City schools seem hellbent on watering down standards — and students will continue to pay the price. The latest example: a proposed grading policy at the Marie Curie Middle School in Queens that would force teachers to accept late work until the end of the academic quarter.
Under the plan, from Principal Henry Schandel, kids must get “multiple opportunities to make up or turn in work, regardless of due date and without academic penalty, up until the end of the current marking period.” Chronically late students may smile, but they’d be learning habits sure to hurt them later in life, as teachers noted.
“We are supposed to be preparing them for college,” one teacher fumed. If kids “say to the professor, ‘I’m not handing in the paper until whenever I want to,’ that’s not going to work.” Duh.
Besides, if everyone knows the real deadline is the end of the quarter, that’ll soon become the one kids miss, and pressure will mount to move that back, too.
Schandel may think his staff will look better if kids get higher grades with extra time. Yet not only will kids suffer, but teachers will face a more drawn-out assignment-grading process.
A Department of Education spokeswoman notes the proposal is not yet official policy, yet nonetheless calls it “academically sound.” That fits a pattern: DOE and the state have long been rolling back standards, so schools look like they’re doing better even if kids aren’t learning more.
How truly tragic that they’ve given up on the kids.