged college readiness rates are improving.

“Every single city college readiness measure is at a record high and increasing,” DOE spokesman Will Mantell told the Post.