It’s the end of the semester. I think back to a year ago and where I was mentally – and I can say that I am not quite as burnt out as I was a year ago. That, my friends, is progress; slow, ugly, but evident.
I gave out my final and it went, as expected, brutal. About 75% of my kids failed. Aside from a couple of exceptions, you failed my class if you did not show up to my exam. I don’t know how I feel about that, because many of those students do not deserve to pass.
We talk a lot about “passing kids on”. These kids were passed on from elementary to middle and to now high school. They will once again be passed on into the real world, and I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to many of them. I have students who can’t read or write, and students who are pregnant or on their second child. It’s frightening. We resent the passing of kids on, but we ourselves do it. I don’t feel comfortable doing it but if you have “too many” failures, the adminstration will hound you because, after all, it’s the teacher’s fault if a student fails – there’s never any shouldering of parents, the students, or the community. That’s not to say there aren’t any bad teachers (because there are), but students shouldn’t be numbers. Education should not be about numbers. When 80% of your school is failing at least one subject, this is beyond any teacher. This goes into the heart of the community. If students fail – they fail; they should be held back and accountable for their failure and not passed off because of fear of not passing AYP or meeting state or federal standards. It is utterly unacceptable to have a 17 year old who cannot read or write.
It doesn’t matter if there is a new principle next year, or a new superintindent because the culture will not change. No Child Left Behind is a band-aide on a deep wound that cuts to the very core of this country’s problem. There not only needs to be government reform on education, but parental reform as well.
