Many education bloggers, including myself, have questioned the use of bogus "credit recovery" programs that allow failing students to graduate, unprepared for either college or the employment world. For example the now closed Tilden High School had an astounding 34% of its students graduating based upon their "credit recovery" program. In many cases, their were numerous complaints about how the "credit recovery" program was abused but simply fell on deaf ears at Tweed. To the DOE it didn't matter how these struggling students graduate as long as they graduated. Furthermore, principals were evaluated on their graduation rate and embraced the "credit recovery" system. To the principals, it was a way to artificially increase their school's graduation rate and get high grades for the school and a bonus for them.
Now it seems that one school, A Phillip Randolph, is under investigation for abusing the "credit recovery" program as Chancellor Dennis Walcott asked the Office Of Special Investigations (OSI) to look into the accusation after receiving several emails from teachers. Interestingly, the New York Daily News accused the union of making up these cheating scandals the very day the A Phillip Randolph story broke in the media. Talk about bad timing and having egg on your face.
Principals have been abusing the "credit recovery" program to artificially increase the graduation rate since the days of Joel Klein. To Tweed, it was all about graduation rates and not about accountability. To the DOE it did not matter that high schools were pushing failing students out by any means possible and that included bogus "credit recovery" programs. Remember this infamous story? In another case a Principal tried to give students "free credits" and was caught at it. The DOE responded by telling the Principal not to do it again. Is it any wonder that principals abuse the "credit recovery" program. There is no consequences to them if they get caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
It will be very interesting once schools will need to publish how much "credit recovery" programs contributed to the graduation rate. 5%, 10%, 25%, 50%? We should know in September when the data is supposed to be published. Look for many high schools and Tweed to be embarrassed how much these schools relied on "credit recovery" programs contributed to their graduation rate.
I guess the DOE policy is "Don't educate students just graduate them by any means necessary".
2 comments:
For decades, many things similar to credit recovery have been done in the school system to make numbers look pretty. Just about everyone, teachers, principals, chancellors, and yes our mayors, has benefited from the inflated test scores and graduation rates, even students themselves have enjoyed temporarily for the things they wanted. That is why there is really no true resistance to the things like credit recovery. Just like the credit limits, kick the can down the road and let tomorrow worry about today.
With double dip recession hanging over the market, I guess that not many people really worry about the quality of the city school graduates
After all, the wall street has been looking and recruiting talents from surrounding suburban schools for as long as anyone can remember.
I think this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the credit recovery abuse.
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