The teachers changed my mind. I did not plan to pub lish more letters today about the scourge of social promotion in New York schools, but the passionate outpouring from frustrated educators cannot be ignored.
They are pulling back the curtain, and they want New Yorkers to see what they see in the classroom. The picture is disturbing, with many students refusing to try to keep up, knowing they will be passed to the next grade anyway.
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” began a Brooklyn high-school teacher. “I had one student who failed 6th, 7th and 8th grade yet was graduated to high school where he sat in my class last fall and did nothing the entire term. Speaking to his mother got me nowhere.”
James Calantjis, among those willing to use his name, said he has been teaching in Gotham for 21 years. “The school system is not demanding high standards and student accountability, despite the rhetoric to the contrary,” he wrote, adding, “There is rampant grade inflation.”
Another teacher, Linda Silver, said: “Thank you for writing what we teachers know is the truth! Social promotion is alive and well and it’s getting worse.”
A woman who teaches in Manhattan accused administrators of preventing teachers from failing students, even those who rarely attend class. She said a common tactic is to blame teachers by telling them to be more engaging.
“I still haven’t figured out a way to engage kids who aren’t there,” she wrote. “One of my classes has a roster of 33 kids, but only 19 regularly show up.”
Among the scores of teachers contacting me, one theme has been a demand by principals to pass a certain percentage of students, usually 60 percent. There is a selfish logic behind that demand.
Schools with a graduation rate below 60 percent for three consecutive years can be put on a “watch” list by state officials. If they don’t improve, they are targeted for changes.
An aide to Mayor Bloomberg says the city does not have a “magic number” on graduation for its assessments but concedes the city cannot ignore the state list. Bloomberg favors closing low-performing schools and replacing them with smaller ones, often with new staff.
Thus principals who demand that teachers pass students who should fail are doing it to protect themselves. It’s “me first and to hell with the kids.”
One way they meet the 60 percent target is by putting students in “credit recovery” programs. Teachers call these programs scams.
An English teacher for 13 years wrote: “If they don’t pass, they can make up a semester’s worth of work in 3 weeks of night school to ensure an on-time graduation. A high school diploma in 4 years has become an entitlement in NYC, and the kids know it.”
The impact of these destructive practices is dramatic. Students who aren’t free to fail will never learn how to succeed. They will find the world has no use for their ignorance and sense of entitlement.
Taxpayers are cheated, their money wasted. And many teachers are ashamed to be part of this fraud.
The Manhattan teacher cited above is articulate on that score, saying: “The only ones who are learning anything are the teachers — learning how to dumb down curriculum and assessments, learning to fudge data to make it fit the necessary criteria, learning how to nod your head in ‘team meetings’ that accomplish nothing because it’s all forced and fake. In short, we are learning the nasty lesson of duplicity.”
Reality bites pants-down pols where it so hurts
Good news, America — top Democrats John Edwards and Anthony Weiner are finally realizing that character is destiny.
That Edwards came within a hair of being vice president amounts to a close encounter with disaster. The Great Pretender insisted he did not have sex with Rielle Hunter as his wife battled cancer. Then he admitted he did but insisted he wasn’t the father of Hunter’s baby. Then he admitted he was the father.
Now indicted for using nearly $1 million of campaign money to hide the scuzzy affair, he insists he did nothing illegal.
Honk if you believe him.
Weiner’s pickle is also fodder for armchair shrinks. The man whose name has spawned a thousand penis jokes is now caught exposing his.
Acting in type, the arrogant brawler first tried to bully his way out of the jam but only dug himself a deeper hole. His inability to say no to the key questions of whether the crotch shot is of him and whether he has taken such pictures are back-door admissions of guilt.
That he hired a lawyer but didn’t file a police report about his claim of being hacked is a red flag that he’s hiding dirty secrets.
My bet is that he can’t squash the truth for long, but a man with his talents is too good for government, anyway. Perhaps CNN will offer him a gig with Eliot Spitzer. Imagine those jokes.
Jobs disaster a ‘bump’ on bam’s road
Did you notice? President Obama has switched metaphors. He now says the economy is suffering “bumps on the road” instead of being “stuck in a ditch.” For real change, he ought to switch policies.
The anemic job growth in May, when only 54,000 net jobs were added, is the latest sign of a slowdown. Unemployment ticked up to 9.1 percent and that should concentrate the presidential mind on one thing: how to get Americans back to work. Otherwise, Obama will find himself unemployed.
It’s not that he hasn’t shuffled the deck. Though most news organizations have not covered it, there has been dramatic turnover among his economic team. Four of the initial top people are gone — Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein.
All have been described as unhappy over various policies, with Orszag, the first budget director, defeated in his bid to get the president to focus on the national debt.
Yet, despite the exodus and lousy results, the policies haven’t changed, and that reflects a fundamental truth about Obama: Supremely smug in his own worldview, he doesn’t listen to anybody. He has his own “facts.”
He is a statist, a believer in expanding the power and size of government. He has a chip on his shoulder about wealth and free markets, and the policies of his first two years, especially ObamaCare, are thwarting economic expansion.
In that sense, his policies are “working,” even as millions of Americans aren’t.
Dying to know how Dr. Death croaked
Inquiring minds want to know: Did Dr. Death have help? Jack Kevorkian preached as sisted suicide and helped more than 100 sick people reach the final exit. Yet obits on his passing don’t say whether he practiced what he preached. It’s more than a matter of mere curiosity. He was a fascinating figure who fought for the right to die on one’s own terms. It’s worth knowing what choice he made at the end.