Mayor, Council Members, State Board of Education Members,<\/p>\n
This is assigned reading.\u00a0 It’s time to take off the rose colored glasses and stop the routine affirmations of “I support education reform” without looking past the polished press releases.\u00a0 Please stop pretending that you don’t know that principals and teachers are under intense pressure to give unearned grades.<\/p>\n
Caleb Rossiter is describing his experiences in a DCPS high school AND a DC public charter high school.<\/p>\n
Erich Martel, Retired DCPS high school teacher (1969-2011: Cardozo HS, Wilson HS, Phelps ACE HS,\u00a0 ehmartel@starpower.net<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/education\/teacher-assails-practice-of-giving-passing-grades-to-failing-students\/2015\/05\/17\/f38f88ae-f9ab-11e4-9030-b4732caefe81_story.html<\/a><\/p>\n Teacher assails practice of giving passing grades to failing students<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n By\u00a0Jay Mathews<\/a>\u00a0Columnist\u00a0May 17 at 12:33 PM<\/p>\n Caleb Stewart Rossiter, a college professor and policy analyst, decided to try teaching math in the D.C. schools. He was given a pre-calculus class with 38 seniors at H.D. Woodson High School . When he discovered that half of them could not handle even second-grade problems, he sought out the teachers who had awarded the passing grades of D in Algebra II they needed to take his high-level class.<\/p>\n There are many bewildering stories like this in Rossiter\u2019s new book, \u201cAin\u2019t Nobody Be Learnin\u2019 Nothin\u2019: The Fraud and the Fix for High-Poverty Schools<\/a>,\u201d the best account of public education in the nation\u2019s capital I have ever read. It will take me three columns to do justice to his revelations about what is being done to the District\u2019s most distracted and least productive students.<\/p>\n Teachers will tell you it is a no-no to ask other teachers why they committed grading malpractice. Rossiter didn\u2019t care. Three of the five teachers he sought had left the high-turnover D.C. system, but the two he found were so candid I still can\u2019t get their words out of my mind.<\/p>\n The first, an African immigrant who taught special education for 20 years, was stunned to see one student\u2019s name on Rossiter\u2019s list. \u201cHuh!\u201d Rossiter quoted the teacher as saying. \u201cThat boy can\u2019t add two plus two and doesn\u2019t care! What\u2019s he doing in pre-calculus? Yes of course I passed him \u2014 that\u2019s a gentleman\u2019s D. Everybody knows that a D for a special education student means nothing but that he came in once in a while.\u201d<\/p>\n The second teacher had transferred from a private school in a Southern city so his wife could get her dream job in the Washington area. He explained that he gave a D to one disruptive girl on Rossiter\u2019s list because, Rossiter said, \u201che didn\u2019t want to have her in class ever again.\u201d Her not-quite-failing grade was enough to get the all-important check mark for one of the four years of math required for graduation.<\/p>\n Rossiter moved to Tech Prep, a D.C. charter school, where he says he discovered the same aversion to giving F\u2019s. The school told him\u00a0to raise to D\u2019s the first-quarter failing grades\u00a0<\/a>he had given to 30 percent of his ninth-grade algebra students. He quit instead.<\/p>\n Tech Prep officials indicated the F\u2019s would have violated special-education rules. D.C. schools officials have not responded to my request for comment.<\/p>\n I share Rossiter\u2019s view that such rule-bending is common in many D.C. schools overloaded with struggling students. The trend has been aggravated by computerized\u00a0credit-recovery courses\u00a0<\/a>that take a few weeks and allow students to escape high school lives they loathe. Former D.C. history teacher Erich Martel\u00a0<\/a>has done much research on this. I have pointed out that the educators enabling such grade inflation might have the students\u2019 best interests at heart. The students won\u2019t stay in school, so giving them a diploma, no matter how fraudulent, might provide them with a chance to get some kind of job and, eventually, as they mature, sort themselves out.<\/p>\n It is very hard to maintain that Pollyanna-ish take on grade inflation after reading Rossiter\u2019s book. He wrongly overlooks or discounts evidence of improvements in teaching and learning in many schools here and elsewhere, but his main point is unassailable. Lying to so many students, their families and other teachers is wrong and yet is rarely discussed in professional circles.<\/p>\n High school graduation rates, as reported by school districts with no independent checks, have been climbing. Public school officials said the D.C. graduation rate\u00a0increased five percentage points in the past four years<\/a>. The U.S. rate rose from 74 percent in 2007 to 81 percent in 2012, according to the Education Week Research Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n I know of no research on how much of that increase can be attributed to fantasyland report cards. Rossiter says the strongest blow against fraud would be to reverse the national trend toward insisting that every high school student get a college-preparatory education before graduation.<\/p>\n I thought that trend was good. Most of those courses also help in the workplace. But Rossiter\u2019s book is forcing me to reconsider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mayor, Council Members, State Board of Education Members, This is assigned reading.\u00a0 It’s time to take off the rose colored glasses and stop the routine affirmations of “I support education reform” without looking past the polished press releases.\u00a0 Please stop … Continue reading