Delusional Education

There is a room somewhere in New York City that holds all the power. Dark wood panels cover the walls. There are glass cabinets with gold and silver ornaments on one side, and on the other there are massive windows with a gorgeous view of the city’s skyline. The floor is covered in a dark Persian carpet and the far wall has paintings of frowning city heroes. At the back of the room there is a magnificent heavy oak desk. At any point in time there are one to three beautiful handcrafted chairs in front of the desk, but there is always one slightly larger, slightly more decorated chair that sits behind the desk. A throne if you will. 

From here some of the most powerful people in New York City create the illusion of success. They want to stay in power, they want to continue to sit in those seats. In the throne sits the mayor, and on this particular day in one of the chairs opposite him sits the superintendent of the Department of Education. The mayor is concerned. The high school graduation rate has only sunk over the past four years, and the numbers don’t look good. This simply won’t do for the next election cycle. Increasing the effectiveness of public education was one of the main platforms the mayor campaigned on. He needs a scapegoat. A head will have to roll.

Unless…..unless his superintendent has a last ditch idea. A hail mary mayhap?

Turns out he does. The superintendent licks his lips, hoping - no praying, that this idea will save his job and more importantly his astronomical salary. His second home in Miami ain’t cheap. He croaks out the magic number, “fifty-five.” 

The mayor narrows his eyes and stays silent.

He clears his voice and says a bit more clearly, “Fifty-five. That is the highest number a student can receive and still fail a class.”

The mayor angrily cuts in, “We are looking for ways to increase the graduation rate, not talk about how well they fail. 

The superintendent nervously continues, “Precisely sir, the number 55 will allow us to do this.” 

“Explain.”

“One of the biggest problems in the city schools is absenteeism. Many students miss over 20% of the days they’re supposed to be in school.”

“Lazy bastards.”

“Of course, our teacher’s don’t make a damn difference either. But here’s why 55 matters. Whenever a student doesn’t attend class without an excuse, usually they receive a zero. This significantly impacts their average. However, with your permission, I can create a policy where teachers aren’t allowed to give zeroes anymore, they can only give the highest failing grade - a 55.”

The mayor gives him a puzzled look. “But they’re still failing. Why would a fifty five matter?”

“Its the average that matters sir. Let's suppose a student has 10 classes and he only attends 3 of them. Supposing he gets a perfect score for all of those days, he’s only got a 30%. But! Let's suppose all of those zeroes actually count numerically as 55%. If that same student shows up to class and does his work for the same 3 out of 10 days, now he has a 68.5%. He passes.”

The mayor looks at the superintendent quizzically…almost surprised, “So let me get this straight. You want me to sign off on a pure grade inflation policy? Weren’t your original policies centered on student ownership? Wasn’t it your idea to have educational policies that forced students to take responsibility for their actions? Hell, that's why I gave you the job in the first place.”

The superintendent feels a twinge of guilt. Indeed, those were his ideas. Back when he used to stand for something those were the ideas he championed which brought him to the highest paid job in education. But those ideas got rid of the original grade inflating policies of previous administrations and tanked the graduation rate. And besides, that was before his wife divorced him. That was before he tried to drown his guilt by buying his 26 year old double D owning mistress in Miami two jet skis and a waterfront condo. And god how he loved watching those double D’s bounce on a jet ski.

The superintendent shrugged his shoulders helplessly, “the policy would skyrocket the graduation rate three months before the end of the election. You could use it to parade the success of our educational policies while campaigning.”

The mayor paused and studied the man for a moment. 

“Do it.”

End Scene

The Grade Inflation Bonanza

Did the above story happen? I have no clue. But what I can tell you is that the 0%= 55% grading policy is in full effect for public schools in NYC. That's right, I work in a school where students deserve zeroes, and they receive a 55’s instead. Let me put this another way, students who don’t do a goddamn thing are immediately awarded over 50% of the grade. 

The way this policy was pitched to me and my fellow staff members went something like this… “we don’t want to punish kids for circumstances we are unaware of. We don’t know what their home life situation is and we don’t know what stresses are placed on them within the family home. They could be taking care of younger siblings or helping their parents run a business. They need the benefit of the doubt.” …they could also be binging a netflix show. 

