And the kids know it, by the way. So the Honors students, who are not necessarily gifted, but are hard working and cooperative, about 70% of them are still trying. (And literally, a 9th grade Honors student in L.A. means a kid who can read at 6th grade level, turns in all her work, and doesn't start fires.) But the rest of them? About 70% seem to have vanished. They could have left the country for all I know. But if they had a bare 70% in March (and you should see the contortions I have to go through to coax even that much out of them) then they are passing in June. Period.
It's such a relief to my mind and my digestive system that I am quitting. I can't believe I have operated in this fiasco for 16 years.
When I was in the ninth grade in 1994, I had a teacher who failed every student in one of his classes with the exception of one mentally retarded boy, who earned an A. He came to every class on time, paid attention, followed instructions, and tried his best to answer the questions on the tests. The administration obviously wasn’t happy. But we had a law at the time that required chronically absent students to obtain permission from the governor to pass a class, and many of those other students had neither attended the requisite number of classes nor obtained the gubernatorial override. So the teacher’s grades withstood the administration scrutiny, and the system retained him for several additional years. After that school year, the family of the retarded boy moved away in an attempt to find a school that did not expose him to frequent physical violence.
This year presents a bizarre situation. The school systems should endeavor to make up the missed classes with regular instruction at the earliest opportunity under normal protocols. Perhaps school will resume in August, and this school year finishes in October or November. The next school year then would begin a week later, with additional classes on Saturdays and holidays to make up the missed time from the delayed start. Alternatively, they can fail every student because no student met the attendance requirements. Schools can’t honestly pass students who do not pass the final examination. It only shows that schools and their credentials are a farce. The diploma certifies then not educational attainment but conformity to an arbitrary system of rules for a protracted period.