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.
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