NYC attendance crisis proves the DOE and UFT don’t – Latest News
If you don’t care whether or not kids come to class, you don’t care in the event that they study in any respect — and that’s what New York City’s common public-school system has come to.
Public-school instructor Mike Dowd’s damning column in Friday’s Post confirmed our worst fears about the unhappy state of the system.
A 3rd of college students in Department of Education faculties, more than 300,000, are chronically absent — and uncounted others miss a lot of the college day.
Teachers aren’t allowed to penalize youngsters for skipping class because of “reforms” made in the identify of “equity” beneath Mayor Bill de Blasio which have continued beneath Mayor Eric Adams.
Out the window, thunders Dowd, went “the longstanding notion that attendance was a basic requirement for passing.”
This makes it simpler to show fantastic high-school commencement charges (it’s now 84% systemwide) , and to keep attendance-based state and federal support coming — all of which is handy for the adults who make a dwelling off the system, even because it betrays their elementary responsibility.
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Some academics and directors doubtless even privately rationalize guidelines that permit drawback youngsters choose out of class as making it simpler to show the kids who do show.
Never thoughts that the full lack of expectations sends the worst potential message to all college students.
Nor that it fails mother and father, who absolutely anticipate faculties to no less than allow them to know their youngsters are truant.
It’s a grotesque “culture shift,” Dowd warns, “as attending class goes from being a widely understood responsibility to a mere lifestyle choice. Regularly absent students often ask me with complete sincerity how they might improve their grades. Some even request college recommendation letters.”
These insurance policies, he fumes, are educating college students “to surrender in the face of everyday challenges. At a formative time in their lives, our future workforce is losing its self-discipline, reliability and resilience.”
By blowing the whistle, Dowd has courageously risked his profession with the metropolis Department of Education — and doubtless earned the fury of United Federation of Teachers head Michael Mulgrew, who’s plainly blissful to go together with the farce.
This rip-off additionally lets the air out of all the ethical posturing behind the state law mandating minimal class-sizes for metropolis faculties: The exact same people insisting on low student-teacher ratios plainly don’t care if the college students are literally in the classroom with a instructor.
It’s plain that no one in energy in New York authorities will utter a peep about any of this: They all care an excessive amount of about appeasing the UFT and different grownup pursuits that feed off the faculties.
But Congress can maintain hearings (it’s a secure wager New York isn’t the solely massive metropolis committing such fraud), and Education Secretary Linda McMahon can launch an investigation — as might the Justice Department.
Surely this conspiracy of silence and neglect violates the civil-rights legal guidelines?
