Tuesday, August 04, 2015

A Lot Of What Is Wrong With Public Education Is In These Two Articles

Student’s stunning plea: Why did NYC let me graduate high school?
I don’t like receiving what I would call a handout, but that’s what happened.

New York City gave me a ­diploma I didn’t deserve.
Teacher on why she passed student who ‘begged’ to fail
The Queens teacher who passed a high school student practically begging to be failed made a stunning admission Sunday — she did it because of the “tremendous amount of pressure” to just graduate kids.

William Cullen Bryant High School instructor Andrea McHale copped to the move the same day that The Post published a front-page essay by guilt-ridden teen Melissa Mejia lamenting how she received a passing grade in the teacher’s government class — even though she rarely showed up, didn’t turn in homework, and missed the final.

A minimum passing grade of 65 allowed her to graduate.

“It was not an ideal situation,” McHale acknowledged to The Post at her Queens home. “If we don’t meet our academic goals, we are deemed failures as teachers. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on us as teachers.”

“I thought it was in her best interest and the school’s best interest to pass her.”

3 comments:

  1. THIS sort of thing is why people now "need" to get a college degree... and increasingly, a master's degree... and so on.

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  2. Any good teacher wouldn't have needed the begging. She would have already failed.

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  3. I would like to know what pressure was on that teacher -- was she in danger of not meeting a graduation quota? Do not enough diverse students graduate?
    What is the 'best interest' of the students, according to this school district and teacher?

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