Final Faculty Conference

We had a faculty conference today. Our principal stood in front of the auditorium and congratulated himself (and us) on our wonderful passing regents percentages. I could not believe my eyes as I looked around and saw how amazed and proud the teachers were. Don't they realize that a 65 on a regents means that a student knows about 40% (if that much) of the work. The English teacher sitting next to me told me that there were kids in her class that passed that are illiterate. A failing paper somehow was magically changed to a passing paper by going through the hands of her assistant principal. A history teacher told me that in order to pass that test, kids just had to be able to pull a few ideas out of a paragraph on the test--doing something called scaffolding. I know for a fact that pushing the right buttons on a calculator can give you a mark in the 70's without any real knowledge of any mathematics. The Math Assistant Principal summed it up well when he gave his statistics. He said "we raise our passing by lowering the bar. This year the passing score on Math B regents was 47 as opposed to 55 in the past." of Only the ELL teacher had the courage to mention their statistics--a measly 55%. This is realistic since many of the kids in the program don't speak a word of English. His statistics were not mentioned.