At What Cost

28 May 2016

I am struggling to understand what my employer and boss and government and community think the purpose of public education is for our students. 

I always thought my role was to prepare students for life and/or post-secondary options after high school. However, this past week has me questioning if anyone actually cares about that. I have spent this week tracking down students in the 2016 cohort through Facebook and graduation crashing, so they could come off a list thus improving our graduation rate. I was told twice this week that by students failing my class, I was denying them a chance at future success and thus preventing myself from a chance at being part of their success story. I watched teachers agonize over professional integrity and ethics as grade change forms were completed to get students to a 69.5, so they could have a high school diploma and so we as teachers would not be chastised by administration (myself included). I watched our graduation rate grow five percentage points in around fifteen hours to appease our boss. 

Now that another year is in the books and my classroom is packed up, I cannot help but wonder if what happened this week is as okay as my boss seems to think. I know it is all a numbers game. We have to grow rates, so we do not get taken over by the state and so that we can continue getting federal funding, etc. Trust me, I get it., but while we continue to play the games that bureaucracy has made us pawns in, I am left with the question, at what expense do we play? 

This was my fourth year teaching seniors and this desperate "Hail Mary" happens each year, but I have never seen it in such a desperate and drastic manner. I keep thinking about all my former students who have taken remedial classes in college because we passed them along. I think about the money and time they would have saved if a teacher or an administrator would have been brave enough to have let the child fail, so they could be successful in the long term. 

I think about my sophomores who will be juniors next year and that on average will take the ACT at least three times. That test will cost them roughly $120 in their high school career if they take it just three times. They will take it that many times or more in an effort to improve their scores from 15s to 17s or from 20s to 22s. These scores are barely meeting college-readiness benchmarks, if they meet them at all. 

You cannot tell me that passing students along and handing out diplomas like participation trophies and awards is what is best for our children. You cannot tell me not to worry or lose sleep over the grade change forms when you forced me to lose a layer of my professional and ethical integrity in the process. Who is going to stop this? Who is going to stand up and say this is not okay or acceptable? Who is going to help our administrators and government officials and community members understand that every time we make these calls and these miraculous "hail Mary passes" to improve the rates we are devaluing the high school diploma and our children's education. I feel like my hands are tied because this is my calling and my livelihood, but I still struggle with how to navigate this broken system. 

I know I should be glad that my school is not being taken over and that we will continue to get funding, but I cannot deny myself the right to feel upset and torn over the cost of the decisions that are being made daily on behalf of our children. The question still remains, at what cost are we passing children through? What is at stake as with tied hands I help to perpetuate a very broken and messy system?