Cynicism aside, there is some truth to this pitch. As an inner city school teacher in Harlem, NYC I have seen some of my kids go through some shit. Most have single parents and many of them do take care of younger siblings. Some deal with friends getting shot and others rely on marijuana to get through the day. I would argue in general, there are far more external pressures pressing on a kid in the hood than kids from the suburbs. There is a kindness to this 0 = 55 policy.

However, let me be clear. It is my opinion that this policy hurts my students far more than it helps them.

The reality is this. Real life doesn’t care how hard you have it. I can think of zero instances in life where doing nothing gets you 55% percent of the reward. When I skip the gym, I don’t get 55% of the gainz. If I don’t open this laptop, 55% of my blog post isn’t magically written. Working three days out of ten doesn’t allow me to keep my job, and skipping the first date with a girl doesn’t make her want to call me. This is true regardless of whether my mother died a day ago or whether I just feel like doing an 8-hour video game bender. Regardless of circumstance, reality never provides an indefinite blank check of sympathy. Right now the NYC Public school system does.

Call me old school, but I’m far more interested in creating an education system that prepares students for reality rather than creating a dream world of puppies, rainbows, and A+’s for dogshit effort. I’m from the antifragility school of thought - the mind is only as strong as the stresses it has experienced. More challenge is a good thing, not a bad thing. And yes, more challenge will mean more failure and lower graduation rates. I dream of world where when a principal boasts about the school’s 99% graduation rate, a parent’s immediate following thought is, “why the fuck is it so easy to graduate from your school?”

If this sounds harsh that’s because it is. But the data is in, and it’s scary. Over 50% of the students that graduate from high schools under the Urban Assembly Schools (the Urban Assembly is an organization that guides the direction of a number low-income inner city schools including my own) and go on to college do not complete their degree. To put this another way, over half of all the students I have taught become college drop outs. They take on higher education debt for two years and don’t earn a degree that allows them to effectively pay it back.

If our job as teachers is to help prepare students for life outside of high school, then at least by this measurement we are failing. Students lean on policies such as 0% = 55%. There are other fail safes as well. Teachers must offer students the option to retake quizzes and tests.  Students still failing class at the end of the semester are allowed to attend a “boot-camp” where they “make up” half a year’s worth of work in one week. Usually it’s completing a packet with worksheets. Without these policies many of my students wouldn’t graduate with a high school diploma. The problem is when they do, the data shows these kids aren’t prepared to succeed when they don’t have forgiving policies to keep them afloat. Within the fishpond of high school they get to wear floaties, but within the ocean of the real world these kids sink. These systems don’t help our kids, they harm them. And they exist for one reason - to increase the graduation rate. 

The thing is, I can’t even blame my school administration for adopting these policies. The state judges my principal and assistant principals performance based on the graduation rate. That’s the metric. If you remove a policy that fluffs up grades and the graduation rate falls 10%, then the school is in danger of losing state funding. It’s a self-destructive way to measure success. One school administration implements a policy that inflates students' grade point average a bit. Then eventually that principal and his team leave and a new principal with a new administration enters with the expectation that they raise the graduation rate. That new team recognizes the policy that inflates the grades, and they may even feel that it’s a poor rule, but they can’t get rid of it because it will reflect poorly on their administration. If the data starts to look desperate, and the changes they make in the classroom don’t improve the graduation rate, then the administration makes desperate policies that inflate the grades to avoid state defunding. And around we go.

Until we find a new system of measurement, and one that doesn’t rely solely on the graduation rate to gauge success we are stuck. Public education’s end goal should be creating a process that produces emotionally intelligent scholar warrior poets eager to kick ass in life. Graduation should represent the completion of difficult training, not merely the end of a process that shoved students through a system whether they deserved it or not. 

When graduation is the bottom line stat that represents the success or failure of a school system, schools will forever fall victim to catering to a student’s grade point average as opposed to caring for the well-being of the student themself. Kids deserve challenges because it makes them better, and teachers know this. It’s why we instinctively flinch when we’re forced to change grades from zero to 55, and then offer students who have missed the vast majority of our classes a last chance “boot camp” to magically pass the class and get the “all holy” credit towards graduation. It’s not that we don’t want kids to graduate, we just want their effort to accurately reflect their reward. Grade inflation policies undermine our ability to let kids embrace challenge and failure - key ingredients for success, and they delay our student’s from meeting reality.

And they’re worse off for it.