Posted on 06/29/2015 6:20:10 AM PDT by george76
How do you fix a failing high school? Change the grades.
Under pressure to boost student achievement, the state-designated “out of time” Automotive HS in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, has resorted to rigging Regents exam scores.
The failing scores of five students who took the Regents in January were switched to passing scores of 65 or higher on their transcripts, the city Department of Education has confirmed.
One junior saw his scores upped to pass two exams required for graduation — Living Environment (biology) and algebra — even though he had failed both classes. The student insisted he deserved a break on the exams because “I studied my ass off.”
In 2011, the state banned “scrubbing” — the practice of re-scoring tests that fall just short of passing. In 2013, the DOE tried to fire a teacher who raised the scores of five students on a Regents physics exam. In 2014, city scores plummeted after a new rule barred teachers from grading tests given at their own schools.
Now, the city has sanctioned it.
“This is Scrubbing Part 2,” a veteran educator said of the Automotive HS score changes. “The teachers used to do it. Now it’s the administrators.”
Automotive HS is one of the city’s 94 low-performing “Renewal” schools — which Mayor de Blasio showered with $31 million this school year and has vowed to revamp with $163 million next school year. The state Education Department has branded Automotive and seven other city schools “out of time,” meaning the schools require significant revamping or a shutdown.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Throwing money at the education problem isn’t the answer. Never was. Never will be. When you hire teachers who are lazy and more stupid than the students then don’t expect your schools to rise to acceptable levels. When you shove ridiculous CORE cirriculums at kids, that may be why the kid studied his butt off and still couldn’t solve a simple algebra problem without showing 47 steps on three pages. When you have parents who don’t make sure their kids did their homework and handed it in on time, well, you’re going to have failing schools.
Another reason to home school.
(You can't make stuff like this up!)
ML/NJ
On the bright side, these students are now ready for college! where grades can be even more flexible.
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The future of America .
These days everything is a lie.
Yes.
Let’s not forget the fact that cell phones, once banned in NYC schools, are now allowed, thanks to the senile Chancellor, doubtless taking her marching orders from His Honor, Mayor Imbecile. Formerly, cell phones were confiscated before the exams, placed in individual ziploc bags and then stored in the proctor’s desk, to be returned when the student finished the exam and left the room. What kids were doing this year, not reported in the news, was asking to go to the bathroom during the Regents exams, and then looking up answers in the bathroom stalls on their phones. This bit of intel is straight from the trenches; you won’t hear about it in the lamestream media.
How nice! The NY DoE not only cheats the government out of big money, more importantly, it cheats the kids out of an education, except that the only thing kids HAVE been taught is that lying and cheating are acceptable. Worthless HS and College diplomas, useful only as decorative paperweights to keep welfare checks from blowing away. Sickening.
Well said.
Students learn nothing useful and are headed to a life of failure.
If the parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents can’t help fund the costs of private schools, home school is the alternative.
Thanks for that info about the cell phones - I wasn’t aware. In Los Angeles - for now- Cell phones during the high school exit exam are still forbidden.
One of my son’s friends finished the California exit exam early, went back to his seat and proceeded to pull out his cell phone to check whatever it is kids check these days - the proctor caught him and proceeded to loudly rip up his test in front of the entire room of students - made a big show of it according to DS.
Kid’s parents are both doctors so he must have caught hell at home.
I have a feeling if NY allows cell phones during tests, we will too - except I heard through the school grapevine that the exit exam is being eliminated this year.
As a side note: The “C or better” requirement is being dropped as a requirement for graduation b/c only 37% of the incoming 12th grade class would walk the stage.
Otherwise known as “after schooling” by the parents and kids.
The school sends home the curriculum and expect the kids and parents to do the **really** hard grunt work of schooling and learning in the **home**!
Every academically successful institutionally schooled child that I have ever met has spent **more** time doing homework than my homeschoolers spent all day. Seriously! And....My kids were finished all general college courses and calculus 3 by the age of 15. Two finished B.S. degrees in mathematics by the age of 18.
No studies have ever been done to show where an institutionally schooled child learns ( home or school) , or who is doing the teaching ( parent, paid or unpaid tutors, or the child himself).
It is entirely possible that we spend up to $30,000/year/ child on government schooling that may be completely **worthless**. It is entirely possible that the only thing schools do is send home a very **expensive** curriculum!
If you are every speaking with a government teacher, please remember the following:
1) That government teacher is **very** likely a LIAR and lying every day to her students, the parents, and ultimately the taxpayers.
2) This person was likely not one of the brightest bulbs on his/her college campus.
3) Was thoroughly indoctrinated in his/her college of education by godless Marxists in a Marxist-run college of education.
4) And...Thinks they are underpaid.
There are two words for that:
1) Child abuse
2) Malpractice
So?......When are the attorneys going to start going after these incompetent liars?
OMG! 37%? Sounds like NYC. And who is going to support these lamebrains? It will soon be 37% (or less) of the U.S. population burdened with supporting 63% (or more) of the population. The stigma of not being able to stand on one's own feet has been replaced by congratulatory mutual slaps on the back for getting others to work for you. Pride has been replaced by dependence. Is this sustainable in the long run?
Lazy? Corrupt? Overpaid? You don't know what you're talking about. Teachers are among the hardest working people out there. They have to spend time researching and writing lessons, planning the logistics of how the lesson is presented, making sure they have their props, working on advanced degrees, xeroxing materials, calling parents, counseling or tutoring students, etc. Much more likely to be corrupt are the politicians dictating educational policy to school administrations from a standpoint of complete ignorance or even greed, if they can make some mega-bucks out of it from the Wall St. hedge fund "ed reformers". Also, said administrators, who force teachers to pass students they don't want to pass because they did not complete the requirements.
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