Defund public schools
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Teachers say they must pass all students
Administrators at a Queens high school are demanding that teachers pass undeserving students – including some they’ve never even seen, fed-up educators told The Post.
The teachers at William Cullen Bryant High School in Long Island City say the pressure comes as the school year is about to end and they are asked to promote students who have skipped classes and done little or no work.
One teacher said the 11th-hour requests started during his first semester at the school five years ago. “I was asked to provide passing grades for a marking period I had not taught, for many students who I had never even seen.”
“Last spring, I was reprimanded for not giving a passing grade to a student who had missed almost 100 days of class and had done no work,” the educator said.
The teacher also angered supervisors by refusing to pass students who turned in plagiarized work, he said.
The issue of AWOL students getting a pass is not unique to Bryant High School, which has 2,100 students and boasts legendary singer Ethel Merman and ex-schools chancellor Joel Klein among alumni.
… Among recent grade-fixing scandals, the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools last year blasted Maspeth High School in Queens for creating fake classes, awarding bogus credits, and promoting truant or chronically absent students.
“I don’t care if a kid shows up at 7:44 and you dismiss at 7:45 — it’s your job to give that kid credit,” Maspeth principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir was quoted as telling a teacher. The DOE removed him as a principal, but will let him stay on the city payroll for seven years until he retires.
In a massive scheme at Dewey HS in Brooklyn, a 2015 probe confirmed complaints by teacher whistleblowers that hundreds of students who were given work “packets” or put in bogus classes without instruction by certified teachers received credits toward graduation. Kids called it “Easy Pass.”
The abuses at Maspeth and Dewey, while extreme, are mirrored throughout the city, with principals under pressure from DOE higher-ups to beef up graduation rates. Many high schools give minimal tasks for failing students in the final weeks to make-up for missing most of the class, The Post has reported.
This charade is repeated in Democrat/teachers union-run cities throughout the country, from D.C. to Baltimore, to Chicago, to Los Angeles. Defund them, give parents vouchers, and unleash charter schools. Certainly, there are bad charter schools, but they couldn’t be worse and most will be better.
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