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NY Times: Lacking Credits, Some Students Learn a Shortcut
Posted by angeliexists on April 11, 2008
April 11, 2007
By ELISSA GOOTMAN and SHARONA COUTTS
Dennis Bunyan showed up for his first-semester senior English class at Wadleigh Secondary School in Harlem so rarely that, as he put it, “I basically didn’t attend.”
But despite his sustained absence, Mr. Bunyan got the credit he needed to graduate last June by completing just three essay assignments, which he said took about 10 hours.
“I’m grateful for it, but it also just seems kind of, you know, outrageous,” Mr. Bunyan said. “There’s no way three essays can possibly cover a semester of work.”
Mr. Bunyan was able to graduate through what is known as credit recovery — letting those who lack credits make them up by means other than retaking a class or attending traditional summer school. Although his principal said the makeup assignments were as rigorous as regular course work, Mr. Bunyan’s English teacher, Charan Morris, was so troubled that she boycotted the graduation ceremony, writing in an e-mail message to students that she believed some were “being pushed through the system regardless of whether they have done the work to earn their diploma.”
Throughout the city, an ad hoc system of helping students like Mr. Bunyan over the hump is taking root in public high schools, sometimes over the protests of teachers, who call credit recovery programs a poor substitute for classroom learning and say they ultimately devalue the diploma. In interviews, teachers or principals at more than a dozen schools said the programs ranged from five-day crunch sessions over school breaks, to interactive computer programs culminating in an online test, to independent study packets — and varied in quality.
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davidasposted said
There is a similar ‘problem’ – at least I define it as such – in Ontario high schools: in effect, teachers cannot fail students for handing assignments in late. Ontario universities are not bound by these rules, of course, and many students do not realize this fact until it is too late. Some skip class, never give us any of their work, and then show up to the final exam expecting they can pass the course. The university administration perpetuates this belief insofar as it considers the students consumers – even refers to them as such. So naturally students believe that once they (or more likely, their parents) pay tuition, they’re entitled to a grade, and see that it’s a good one! I’ve failed a fair number of students in the last two years, something I do not like to do, who suffer from this delusion.