(silive.com) “The allegations that teachers at Wagner High School were directed to add points to state exams in order to boost the school’s performance are an extreme example of a more subtle type of grade inflation that’s common throughout the public school system, according to teachers at every school level on Staten Island.
Educators at a half-dozen Island schools said that pressure to grade state exams generously has gone up in recent years as test scores — which determine promotion in the younger grades, and graduation eligibility in the upper grades — have been increasingly used as the pre-eminent barometer of a school’s success — or as the impetus for punishment.
“When you’re in search of more points, you’ll find them. Nobody cares how it’s done,” said Frank DeSantis, a 26-year veteran who teaches at McKee High School in St. George. “A lot of teachers get that feeling that all [schools] are looking for is statistics, and [they're] lying and cheating to get them.”
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“I’d see other papers that other teachers had graded, and I don’t know how [the students] got any points,” said a teacher who retired from Wagner High School, referring to the team grading process for diploma-granting Regents exams. “The watering down of standards is just appalling. I was teaching for almost 30 years and the difference is astounding.” (more…)
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