Let's Give McGinty & Kennedy Credit They Deserve

When are left wing bleeding heart social in-activists going to realize that there are going to be losers and there is a limit to how much of your resources should be allocated to the losers. The resources would be better spent on helping those who are at least trying.

Failure is not an optionStar.com - News - Failure is not an option

Louise Brown
Education Reporter
June 09, 2007

She has skipped 30 classes in a row and hasn't handed in an assignment all term, but the principal wants her teacher to cut this Grade 12 student some slack.

"He told me, 'Look, the student says she's finally willing to hand in all her work, so I want you to mark it and don't take off points for being late,'" sighs the English teacher at a west Toronto high school.

"Whatever happened to deadlines? We bend over so far for kids these days, it's a joke."

With the school year almost done, the pressure for marks is on – and not just for students, but also teachers.

A growing chorus of educators say Queen's Park's new drive to keep kids in school to 18 is pushing them to coddle students with inflated marks, too many second, third and fourth chances and too few flunking grades, adding to an already lofty sense of entitlement.

In a new survey of nearly 1,000 high school teachers in Durham Region, four out of 10 say they feel principals push them to drop standards so more students will pass. One in four feels pressured not to give an F.

Yet some say it's time to bring back the F-word – Fail – to a school system that has shunned it for a generation.

"Everyone wants what's best for the student, but teachers are asking, `Have we gone too far?'" says math teacher Ken Coran, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation.

"I can't say every principal is pushing teachers to raise marks, but the buzz we're hearing in staff rooms is, 'Are we making it too easy to get a credit?'"