I have been posting about academic fraud for years, you can read them Here. Now the esteemed columnist, Susan Edelman of the New York Post, wrote an eye opening article about the grade inflation tha goes on in most of the New York City public schools.
As a high school teacher, I used to get many of these middle school students who could not do simple Math and had no clue what commonly used words meant. Even worse, because these students were academically unable to do high school course work, they would act up and become discipline problems.
Of course the Department Of Education (DOE) would blame the high schools and the teaching staff for their failure to improve student academic achievement when these students do not have the academic tools to succeed in yhe first place.
Teachers have often complained that school administrators pressure teachers to pass undeserving students and the DOE supports school administrators in artificially inflate grades and passing rates. In the high schools many poorly performing schools require teachers to have a "scholarship requirement" that forces the teacher to pass up to 85% of their students.
Unfortunately, if the teacher is not tenured, the teacher will not go against the administrator and pass the students, despite their academic failure. Let the next teacher or school deal with the low performing student.
Despite a new Chancellor who is attempting to "clean house", the DOE mentality is to still punish schools who have low graduation rates. Therefore, principals are encouraged to pass and graduate students despite their academic shortcomings.
Whenever I read an article discussing grade inflation, I cannot help but think of students attending a YABC program. In the YABC program, you have 20 year old men and women (in their 7th year of high school) suddenly becoming geniuses and passing high level math and science courses. The goal of the program? Allow the "students" to earn as many credits as possible before they age out at 21. Some of the "children" can earn up to 12 credits a term with the help of independent study credits that count toward the required 7 elective credits. These
ReplyDelete"independent study" classes are nonsense packets the "children" complete to earn a credit. The student transcript makes it look like it is a real class. Such nonsense. Same thing goes for phys ed credits. At 20 years old, one cannot complete 7 terms of required phys ed. before aging out at 21. Solution? Complete a packet, and presto!! Credit earned!
When it comes to grade/credit inflation, YABC is truly the king!
Dwarka from Bryant has a YABC program that graduated 30 over-aged/under credited students this year!
ReplyDeleteWill the news pick up on this?
The issue is bigger than just implying that elementary and middle school teachers are just passing kids through to keep the targets off their back.
ReplyDeleteOf course we ALL do that to some degree, but really, no one wants to address the elephant in the room: our educational system, and the types of knowledge and formats of instruction were designed for WESTERN populations from a Euro background.
People of color generally have their own ideas of what is important to learn and how (and how much of it) needs to be acquired. Can I say it in a more neutral and non-'racist' way than that? Most of my coworkers in my school are now POC (after the new latino admins purged most white teachers).
The anti-white, anti-western stuff they say is off the charts. The 'woke' movement really wants us whites eliminated from the face of the earth! Today a young Colombian teacher who was tapped to teach AP U.S. History told me that she told her trainer that she didn't want to teach about white men, and so the trainer gave her a lot of 'diverse' resources.
How is stuff like that acceptable in a majority white, oh wait! The wave of mass immigration of the last 20-30 years has truly made this world, which was once ours, into theirs!
So when black or latino students are not measuring up or excelling in a system created for white kids from a white cultural background, the answer is not to make more and more new magic programs, but to recognize, as ALL social justice activists call for, that the kids need teachers 'who look like them' so they can 'understand them better.'
The curriculum also needs to be made more afro-centric or latin-x centric, and those evil whites need to be purged from the curriculum, except when you need a group to vilify and blame for all ills in the world.
This is basically the way we are headed now anyways. Imagine our nation 20-30 years in the future with an unstoppable anti-American, anti-white propaganda machine washing over the 60-70% POC population!
We had a good run. We should not blame any teachers for trying to survive the decline. It's not that POC cannot learn, it is that they do not want to learn what we feel is important. The UFT newspaper and AFT magazine proudly proclaim these truths in couched language.
I think most white teachers over 30 know instinctively that their students do not care about Western knowledge, that's why they refocus their classrooms to 'cultural' stuff and 'diversity' so much. At least it looks like the kids are doing something (to the admins who swoop in to lecture white teachers about how racist they are).
Just my two cents.
The passing rates shown include scores of 2/4; which the state counts as mastering some of the elements of a subject matter but we as educators know is really a failing mark. Which means these scores are even more dismal then shown here.
ReplyDeleteIn my school, if a student is going to fail a class, the teacher must fill out a Student Improvement Plan. This is multi-page document, for each student failing a course, for each report card. It is amazing how very few students are failing after this initiative was instituted. I am guilty. All of my students pass. MY CL says that we should fill out the forms because it is worse in other schools. All his students pass, too.
