NO MORE delays. And no more excuses.
Nimble Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew has dodged a simple question: Why don’t city schools stop moving kids who are functionally illiterate to the next grade?
Crew has tried to put off ending the practice of so-called social promotion until at least the next century – when Crew is gone from the city, and no longer needs to justify his quarter-million-a-year salary.
Now, get ready for Crew’s latest excuse for dragging his heels: He hasn’t got the money.
He flunks.
The correct answer is: The city can’t afford to keep promoting students who can’t read, write or compute at grade level.
Each year, another crop of dummies is released on the streets, diplomas in hand, without the basic skills for success. Now that’s expensive.
Perhaps Crew is in need of shock therapy. A batch of writing samples provided by a Queens middle-school teacher ought to give him a jolt.
This essay, penned by a girl in the eighth grade, was submitted without such frills as punctuation or correct spelling:
“My winter vacation was fun I went to upstate to visit my stepfother in Jail I was very sleepy and alot of food when the vist was over the day was done we get home at 10:00
“With my time off I wish TV and lean to music and talk on talk alot with my freinds …”
Here, a sixth-grade boy expresses his opinion of a newspaper letter-to-the-editor that argues against the city’s habit of holding parades for sports heroes:
“I agree with your letter … My hero is Michael Jordon becaus he is A basket ball player and I like Michael Jordon he is the Best basket ball player there is and I like playing basket ball to.”
A seventh-grade girl gives her assessment of a written passage:
“I think that she should only be thinking about one stuff cause people cannot consentrated in to different stuff because if you do good in one youre not good in the other.”
The teacher, whom I won’t identify in order to protect his students, says school administrators treat the education debacle with a shrug. Why bother? According to school system policy, these kids are anyway going to be pushed from one grade to the next.
Recently, the teacher said, a boy became disruptive in class.
“An assistant principal told me, ‘Don’t worry about him, he can’t read,'” the teacher said incredulously.
“He’s in the eighth grade, and he can’t read? He’ll be in high school next year.”
Rudy Clueless’ newest brainstorm for improving learning is to insist on proper manners – that is, removing your baseball cap and leaving at home your beeper.
The middle-school teacher laughs. Not long ago, he saw a large boy threaten a female school administrator.
“He screamed at the top of his lungs, “Screw that fat bitch! I’ll smack the crap out of her!'” said the teacher.
The boy failed to display proper manners when he then requested that the administrator perform a sex act on him.
The boy is still in the school.
“Every day I see 12 or 15 kids who really want to learn,” said the teacher. “They are frustrated by ones who don’t.”
But every time he tries to remove a kid from his classroom, the child is usually returned minutes later.
“I think 90 percent of the problem is they can’t read. I know they can’t write. It makes them angry.
“My heart goes out to these kids.”
In the midst of an all-out crisis, the chief of the city’s 1 million school kids better have answers. But yesterday, an announcement to a breakfast meeting attended by Crew contained this outrageous order: “PRESS IS INVITED TO ATTEND BUT MAY NOT ASK QUESTIONS.”
It may be in Crew’s best interest to avoid letting taxpayers in on the truth: He hasn’t a notion how to fix our schools.
But I have an idea for helping him afford the insidious practice of social promotion:
Rudy Crew ought to dip into his own paycheck.