A for-profit school that was hyped by Republican lawmakers as a solution to Tennessee’s education problems recently admitted deleting bad grades to “more accurately recognize students’ current progress.”
A December email obtained by WTVF showed that Tennessee Virtual Academy’s vice principal instructed middle school teachers to delete “failing grades” from October and September.
“After … looking at so many failing grades, we need to make some changes before the holidays,” the email says, adding that each teacher needed to “take out the October and September progress [reports]; delete it so that all that is showing is November progress.”
“If you have given an assignment and most of your students failed that assignment, then you need to take that grade out.”
Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson said she was horrified because the school’s instructions amounted to cheating.
“Does it talk about we need to make changes in curriculum? Does it talk about we need to make changes in our teaching strategy? No,” Johnson told WTVF. “Those changes we need to make are deleting grades from the computer system.”
“To come in and say ‘everybody who made failing grades the first two months, we need to delete those grades,’ to me that’s a huge issue,” she explained. “To me, this appears like it’s grade fixing.”
The problem with for profit schools is that if their product, student's grades, is not good enough there will be less profit. So if you cannot delver the goods, you take shortcuts.
Just another reason why capitalism and education shouldn't mix.
There is more on this situation to be found here.
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