in schools all over the nation there are failing students who are not given help to improve their failing status and who are then passed on to high school where over half of the students are not adequately prepared. What message are we sending out there? That it doesn't matter and that someone will academically push you along, no matter how little you do?
Graduation mockery
What part of 'failure' does school not understand?
June 26, 2005
Look no farther than San Ysidro Middle School to see how not to educate the children who have the toughest time learning.
Not only did the school include 143 eighth-graders who did not pass the eighth grade in its ceremonial celebration for graduates. The school also went far beyond this ceremonial fiction and actually passed these failing students on to high school.
What a recipe for continued failure for those children.
And school administrators seem to know it. Among their rationales: It might be the only graduation the failing students ever have.
School administrators have all but seen to that. Graduating with his middle-school class might make a student feel good for a day. But how will he feel in high school, where success must build on mastery of middle-school material?
Odds are he'll either drop out from frustration or boredom or be socially promoted through four years of high school, only to fail the state exit exam. And how will he feel when he cannot keep a job that requires an actual high school education, much less pursue college or a career?
San Ysidro Middle School, suggests Principal Carolina Flores, may have failed these kids. Could she be more right?
Has any teacher moved to hold back any failing student? No, although the principal of the high school they are to attend next year has determined that 70 percent of incoming freshmen aren't up to grade level.
Why not? Perhaps because the two school-year vacation periods during which failing students can attend catch-up classes are taught by volunteers who don't teach the subjects the students are failing. Has anyone insisted on fixing that? Apparently not. Has anyone demanded that failing students get extra attention in the classrooms? Apparently not. Has anyone demanded that all students get attention in the classrooms? No: "There's not a lot happening in the classroom," Flores says.
Who is supposed to shake up and shape up San Ysidro Middle School? Flores, the fourth principal at this middle school in five years, has asked that teachers submit lesson plans and grade students consistently. Some do, some don't. Where are the superintendent and other district administrators to back up this principal? Where are school board members to support her requests? Where is an appalled union representative to demand that its teachers raise their expectations along with their teaching so their students can learn? Where are angry parents to raise cain? Where, as a necessary last resort, is state oversight?
This middle school, this district, this board are abjectly failing their students, both those who achieve and those who do not. They are merely passing along a problem that ends every June only to begin again in September, that adversely affects hundreds of present and future families and society as a whole, that perpetuates ignorance, failure and poverty. Worst of all, most of those most directly involved in this failure think they're doing these kids a favor. Who will wise them up?
A possible solution would be to pay teachers more, but in order to do that the government would have to cut somewhere, meaning that although teachers deserve a higher pay, in order to receive it, other teachers will be fired. If the pay was raised, not only would there be an increase in people who would make a career out of it, but there would be more teachers to handle the increase and overcrowding of schools and the failure rate would decrease and students would be able to receive a much better education.
IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THANK A TEACHER. The teachers are so important and they are treated as if they are not as important. They are needed. How can situations where failing students are not helped but merely passed on happen?! This needs to be fixed!!
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
