vin/020325.html
Agustin Orci, deputy superintendent of instruction for the Clark County (Las Vegas) School District, says he's unaware of any principal setting quotas for the number of students their teachers can "flunk." He further declares such directives shouldn't be issued.
But these are word games, like the assertion that state police have no speeding ticket "quotas."
(While it may be true there's no fixed "quota" for any given shift, do we really believe one of these glorified meter maids could go for weeks failing to collect this add-on highway tax, shrugging off his or her non-participation with a simple declaration that "I'm just not seeing that much dangerous behavior out there," without being called in for a little chat? How about if he or she were to add, "Besides, the courts have defined 'driving' as an excisable commercial activity -- most of these folks I see whizzing by are merely 'traveling'; they don't really need 'drivers licenses' in the first place"?)
In fact, a number of (understandably) anonymous Clark County teachers now report they've been advised to "flunk" no more than 35 percent of their students. John Jasonek, executive director of the local teachers union, says the issue has come up in at least 15 union grievances this year. Letters to the editor of the Review-Journal from still other educators indicate the "flunk quota" has been a poorly kept secret for some time.
Now, it may indeed be a matter of concern should half of any given classroom fail. But what we're seeing here is further evidence of the systemic breakdown and failure of government school system -- like a dying patient on life support, who only starts to hemorrhage and develop infections at a second and third remote location as soon the doctors' heroic efforts have temporarily stabilized the initial complaint.
Ironically enough it's the good teacher -- the rigorous teacher who demands the most from his or her students -- who's most likely to blow the whistle on this build-up of "socially promoted" pass-alongs he or she has inherited, by awarding just such "reality check" grades ... while the feet-up-on-the-desk, go-along-to-get-along schmoozer next door hands out A's and B's like they were free ketchup packets at McDonald's.
The problem with any such quota is made clear by one southwest-area high school teacher, who told the Review-Journal's Lisa Kim Bach last week that he could easily flunk his 35 percent "quota" based on non-attendance alone. At that point, are passing grades to be awarded merely "for showing up" -- with parents none the wiser?
"In my classes, the ability levels are all over the place," the high-school whistleblower reveals. "I'm telling you that I have kids who can barely read and write. If I graded the way I'm supposed to grade, a majority of them would fail."
Today's standards are already greatly reduced. College freshmen are taking remedial grammar and arithmetic in record numbers, while the notion that they should have mastered geometry and Latin and at least one foreign language -- commonplace before the Second World War -- now merits little more than a chortle.
If the "flunk quota" is filled by those who simply don't bother to show up, must we now "pass" everyone who (start ital)does(end ital) show up? Would any of us be happy knowing our surgeon had graduated medical school on a "diplomas-for-everyone" basis?
This is like "solving" an epidemic of fever at the local hospital by instructing the nurses to simply reduce all recorded patient temperatures by whatever percentage is necessary to drop the "fever rate" below 35 percent. Not only would this accomplish nothing, it would actually (start ital)prevent(end ital) proper analysis and treatment of the underlying problem, by compromising a vital diagnostic tool for (in this case) teachers and parents alike.
Anyway, is it really a measure of failure for a majority of any given class to "flunk"? Only if they all belonged there in the first place. Nowhere else on earth is it assumed that all 17-year-olds ought to be on a career path to become doctors, engineers, and architects. If that's no longer what the final years of high school are about, then what (start ital)is(end ital) the true nature of this vastly expensive enterprise? And even if this long overdue housecleaning (start ital)is(end ital) seen as a measure of failure, it could just as easily demonstrate a failure to provide adequate disciplinary power -- the power to maintain order by expelling troublemakers and getting them permanently "off the books" -- as any failure of pedagogical method.
We'll never figure out which, if we now stand by and allow true rates of government-school success or failure -- increasingly, failure -- to be covered up by this brand of bureaucratic fraud.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal" and author of "Send in the Waco Killers." For information on his monthly newsletter, "Privacy Alert," or on his new book, "The Ballad of Carl Drega," e-mail privacyalert@thespiritof76.com; dial 775-348-8591; or write 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503.
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
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