They All Went to College

Of course, it’s a fraud. We would not want to hold African-American students to any standards whatever. They have problems. They suffer from bad families and they live in bad neighborhoods. We do not want to be too tough on them. It might hurt their feelings. And it might undermine their self-esteem.

So, we take a page from the politically correct playbook and just give them passing grades... and then allow them to graduate. And then we send them off to college, uneducated and unprepared. If colleges have the same standards as high schools they will graduate knowing nothing, being unprepared to get a serious job and will return to their neighborhoods, to perpetuate the same cycle of failure. But, they will have high self-esteem and will know how to blame white males for their problems.

Keep in mind, for these people, failure is just a social construction. All you need do is pronounce someone a success, and presto changeo, he is a success.

The story come from NPR, (via Maggie's Farm) thus from a source that is not filled with right wing Tea Party patriots.

The first problem with the District of Columbia’s Ballou High School is that students do not attend classes. This does not prevent them from being counted present—yet another social construction—and given diplomas. How much are these diplomas worth? I leave it to your imagination. And of course, they all then attend college.

NPR reports:

An investigation by WAMU and NPR has found that Ballou High School's administration graduated dozens of students despite high rates of unexcused absences. We reviewed hundreds of pages of Ballou's attendance records, class rosters and emails after a district employee shared the private documents. Half of the graduates missed more than three months of school last year, unexcused. One in five students was absent more than present — missing more than 90 days of school.

According to district policy, if a student misses a class 30 times, he should fail that course. Research shows that missing 10 percent of school, about two days per month, can negatively affect test scores, reduce academic growth and increase the chances a student will drop out.

Teachers say when many of these students did attend school, they struggled academically, often needing intense remediation.

Giving passing grades to students who do not attend class was school policy. To do otherwise would have been racist. And besides, we no longer care whether the students know anything. What really matters is that they have high self-esteem, that we have filled their minds with false pride:

WAMU and NPR talked to nearly a dozen current and recent Ballou teachers — as well as four recent graduates — who tell the same story: Teachers felt pressure from administration to pass chronically absent students, and students knew the school administration would do as much as possible to get them to graduation.

"It's oppressive to the kids because you're giving them a false sense of success," says one current Ballou teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her job.

"To not prepare them is not ethical," says another current Ballou teacher who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

"They're not prepared to succeed," says Morgan Williams, who taught health and physical education at Ballou last year. Williams says the lack of expectations set up students for future failure: "If I knew I could skip the whole semester and still pass, why would I try?"

This is grossly unfair to black students. It’s an injustice:

One current teacher says, from the perspective of a black teacher teaching predominantly black students, graduating these students is an injustice. "This is [the] biggest way to keep a community down. To graduate students who aren't qualified, send them off to college unprepared, so they return to the community to continue the cycle."

We can evaluate the academic prowess of these children by looking at their SAT scores. Read them and weep:

Plus, many of the students who were in those classrooms were struggling academically. Last year, 9 percent of students there passed the English standardized test. No one passed the math test. The average SAT score last year among Ballou test takers was 782 out of 1600.