Sheriff David
Clarke Exposes The Dumbing Down Of Academic Achievement, by Tyler Durden,
1/7/18, Zerohedge
When all 164 of
Washington D.C. Frank W. Ballou Senior High School’s graduating seniors last
year applied for and were accepted to college, the whole community - students,
teachers, administrators, parents, and education reformers - had reason to
celebrate the achievements of these obviously hard-working graduates. With a graduating
class the school system considered “academically disadvantaged,” someone in the
school district should have smelled a rat.
After
all, 98 percent of Ballou’s 930 students were African-Americans, and two
percent were Hispanic/Latino, according to data from the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS)
system. One hundred percent of them were considered “academically
disadvantaged” by the system. Kids like this deserve the great opportunity that
a high-quality, character-building education can help provide. There was a time when good
educators, in fact, would tirelessly fight to give it to them. Those days are
apparently over.
Sadly, this happy story collapsed in November, when an investigation by WAMU and NPR found that the much-ballyhooed Ballou
graduated dozens of these students despite high rates of unexcused absences
throughout their senior year. Half
of them missed more than three months of school. One in five was absent more
than present. When kids don’t show up for class, no learning can
take place. And many continue to be perplexed about the growing achievement gap
between black and Hispanic kids and their white counterparts. These truancy
rates are a big part of the problem.
Some teachers, saying they felt pressure to pass
failing students and get them to graduation, cooperated with the investigation. An internal e-mail shows that in April, just two
months before the end of the school year, only 57 students were on track to
graduate. Many of the others could scarcely read or write.
All
of which means the graduation jubilation in June was not, in any way,
justified. Put bluntly, Ballou’s administrators and some teachers cooked the
books, used taxpayer money to commit fraud, and above all harmed poor black
youths and their futures the most. Quite an indictment.
Perhaps even more alarmingly, NPR’s report led
teachers from around the country to share similar situations in many other districts. This is a nationwide academic scandal in K-12 urban school districts, not
to mention the serious disciplinary issues they have.
As I
recall, when the multinational energy corporation Enron cooked the books and
committed private-sector fraud that hurt mostly white-collar investors, people
were actually indicted and in some cases sentenced to prison for crimes.
Shareholders sued. That scandal ended with Enron closing its doors for good.
And even that wasn’t considered sufficient accountability in the private
sector: the fraud also essentially ended the life of Arthur Andersen, the
distinguished accounting firm Enron had used.
I
hope the same kind of attention will be paid to the Ballou scandal. So far,
it’s being taken with apparent seriousness. In late November, D.C. Mayor Muriel
Bowser and DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson announced two investigations arising
out of the Ballou deceit. One will be conducted by D.C. State Superintendent of
Education Hanseul Kang and is slated for completion later this month. Another
will be led by two deputy DCPS chancellors who are examining the problem
system-wide. I hold out little hope that anything more will come out of this
than for the school district to attribute the problem to a lack of teacher
training or a misunderstanding with no intent to deceive.
The
D.C. Council’s education committee held a lengthy hearing on the matter in
mid-December, and Ballou principal Yetunde Reeves has been reassigned, pending
the outcome. That is likely the worst of what will happen to her, because the
teaching establishment tends to punish only by reassignment.
Two things were left out of the story. First, where were the parents? They had
to have some inkling that their son or daughter was not attending school
regularly and certainly were not learning. They have a duty to see that their
child shows up to school everyday in a state of readiness to learn. Second,
what colleges accepted the kids who can’t read or write? They should be outed.
Whoever is responsible for perpetrating,
encouraging, or tolerating this Ballou fraud should be held as accountable as
those who were behind the Enron scandal. Having
helped to deny real opportunity to mostly poor black kids who deserved it, the
fraudsters should receive what every such crook deserves. Jail.
But
that will require major change in America’s schools. Today, Enron’s cheating is a felony.
Teachers’ cheating is job security.
Comments
The
“one-size-fits-all” model of public schools only works with students who have
enough self-discipline to tough it out and actually learn to read, write and do
math.
All
others need a different approach that involves learning what they want to
learn. First they need to get off drugs. I would call these “emersion schools”,
where poor students are routinely flunked out of public school and are assigned
to these “emersion schools”. They need to be drug-tested regularly and hired to
function on family farms until they learn how to work.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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