Making Believe – NYC Public Schools Going Nowhere Fast

Kids and parents are happy for obvious reasons; teachers are happy because, far from getting called to account for their charges’ failures, they get credit for all this “success.” Similarly, principals and other school administrators can proclaim the dazzling effectiveness of their leadership, and school district bureaucrats can take satisfaction in the idea — or the illusion — that their system is working.

That’s a big reason there has been such a backlash against standardized testing: It imposes from outside the school an evaluation system that inhibits teachers and principals who are so inclined from using the kind of subjective measures that allow everyone to feel good. They can’t fudge the numbers.

Of course, the kids and the families who trust in the school system are the real losers when firm standards are tossed aside in favor of feel-good non-standards, at least in the long run.

Sure, motivated, focused kids will do well in almost any system. But ordinary, less accomplished children and their parents go on to find that educational institutions at higher levels — not to mention institutions in the real world of work — are not nearly so forgiving, and all the important things those students never learned at lower levels where they enjoyed such false success come back to haunt them,

Far too many of them leave school ill-prepared for what’s next, but the school system that failed them chugs merrily along, churning out class after class of students who leave not even knowing how inadequately educated they are, even as the system proclaims its own triumph. And heaven help the elected official who dares to question that self-assessment.

There has been a push toward reform as even conscientious educators within the system recognize its deficiencies. Common Core, for all its flaws, is part of that push toward higher, harder standards. But now, the inevitable pushback has begun, led by people in and out of the system who insist higher standards are oppressive. Many seem to suggest they’d prefer a return to a wholly subjective method of evaluation — the kind of system that allows them use vague buzz-words and catchy insider lingo to cover the reprehensible practice of promoting kids who aren’t learning from one level to the next until they are out of school and on their own. Social promotion, it’s called.

Sadly, it appears that the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, in pursuit of some distorted notion of populism, has bought into this reactionary approach.

‘Consistent with the process’

Witness the mayor’s declaration last week in response to a report in the New York Post that several students at Automotive High School in Brooklyn had their failing scores on statewide Regents examinations artificially inflated to allow them to pass.

The mayor shrugged off this falsification of grades — and that’s what it is — telling the newspaper, “This is something that we have seen consistently over the years.

… This is a process that is done from time to time. It is not an unusual process. … It’s something that is within the normal approach of our school system. I think it should be looked at in that context of history, that this is something that’s been done consistently when there’s a specific situation that calls for it.”

Really, Mr. Mayor? Is that supposed to make New Yorkers feel better?
There is reason to believe this kind of “grade-scrubbing” is not isolated to one school, as the mayor himself happily suggests.

The New York Times reported last week that far fewer students are being required to attend summer school this year, continuing an alarming trend. The Department of Education says that just over 19,000 students in the third through eighth grades are being required to go to summer school in 2015. That’s a mere 6.2 percent of the total number of students in that grade category. That’s down from 7.4 percent last year and 10 percent in 2013.

Summer school drop-off

In fact, summer school enrollment has dropped off more than 57 percent since Mr. de Blasio took office.

Moreover, just 1.2 percent of students have been held back after this school year. That’s half of what it was two years ago. That’s undoubtedly a result of the city’s rediscovered feel-good approach.

Again, this makes kids and many parents happy, but pushing children who need extra work into the next grade when they’re not prepared for it does them and their families a grave disservice. They just fall further behind, even with the system’s already minimal expectations.

The city DOE attributes the summer-school fall-off to the new state-mandated practice of evaluating students based on their work throughout the year and not just on end-of-year tests, which were the decisive factor in the past.

That sounds like a rationalization to us.