This reminds me of things like <a href="https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/</a> and when I was (briefly --- thankfully) involved in teaching CS courses a few years ago. More than half the class clearly hadn't actually passed the prerequisites. Lots of begging for leniency and remarking, some extremely emotional appeals. It's a difficult situation because if you let them through, it only creates problems further down the line; and if you don't, then everyone questions your teaching ability (but strangely enough, not the <i>learning</i> ability of the students, which most certainly has a huge effect on how well they do.) I chose the latter and don't regret it --- and left that industry before long, although not before accumulating a pretty negative reputation, because my class' grades would always be a <i>strongly</i> bimodal distribution with one of the peaks well below the failing point.<p><i>School district leaders, including Wilson, defend the use of makeup work, arguing they want to give students "multiple opportunities" to show they understand material.</i><p>Contrast this with the attitude of some more demanding professions like piloting an aircraft: "If you don't get it right the first time, it could be the end of your career, or even your life."
When you financially incentivize teachers to hit measurable data targets, don't be surprised when they game the system to hit those targets. The same happens in every industry and job. If I were to tell software developers that their bonus was dependent on hitting story point metrics, they would suddenly be exceeding the story point metrics I desired, despite in reality the same amount of work being completed.<p>The real problem here is that the stakes are the students' education, and in truth their futures. I wish I could think of some easy solution to this problem but it's so damn hard. I believe a lot of it comes down to the parents and their values, but that's a tough problem to fix.
A german friend of mine always used to say:"In any other mission critical profession, if you are a doctor, a craftsman or an airplane engineer, if you fuckup something too badly, you will be forbidden to continue working in your profession for misconduct(atleast in Germany). In our job, people can ruin lives, destroy whole companies and then have that seen as experience on their CV."<p>As horrifying the idea of career ending bugs sound to me, we probably need to appreciate the fact that there's a level where adding "coders" to the pool is doing more harm then good when we look at what it will do to the understanding of what's "acceptable".
At my high school they pulled bs like this too. We all had to apply to our local community College, which had a 100% acceptance rate. They also had a 100% graduation by changing anyone who wouldn't pass to a junior.
> The majority of Ballou’s 2017 graduating class missed more than six weeks of school<p>If not for the investigation, would anyone have ever noticed?
These numbers are not really that different than many underserved communities just this school’s spotlight in the media makes all of this seem shocking. Also let’s just be real here about the reality of future prospects among most people here in the U.S. but even more specifically the kids in the article- many of them know it just doesn’t matter. Not so much that things are desperate or hopeless but the goal at the end may not seem that great so they opt to enjoy their lives in that moment. I’m afraid still this played out scapegoating is the reason collectively everyone will look at a situation like this and think “Well this is why we can’t find super high achieving versions of these kids”. No, they exist and also there are plenty of other situations worse than this and different groups of people involved as well. The solution is actually really simple- stop pretending to be very inclusive while actually being very exclusive. Demonstrate how education can lead to a fulfilling life to these kids. Not speeches or abstract situations but real living examples, people they grew up around, etc.. Really you can only tell yourself so much that your “paving the road” to help people that come after you until the realization sets in this will be as far they let me go and everyone like me too. Just wait a few more years like this and we will see all sorts of people “gaming” all sorts of “systems”.
The real question here is what colleges are admitting kids that can't read or write? Is affirmative action really so strong that these colleges accepted every kid from a HS where the average SAT score is in the 16th percentile? Or did the high school also help the kids fudge their applications?
This is crap. Here in India at least, attendance has nothing to do with college admissions.<p>One can study better from home anyway.
Also considering that it's a poor school, the teachers are surely not that great either.<p>This is a puff piece. If the teachers taught better, students would come. This just shows how broken the system of failing due to low attendance is. These kids obviously worked hard in spite of school and that should be celebrated, not investegated.<p>The teacher's attitude is weird to say the least.<p>Good kids but didn't deserve to walk across that stage?<p>The teacher ought to be sacked.
> Many teachers we spoke to say they were encouraged to also follow another policy: give absent or struggling students a 50 percent on assignments they missed or didn't complete, instead of a zero. The argument was, if the student tried to make up the missed work or failed, it would most likely be impossible to pass with a zero on the books.<p>It sounds like the grading system is broken.<p>Does a zero do the thing that we want it to do?<p>Could there be a different metric, that doesn't weight a zero in a way that knocks students out like in an elimination tournament? What are the goals of grades? It seems like they are structured to rank students in a competition. That's great for the winners. But what do you do with the loosers?
The line I abhor is this...<p><i>"It is expected that our students will be here every day," said Jane Spence, chief of secondary schools at D.C. Public Schools. "But we also know that students learn material in lots of different ways. So we've started to recognize that students can have mastered material even if they're not sitting in a physical space."</i><p>This is typical of the heads of failing schools. Yes, our kids can’t pass state exams. Yes, our parental survey complain of bullying. Yes our teachers complain in surveys about school leadership. But you’re just not measuring the learning that’s happening here.
while this may be extreme, don't think that the same types of things don't happen in more affluent schools
- special projects, make up work, multiple times to take a test, parents and administrators pressuring teachers, etc.<p>The only thing I haven't seen in the more affluent schools is the tolerance for unexecused absenses and tardiness.