Caleb Stewart Rossiter, a college professor and policy analyst, decided to try teaching math in the D.C. schools. He was given a pre-calculus class with 38 seniors at H.D. Woodson High School. When he discovered that half of them could not handle even second-grade problems, he sought out the teachers who had awarded the passing grades of D in Algebra II, a course that they needed to take his high-level class.<\/p>\n
There are many bewildering stories like this in Rossiter\u2019s new book, \u201cAin\u2019t Nobody Be Learnin\u2019 Nothin\u2019: The Fraud and the Fix for High-Poverty Schools,\u201d\u009d the best account of public education in the nation\u2019s capital I have ever read. It will take me three columns to do justice to his revelations about what is being done to the District\u2019s most distracted and least productive students.<\/p>\n
Teachers will tell you it is a no-no to ask other teachers why they committed grading malpractice. Rossiter didn\u2019t care. Three of the five teachers he sought had left the high-turnover D.C. system, but the two he found were so candid I still can\u2019t get their words out of my mind.<\/p>\n