A high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland, has only passed three courses in his last four years of “study.”
But here’s the kicker: his 0.1373 Grade Point Average is average at his school. Out of 120 students in his class, the young man ranks 62nd, with 58 others failing to reach his hardly stratospheric GPA.
“Tiffany France thought her son would receive his diploma this coming June,” explained Project Baltimore, the local Fox affiliate’s watchdog effort on education. “But after four years of high school, France just learned, her 17-year-old must start over.”
The television exposé found that in three years her son had “failed 22 classes and was late or absent 272 days.”
But for some inexplicable reason, though the unnamed lad was flunking roughly nine out of ten classes, Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts continued to pass him on to higher grades and more advanced classes than those he had just bombed on.
“I’ve seen many transcripts, many report cards, like this particular student,” informed an anonymous (for fear of reprisal) administrator with the City Schools.
“He’s a good kid,” his mother offered. “[H]e’s willing, he’s trying, but who would he turn to when the people that’s supposed to help him is not? Who do he turn to?”
Baltimore City Schools released a long statement detailing their bureaucratic procedures and protocols to prevent students from falling through the cracks. “France says none of that happened,” reported Project Baltimore.
I was privileged to have two parents who would never have allowed me to be so mis-educated. But when parents struggle, the theory is that public schools are there to help. In actual practice, though, this theory fails.
But gets passed along anyway.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Related reading:
- Common Sense: Reading, Writing & Racketeering
- Townhall: The ABCs of Failure
- More Information on “The ABCs of Failure”
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4 replies on “None of That Happened”
The fact is mom and dad are not involved from the git-go. If they were the student would be disciplined to achieve, school boards, principals and teachers would be replaced. Where are the protests for better education? Lethargy is a societal malady today.
This should be made to be impossible. The way to do that is to regulate that such performance and “advancement” must disqualify the school from funding.
Please do not misunderstand, funding would be denied for this practice but not if the student was properly treated, made to repeat and attend the classes until proficient and receiving additional help (which might even merit additional funding).
This is an abomination and has essentially condemned this poor child likely poverty for life.
The school should have to refund the monies it recieved for educational services it failed to deliver to this and apparently many others as well.
The administration has defrauded the taxpayers and the students, the school should be shut and the parents provided a voucher. Clearly they could have done significantly better in an open educational services market for it would be nearly impossible for them to have done worse.
Abolish the govskools!
This is nothing new. And it isn’t just Baltimore, although they are a “good” example.
Public, aka government, schools are not in the business to teach; only to indoctrinate, in most cases.
When you consider that we spend more per student than the majority of countries, we should really be ashamed.