Tale of Two Cities Debate

This week in the Baltimore Sun, there has been an interesting debate about the graduation rates in Baltimore and how they correlate with expectations and standards. Last week, there was an editorial (City's Graduation Rates: A success story still being written) about the city's rising graduation rates and the national praise for CEO Dr. Andres Alonso's efforts in Baltimore City Public Schools. Two days later, a letter came in (Baltimore raised graduation rate by lowering the bar) from Paul Evans, a 31 year retired teacher who taught at the high performing Western High School. Evans claimed that the reason Western and, presumably other schools, were seeing higher graduation rates was because North Avenue was refusing high numbers of failing students. According to Evans, when a list of 10+ failing seniors was submitted to North Ave, it was returned with a request to get the number lower. This happened for consecutive years until schools preemptively started lowering the bar, making exceptions or initiating emergency interventions for failing students.

This is a story that almost anyone who has taught in a Baltimore City school can easily believe. The chain of commands often ends with asking teachers to fudge grades, assemble make-up packets, offer extra credit projects or make other exceptions to enable students to pass. I've heard numerous anecdotes of principals asking teachers to change grades if they have too many failing students. Most teachers of integrity will refuse to do so, but it doesn't stop principals from changing grades themselves. Last year, I had 12 7th students who failed at least two core courses. As they predicted, they are all sitting pretty in 8th grade at this moment.

There are many problems with lowering the expectations and fudging grades. However, paramount is the one that Evans points to in his letter: students have caught on. Once students have gotten the message that they're not allowed to fail, it relieves them of all responsibility for their learning. At the end of the quarter, they have come to expect make-up packets. They ask for extra credit after 10 weeks of doing nothing. The work and study habits are abysmal. I remember having a conference with a student during 4th quarter last year. He had not done a lick of work in 2 weeks and my gradebook had a string of goose eggs. I told him if he kept this up, he would undoubtedly fail the grade. He looked at me and said, tauntingly, "Go ahead. I dare you to fail me. I will bet you a million dollars that I go to 8th grade anyway." Of course, he did fail and sure enough he is in an 8th grade uniform today.

In addition to this shift of responsibility, Evans brings up an even scarier point: sometimes, data does lie. If principals and teachers are being pressured - persuaded even - to fudge numbers, make exceptions, lie, and compromise their integrity for the sake of meeting quotas, then what will we learn from this data? What use is it to educators, policymakers or analysts? How can we even begin to make real changes, analyze problems and design systems for intervention if our entire system profile is based on lies?

In order to achieve true reform, Baltimore needs to take a sobering look at the real statistics, identify real problems and start thinking about solutions, rather than trying to sweep everything under an increasingly lower bar.