DOE principals have free rein to pass failing kids (NY)

It’s an open secret at the Department of Education — but not so much for the public — that principals can pass failing kids with impunity.

Former PS 123 head Tyra Williams passed a slew of flunking kids in 2013 and 2014 — but DOE officer Kate Hansen told investigators that she had every right to do so.

A couple of things come out in this story that should both scare and enrage every parent who wants their child to get a good education. And that means honest grades, because what use are fake inflated grades when it comes right down to it? A momentary thrill of achievement that was no achievement at all? There is TREMENDOUS pressure on NYC teachers to have a very high percentage of their students pass. They will certainly be written up in disciplinary letters, be subjected to meetings with their principal, and have other manifestations of power shaken at them to intimidate them. And don't those kids know it! They know very well that the onus of their passing rests not on them (welcome to libtard Weirdoville!), as a logical mind might think, but on their teacher. It is the teacher's fault if the students, ignoring homework or project assignments, failing to study for tests, watching videos on their cell phone while the teacher is teaching, etc. fail to come up with a composite number the teacher can legitimately pass them with. Teachers who give too many failing grades, no matter the reason, are then on the "S" list of administrators. If they continue to be honest, the administrators will then start to compile a paper trail of documentation to bring the teacher up on some fake charges in order to terminate them. It is never difficult to find some revengeful students all too willing to go along with this, coached intently by the vindictive administrator, who WANTS their $15,000 bonus for good grade stats. They will sit down and collaborate on a story that the teacher used "inappropriate language", "made them feel bad in class", "touched them inappropriately", etc. If you then would ask the students what half the words in their startlingly similar statements mean, they would give you a blank look for an answer. For of course, the administrators practically dictated their statements for them.

As for the statement in this story that the administrator has to put in a WRITTEN notification to teachers that they are changing grades, that's a tall pile of bovine feces. The first notice that teachers have that the grades they submitted to the principal have been changed is seeing the report cards when they hand them out, with resultant seething anger and feeling of helplessness. No longer is the teacher the master of their classroom. They are a rubber ball tossed up, back and forth, between the empowered students and the sleazy administration.

The statements attributed to the NYC Department of Education (DOE) in this article are LIES.

Unbelievable.

Back in my day, there were a few kids I remember who were held back, and flunked. One kid flunked 2nd grade. Another flunked 4th grade and had to repeat.

To say they flunked is probably not politically correct language nowadays. But that’s what we all called it.

I remember we were, in a way, afraid of our teachers, afraid of discipline if we didn’t do homework, afraid of getting a bad grade, afraid of the teacher, afraid of what our parents would do if we got bad grades, or got in trouble at school.

Times have changed. Have they really changed for the better, when you hear things like this out of New York schools? I’m sure the same thing happens elsewhere too.

This has been going on in my neck of the woods for a long, long time. And maybe 1% of the changes were justified. Example: A teacher I worked with simply refused to give any A’s in an Honors Biology class. I knew many of those kids. The teacher was wrong, and the principal had to step in.

As for the other 99% of the cases, grades were changed to make athletes eligible for sports, and grades were changed to raise our graduation rates. All very hush, hush.

Teachers' unions have, for years, robbed children and their parents by protecting inferior and unqualified teachers by allowing them to occupy the classrooms all over America. The improvement of learning performance of children should be the yardstick by which a teacher is measured. Good teachers will prefer that measurement of their classroom's success or failure. Bad and unqualified teachers will rebel and revolt.

Your statement is absolutely a bunch of hooey. The point I was making had NOTHING to do with UNIONS. It had to do with the greed and duplicity of principals going behind teachers' backs to change grades. You were just attempting to use ANY mention of "teacher" as a ready pulpit from which to spew your knee-jerk union hatred. I am not supporting unions wholesale, they certainly have their corruption problems, but this specific grade-changing situation has NOTHING to do with "unions protecting bad teachers". No matter what kind of teacher the kids have--and there are very few "bad apples" among teachers, from what I've ever seen (the perception being warped by newspapers who LOVE to prominently place any story catching a teacher doing something unsavory--never plumbers, never accountants, mind you)--I contend it is disgusting that NYC administrators routinely change grades behind teachers' backs, rewarding poor or no work with passing grades and further bringing down a system already on its last ethical or quality gasp. Your suggestion that "the improvement of learning performance of children" should be the "yardstick by which a teacher is measured" is a typical outside-the-profession statement. When you have students coming into your classroom with reading levels of 1 or 2 out of 4, with poor computational skills, with poor writing skills, with little motivation to work hard because they know the teacher "has" to pass them, you will not see great academic success no matter what kind of teacher you are. If you give the students the grade they actually deserve, you open yourself up to the road I described above. And if you give them passing grades they don't deserve, you contribute to the fraud. No wonder education classes' enrollment is way down at colleges, and teachers are retiring at record rates.

"Your suggestion that 'the improvement of learning performance of children' should be the 'yardstick by which a teacher is measured' is a typical outside-the-profession statement."

Actually, this conclusion is incorrect. Trained as a teacher, and having taught, as well as having been a part of an organization providing consultation to a legislative Task Force on Excellence in Education, my suggestion comes from both research and experience, and it has been the opinion of many who have worked to penetrate and change the vast bureaucracies which control and impact on the sad state of K-12 education in the States.

That aside, decades of control by the combination of Liberal/Progressive political and union power on the bureaucracies and schools of the nation have had their consequences--not many of which have made the improvement of the learning performance of children become better.

What organization is that? I stand by my statement that you cannot evaluate teachers based on student performance because I have personally had students who cut class, disrupted class no matter what measures you took, failed to submit work despite being informed what consequences that would bring, failed to study or even show up for tests, etc. My colleagues have all had such classes as well, which are becoming the norm in NYC. The master teacher of the world could not have a successful outcome with such students, particularly when they well know that the teacher HAS to pass them and so they can continue with the above behaviors and still get a passing grade. So how fair is that to the teacher, who has worked hard on their lesson, tries their utmost to teach the lesson while everyone is texting, watching videos, making calls(!), etc. with their cell phones (thanks to commie mayor Dumblassio, who now allows cell phones in the classroom), comes into your classroom with very low reading levels (having been passed along to higher grades which they never should have), can barely write, etc.? It is not.

Even though unions have become very corrupt and absolutely useless leeches on teachers’ salaries, while delivering very little in the way of services, you cannot blame unions on the poor performance of the students. The blame is largely on the lib-prog policies foisted onto the administration of schools by politicians, and the parents of the students who send their kid to school utterly unsocialized to function in a classroom setting. The teachers try their darnedest, but honestly, it’s like hitting your head into a brick wall with these conditions.

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