FLUNKIES: School columns prompted action. (
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Normally, I would be alarmed if the government started a file on me. In this case, I’m flattered — sort of.
A report called “The Goodwin Column Cases” came after I published teacher complaints that principals forced them to graduate students who failed courses or skipped classes. They called it social promotion without end.
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The details were vivid, and the complaints had a compelling logic. According to teachers, principals said that graduating at least 60 percent would allow the school, and everybody in it, to avoid scrutiny from city and state educrats.
Not incidentally, 60 percent was the citywide average. Anything below is a red flag for the state. Add that to the bonuses then given to teachers and principals for “progress,” and there were clear incentives to cheat.
Of course, that also means cheating the students of a true education. And that gets to my disappointment at what’s in “The Goodwin Report.”
Chancellor Dennis Walcott’s invitation for teachers to contact him was brave, but it produced half a loaf at best. Schools investigator Richard Condon is independent of Walcott and initially declined to investigate any of the 29 complaints from 17 schools my columns produced, but relented after Walcott pressed him. Condon, in his letter concluding the probe, said he focused on 22 complaints involving nine schools.
Complaints at six were “not substantiated,” though reading the few details he provides underscores the fact that “not substantiated” hardly means innocent.
At the other three, big problems yielded big excuses. The biggest fish, as Susan Edelman chronicles, was Murry Bergtraum High, where 43 percent of students were aged-out phantoms or a handy way to get state money.
The two other schools are instructive in another way. Teacher complaints that credit-recovery programs were a sham were deemed valid, but the principals pleaded ignorance of the rules and got off scot-free. As Condon notes in his letter, “No one was reassigned as a result of these investigations.”
A final thought: The graduation rate, including August, is now 65 percent. But the state finds that only 20.7 percent are ready for college or career. In other words, two out of three grads got a diploma that may not be worth the paper it’s printed on.
Yet we are told this is the best New York can do.