Several weeks into his first year of teaching math at the High School of Arts and Technology in Manhattan, Austin Lampros received a copy of the school’s grading policy. He took particular note of the stipulation that a student who attended class even once during a semester, who did absolutely nothing else, was to be given 45 points on the 100-point scale, just 20 short of a passing mark.
Mr. Lampros’s introduction to the high school’s academic standards proved a fitting preamble to a disastrous year. It reached its low point in late June, when Arts and Technology’s principal, Anne Geiger, overruled Mr. Lampros and passed a senior whom he had failed in a required math course.
That student, Indira Fernandez, had missed dozens of class sessions and failed to turn in numerous homework assignments, according to Mr. Lampros’s meticulous records, which he provided to The New York Times. She had not even shown up to take the final exam. She did, however, attend the senior prom.
Through the intercession of Ms. Geiger, Miss Fernandez was permitted to retake the final after receiving two days of personal tutoring from another math teacher. Even though her score of 66 still left her with a failing grade for the course as a whole by Mr. Lampros’s calculations, Ms. Geiger gave the student a passing mark, which allowed her to graduate.
If you can’t do the math then you aren’t literate in the language of most technical subjects.
It’s as simple as that, if you can’t do the math, then you are technically illiterate.
Good luck finding an employer who grades on a curve like that.
Who needs an employer when the welfare system will provide subsistance?
I lost a position years ago in a private computer nda travel school because I had the gall to expect students to:
1. attend class, and
2. turn in their work.
Needless to say, the retired admiral who ran the school wasn’t too pleased because he got paid by Uncle Sam for ‘completions’ by students, not competence in general education subjects (English, algebra, business math, psychology, and logic), so, I was relieved of the agony of trying to justify grades when no work was done.
Well at least the public school surely taught her the proper use of condoms.
When a math prof, I had a student turn in a test for a regrade. It was a problem that my TA had graded and I was mystified how the TA could have given the student so little credit because the solution was entirely correct. When the TA and I looked more closely, we saw that the student had apparently erased his original answer and turned a corrected version. Going on this hunch, we photocopied the student’s next test after grading it. The next day, the student duly handed the [i]corrected[/i] test back for regrade. I had the kid hands down, photocopy of the originally submitted test and the very much different resubmitted test. Well, I was a lowly junior faculty and the asst dept head handled these discipline issues. The kid was determined, and with enough protestations, he got off with an incomplete but no permanent annotation in the record. He retook the class and passed, I heard. Did he cheat to pass the second time? Who knows? Did he cheat in other classes? You can bet on it.
If I was a recruiter, looking for a college grad, I would only trust degrees from military academies.
I trust no one is surprised by this? Grade inflation has been around for a long time – several generations – in colleges and universities. A B now is an unsatisfactory grade. So why not alter grades to let people pass. What’s the dif? The point is that out culture encourages this kind of fraudulance, so that its appearance in schools is a matter of course. You are also therefore not surprised that cheating over the last 40 years has increased enormously at every level? I was a teacher in college and high school for a long time. The profession is no longer reputable, and I am embarassed to admit that I stayed as long as I did. LM
I thank God I had a mother who took a hold of things when I got my first and last “F” in mathematics. She would take me into the kitchen and wash dishes while I did my math homework. She would look at the work and tell me to do certain problems over. She did not tell me the answers. Also I was not allowed to listen to my favorite radio programs until the work was correctly done. In later years my stepson had to learn this same lesson. There was one time he was awakened late at night and made to finish his homeork.
Years later this same lady, my mom, who road herd on me sat and clapped her hands when I walked across the stage and received my Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering. I was 50 at the time and except for one woman student, age 62, I was the oldest. When she walked across that stage I never heard so many hands clapping and kids yelling “..way to go Mom..” These words made my heart rejoice and my ears ring.
I would like to caution Barradu, comment #5. I would prefer that we not generalize this situation as the fault of “the public school system”, this particular principal acted wrongly, yes. I feel for every teacher that deserves but does not get the support of their administration. After 27 years “in the biz” I can almost guarantee that the parents of Miss Fernandez raised holy **** and made threats of some nature, most likely lawsuit, and the principal and central administration wanted to avoid that and the bad press at all costs. On a daily basis I deal with students and parents that repeatedly fail to take responsibility for their own actions. While there are many weaknesses in the public school system we cannot be blamed for poor parenting, yet somehow, I suspect, that too will be the fault of our public education system.
I would agree with “princess of quite a lot” in comment 9. Having been a student and a student teacher in both settings (public and private), if you think this only goes on in the Public School Sector, you are sorely mistaken. In fact, I would argue that the worst culprits of grade inflation are some private schools. Some parents these days aren’t going to put up with paying thousands of dollars for their kid to fail a class. If they have the money, clout, and the lawyers, I guarantee their kid will pass with the school’s blessing. Period.
Addition to #8,
Just to get things perfectly clear:
Not only was my Mom present, but my wife, my sister, and our daughter. The two grandson were sad that they couldn’t be there but they were in school at the time.
#9. It is the responsibility of the school system to fight off such parents. That they do not do so – and they too often don’t because the parents will go to the school committee who does the hiring and firing – makes it the public school’s fault. It’s that simple. LM
#12 My own school district has spent hundreds of thousands in such battles, money they can ill afford to spend. Must they continue to do so? Because of these costs and the decrease in public school funding in my state, we have suffered numerous lay-offs both certified and non-certified. Classrooms are over-crowded, supply budgets are at an all time low, etc., etc. When will someone outside our district budget help to fight these battles? I certainly am open to suggestions. In my tenure as a teacher I have seen the curriculum go from basic academics to that plus life skills, skills that once were the responsibility of the parents. I understand that home life for too many of my students is a less than ideal situation. Therefore, I can accept the need for us to inlcude these life skills in our teaching. However, if we are going to be held accountable for the majority of a child’s upbringing, we need more support outside the classroom and school building.
With regard to #6, I wouldn’t be naive about the military academies. There have been cheating scandals over the years at all of them. Any large academic institution that has students who are there only because they are required to be there, who are mostly focused on getting a credential rather than learning has some level of cheating.
What’s depressing about the story from the NYT is the administrators’ complicity in fudging academic standards. But I expect we will see even more of these kinds of stories, because one of the trends in education (things like “No Child Left Behind”) is requiring schools to meet particular goals in graduation rates or test scores, which may or may not be realistic depending on the students involved. When teachers and administrators are promoted or given raises based on test scores or graduation rates, you will inevitably begin to see some teachers and administrators becoming complicit in cheating, fudging numbers, etc. At a minimum, you will see widespread “teaching to the test” even to the exclusion of teaching other essential areas.
OTOH … I just spent this week at a Habitat build project with some of our youth. Another group was there, led by two teachers from a neighboring county. Said teachers had taken off the week to bring twenty of their students to the work site. I was impressed by their dedication and work ethic. BTW, they are both people of faith; one an active Jew and the other a Christian. Wonder if that had something to do with their passion …
Maryland Brian
Do we need any more proof that NYC’s education system is in the toilet? Hardly!
Jason, I live just south of the Air Force Academy who have had some cheating scandals. I am not saying that cheating doesn’t happen, but if they get caught, they are out on their ear.