| January 23, 2008 Graduation rate inflated by 'pseudo-credits'? |
End of January and 'tis the season for teachers working in semestered high schools to crank out first semester marks.
But for well over a year, high school teachers have been complaining that pressure to graduate more students -- stemming from a provincial commitment to boost high school graduation rates to 85% in three years -- is resulting in artificially-inflated marks and artificially-earned course credits that do not reflect students' true abilities or efforts.
"If there is any way to pass a student, we are encouraged to do it," one Toronto high school teacher told me.
"There is certainly a sense ... that principals are pushing more and more for teachers to pump the marks up to lessen the failure rate," Doug Joliffe, president of the union local for Toronto's public high school teachers, told me. But, he added, "not failing students is not the same as teaching them."
It has been a long-held practice that teachers do not give a mark of 49; they either give a clear failure of something around 45 or put the mark up over 50. But, teachers say, the situation has become worse.
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