Papering Over Failure
To see one reason why so many city schools struggle, consider this week’s Post series on grade-fixing and other cheating in the schools. Between 2013 and 2015, The Post found, dozens of teachers, principals and other staffers improperly helped kids advance — showing them test material beforehand, giving them answers during exams, changing grades and so on. Yet often, the cheaters got no more than a wrist-slap.
It’s all in records from the Department of Education’s Office of Special Investigations — which the DOE refused to release for two years, forcing The Post to sue.
Among the lowlights of the series: When a fifth-grade Brooklyn teacher wondered why his kids didn’t know material they should’ve learned the year before, he asked them if a teacher had given them test answers.
“Quite a few” said yes: Fourth-grade teacher Joshua Levine had provided answers and alerted them to questions they answered incorrectly — the test.
Another teacher filled in incomplete answers. Two gave kids questions to geometry and statistics midterms in advance. A principal changed the grades of dozens of kids from failing to passing. And on and on.
All the cheating made it seem as if the kids had learned more than they did — papering over their schools’ failure to teach.
And of the cases in the series, only one teacher (who didn’t have tenure) was fired.
The Post has been uncovering grade-fixing schemes for years. In 2015, we called for then-Chancellor Carmen Fariña’s resignation after teachers and principals reported enormous pressure to pass kids, even if it meant fudging grades.
To make schools look good, Fariña even restored “social promotion” — moving up kids whose records prove they were unprepared.
And while the city brags about higher graduation rates, more than a third of its grads are deemed not ready for college or the workplace.
CUNY ed professor David Bloomfield says such policies hurt students and undermine “public faith” in the schools. He notes that employers and “even the criminal-justice system” pay a price. He’s right.
The first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one. But the city public-school system flips that adage to: You don’t have to fix a crisis as long as you can conceal it.