Posted on 06/21/2009 2:07:23 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen
The pressure to pass students - even those who rarely go to class or can't read - is pervasive in the Philadelphia School District, teachers around the city say.
The push comes in memos, in meetings, and in talks about failure rates that are too high, the teachers say. It comes through mountains of paperwork and justification for failing any student. It comes in ways subtle and overt, according to more than a dozen teachers from nine of the city's 62 high schools.
"We have to give fake grades," said a teacher at Mastbaum High in Kensington. "The pressure is very real."
One pressure to promote has to come from the desire to pass the little hellions on to the next grade so the teacher doesn’t have to deal with them two years in a row.
The teachers are badly trained, the textbooks are badly written, and the lessons are painfully boring. That’s a recipe for failure.
Unbelievable!
This has been going on for 50 years or more. It’s just that each generation finds it can learn less and less, and still get good grades.
I’ve seen parents go to nx years Superintendent, (after original Super moved on) attempting to force a teacher within the district to change grades from the previous year. The teacher told super that he could change the grade but she would not, student got what the student earned. Teacher told super that he could fire her but she wasn’t changing grade. So much politics in our schools today, pretty tough to deal with it all.
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