ReplyDelete8:02 They will try to make you feel that you are the reason that kid failed. Perhaps if their families valued education like Asians and whites you and others in the profession would never be put on the spot. Too few black kids really care about education. Hispanic kids for all their gangbanging Latin Kings, YG, etc. couldn't give a s;:t either. Perhaps if the government withheld their government assistance checks and section 8 apartments you would in fact see a difference. But do t count on it in Liberal New York...
ReplyDeleteTo 8:02 - That's what the admins instituted in my school about four years ago.
ReplyDeleteIf any teacher 'wanted to fail' a student (it's never the student's fault) then they had to make a big action plan and have meetings with the admins about it. "What did YOU do to help the student?"
Teachers who did not get with the program were excessed, harassed out or tortured with punitive observations.
Needless to say, the fail rate in our school now consists of only students who never showed up or who came only 5-10 times the entire year.
@9:41,
ReplyDeleteWith all do respect your thoughts are being contaminated by the nonsense you’re forced to listen to in the warehouse/cave (school) you are enslaved. Kids can’t reject Western culture (music, art, law, science, economics, etc.) if they haven’t been introduced to it. It’s not just minority kids by the way - everything in the media (music, movies, video games, cell phones and advertising) drums ignorance, selfishness, narcissism and instant gratification. Our American ghetto culture is spreading worldwide. It the worship of self over all else. (When I started teaching I remember Russell Simmons as one of the first to blast this new world order via his gansta rap -he has done more long term damage to inner city youth than any one person I can think of. He’s keeping a low profile with Harvey Weinstein.) Religion is dead, sin is dead, guilt is dead, and all that matters is getting yours before the next guy. “Mine is mine and your’s is mine.” Women are objects, some opposing group is to blame and everyone is owed a living. Trump isn’t the opposing force of this new order, he is a product of it - Obama was the embodiment of Western culture, Trump is its death blow. Always try to do the right thing within reason and get out of the DOE ASAP - the fraud that’s being perpetrated will be blamed on teachers. It will pave the way for charter schools with the public, politicians and media demanding them. Charter schools won’t change anything of course. Everything has to start at home - if the home fails, everything and everyone fails. None of this has anything to do with race. Remember NO is a word our students and children have to hear frequently if they are to grow into adults that can function in society. Happy 4th.
Bronx ATR you bring up some excellent points. For the most part I agree with you assessment on the current state of our school system and society of our youth in general. However, I am not sure how you come to the conclusion that Obama was the embodiment of Western civilization. If anything under the 8 years of Obama the country became more racially divided and the national debt went to over 20 trillion dollars. This also doesn't include the bad foreign policy decisions such as the Iran deal. You also suggest that Trump is evil. I am not sure what you base this on? The economy is strong, strong foreign policy, re-worked trade deals with China, Mexico. I think he will win in 2020. Do you really think Booker or even Biden for that matter is a viable candidate?
ReplyDeleteTo 2:23, you are so right - charter schools will replace public schools everywhere eventually because charter schools can hide everything and have little accountability.
ReplyDeletePlus, the desire to move everything online for "21st century skills" essentially will be the nail in the coffin of education in the U.S.
Kids are literally learning nothing in so many schools now, because the ADMINS are demanding that teachers DO NOT teach, but "facilitate' or "coach" or become the "guides on the side" while the students "teach themselves and each other" with "activity guide packets" which are just packets of worksheets and discussion points.
We are doomed.
@8:44,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the compliment. Trump is not good or evil - he is amoral. He does everything for self as the center of his universe. Trump embodies the current ignorance of all topics and outright dismissal of any fact that interferes with his self motive, i.e. climate change. (The rapper Kanye West recognized a true ghetto Superman in Trump - both are ‘stable geniuses’.) If the overall economy goes up in his pursuit of wealth, it’s purely accidental. He doesn’t read, know history, art, music, philosophy, education or civility. Women are objects to ranked, bedded or paraded. He can’t articulate simple words like origin and doesn’t even recall that his father was American. I could forgive much of that but he’s mean spirited and cruel. Obama was a terrible president but an educated, articulate person. He was also civil and has a good heart. For me Obama represents the best of Western culture and Trump represents its demise. Will Trump win? Yes, he will. Happy 4th. (Watch the parade tomorrow and contemplate what we are becoming.)
@9:58 a.m. I am a guidance counselor at a YABC and you have your information wrong unless all YABCs are not running the same way. According to academic policy students can't have independent study unless it is an elective. Plus, YABCs can't give students more than 6 to 8 credits per semester. These students can also stay in school until age 22/23. There is no rush to have them finish by 20/21 years of age. Now, are these the strongest students coming into YABCs? The obvious answer is absolutely not. These are weak students with weak study skills otherwise they would not be in a YABC. Are these students just being passed? YES of course they are. These are students getting passed just like any other student. Unless students are in specialized high schools - they are all getting passing grades just for showing up. Klein started this, Walcott loved it, Farina endorsed it and Carranza has no clue except that whites suck.
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