Do you recall the Atlanta grade fixing scandal? The one in which dozens of teachers and administrators in Atlanta falsified artificially high grades for their students, “to win bonuses, protect their jobs or please their superiors” – while the students who, in truth, were not performing anywhere near what those grades suggested, were passed through as if they were on the honor roll?
If not, here’s a reminder.
Now let’s fast-forward to the present, and look at the following excerpts from Susan Edelman’s article in the New York Post:
Grade-fixing is alive and well in NYC schools as administrators come up with tricky new ways to inflate their graduation rates — and few of the hundreds of cheating complaints ever get investigated.
The latest scandal erupted at the Secondary School for Journalism in Brooklyn when a student who had cut a required English class dozens of times and got the lowest failing grade, a 45, walked on stage in a white cap and gown to get his diploma — even after a whistle-blowing teacher cried foul.
Principal Marc Williams did not simply change the student’s grade in the class he had failed — a method used by other city administrators. Instead, he added an English course to the teen’s transcript, and let him sit at a computer for a few days to do an online program, teachers said. A whistle-blower claimed a classmate sat next to the teen and helped him take the tests to get a passing 65 grade. Told about the apparent cheating, the principal did nothing, sources told The Post.
Besides the added last-minute credits, about 20 seniors at the 217-student Park Slope school, one of four in the John Jay building, took various online classes to help them graduate. But the classes lacked teachers certified in the subjects to instruct or assist the kids — a violation of state and city regulations, insiders charged.
At Dewey HS in Brooklyn, hundreds of students were put in bogus “Project Graduation” classes in 2013-14, getting credits without any instruction.
Assistant principals fixed grades, investigators found.
Despite a probe that confirmed the fraud, DOE officials failed to give records to an arbitrator, who then tossed charges against Principal Kathleen Elvin.
She was removed as principal, but the DOE kept her on as a $157,000-a-year bureaucrat.
The DOE said it refers misconduct complaints to the city’s Special Commissioner of Investigation.
But of the 704 complaints of test-tampering and grade-fixing the SCI has received since August 2015, it has investigated only 22 cases and substantiated three, a spokeswoman said Friday.
To paraphrase what I wrote in my previous blog about the grade-raising scandal…
…what a great idea for booming up New York City’s graduation rate. Maybe next time they’ll just give out diplomas after a couple of years, regardless of whether students have learned anything at all. You know, like those “participation” trophies they give instead of trophies to the teams that actually win.
Then their “graduation” rate will be 100%, and New York City will be the envy of the country and the world. Right?
Maybe they will team up with Kellogg’s and they can put them inside cereal boxes??? Along with the diploma if you send in five box tops you get a plaque that says They’re Great!!!