When you tie teacher and admin pay to "performance", tie school survival to "attendance" and "graduation rates," it's not a stretch to imagine why people would lie. Should we blame Klein, Black, Bloomberg, Duncan, Obama, GWBII? Some combination of all of them? Or just go firing school officials?New York City’s top-ranked school is under investigation for cooking the books, reports the New York Times. Theater Arts Production Company School, a middle and high school located in a low-income Bronx neighborhood, graduated 94 percent of seniors, more than 30 points above the citywide average. The school earned a near-perfect score in “student progress,” based partly on course credits earned by students. The school’s no-failure policy requires teachers to pass all students who attend class, regardless of their performance; no more than 5 percent of students can get D’s.
In practice, some teachers said, even students who missed most of the school days earned credits. They also said students were promoted with over 100 absences a year; the principal, rather than a teacher, granted class credits needed for graduation; and credit was awarded for classes the school does not even offer.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
It's a Rosy Picture, Rotten at the Core.
I shouldn't need to add much to this:
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Rhetorical questions, I know. But all the people you name will act shocked, shocked at the utterly predictable situation, likely the tip of the iceberg, and go on blaming unionized teachers and public schools for all the ills of society. This allows them to ignore all the ills of society, which would be far less convenient to address.
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