Valerie Strauss, Washington Post, February 1, 2018
On Oct. 28, 2015, the D.C. Public Schools district put out a statement lauding itself with this headline: “DC Public Schools Continues Momentum as the Fastest Improving Urban School District in the Country.”
For years, that has been the national narrative about the long-troubled school district in the nation’s capital: After decades of low performance and stagnation, the system was moving forward with a “reform” program that was a model for the nation. The triumphant story included rising standardized test scores and “miracle” schools that saw graduation rates jump over the moon in practically no time. Arne Duncan, President Barack Obama’s education secretary for seven years, called it “a pretty remarkable story” in 2013.
A city study — undertaken after media reports revealed the situation — found that more than 900 of 2,758 students who graduated from a D.C. public school last year either failed to attend enough classes or improperly took makeup classes. At one campus, Anacostia High in Southeast Washington, nearly 70 percent of the 106 graduates received 2017 diplomas despite violating some aspect of city graduation policy.
It was a shock for many people in the District, including, apparently, Antwan Wilson, the chancellor who has been running the district for about a year and said he didn’t know anything about the practices that sparked the scandal.
But the truly shocking thing about D.C.’s schools scandal? That it isn’t shocking at all. It isn’t, at least, to anybody paying attention to the past decade of school “reform,” which has attempted to run America’s public education system as a business.............To Read More....
My Take - The author goes on to claim the blame lies in too much emphasis being placed on performance. Isn't that what education is all about? The fact is the scandal is all about the administrators and teachers in these schools are cheating.
They have unteachable students, who refuse to go to school, refuse to do the work and have absolutely no discipline at school or at home. And they're being taught by bad teachers who are making up the results as they see fit.
To some extent I can't entirely blame the teachers because in order to rightly address this they would have to condemn the social structure of black America, and that's not politically correct. Since they have to produce good a good crop of students from infertile ground or get fired - an impossible task within the current parameters in which they have to work - they cheat.
It's claimed in the article scores went up because white kids were now going to some of these schools. Well, if that's true, and it seems it is, what is the performance in almost all white schools? Aren't they working with the same parameters as the almost all black schools? Aren't they going to the same schools where these administrators and teachers are working and teaching? Isn't this where black kids are failing? Does anyone besides me think that's profound?
Kick out the kids who won't work and are disruptive. Leftists claim that's terrible since they can only then turn to crime. So? That's what they're already doing since they're not going to school and giving them a diploma they didn't earn or deserve isn't going to fix that since they're still largely illiterate, lazy, undisciplined, violent and irresponsible. Why would anyone think an unearned diploma is going to fix that?
Administrators and teachers need to be fired and the teacher's unions need to be put in their place. Let them go on strike, then fire them and start all over again. Public employees cannot belong to a union. Private employee unions know too many demands bankrupt the company. In the public sector that never happens - at least for the time being - but California is probably going to be the first. Pigs get fat - hogs get slaughtered! And it's time the hogs of public education were taken to the slaughter house.
But the real problem lies in the culture and mentality of black America, and the "leadership" of black America, who are all about blame - that is blaming black America's problems on everyone and everything except blacks themselves. There's an almost universal failure in black America in spite of the billions and billions of taxpayer dollars that's gone to that community. None of which has addressed the fact black Americans are "disproportionately incarcerated, murdered, fatherless, illiterate, jobless, and aborted." And based on that reality - most of that money was wasted!
Black America is it's own worst enemy, and when black America, especially the black religious community, finally address that - starting with a 70% illigitimacy rate - then things will change.
In the meanwhile - let's start with vouchers, and any kid who won't work gets kicked out. Test scores will really go up then.
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