What Does It Mean For A Student To Deserve Promotion?
Anyone who’s read this blog for a while knows that the New York Post isn’t a friend of this program, but can we talk about this interview for a second?
Melissa Mejia, a former student of Bryant High School in Queens, NY, wrote an impassioned essay on why she was allowed to pass a class she didn’t deserve to pass. She readily admits that she rarely showed up to her government class and didn’t turn in assignments she promised to. The teacher in question, Andrea McHale, was given a chance to respond to the student’s claims and did so in a way that belies the nature of the work we do in the classroom, and the ways our hands are tied on a case-by-case basis.
Ignoring the Post’s penchant for turning the ordinary into outrageous, this story reminds me just how many factors come into play when we teach students and, in this case, who deserves to be promoted.
As a middle school math teacher, I’ve probably promoted a few students earlier in my career who didn’t deserve it. Later in my career, I’ve probably marked a large set of my students with a failing grade for various reasons. [My standards is high!] Deserving is such an interesting word too. Educators see lots of kids who don’t “deserve” to graduate, but may have different criteria for what it means to deserve it. Did the students do all of the teacher’s assignments? Were they on time to class? Did they participate in class? Do they have behavioral issues in and out of class? How much weight do we place on teacher-made tests when the final test shows that they’re competent in the material we educators taught?
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