Perhaps my very favorite among the many humorists and comedians whose work I treasure is George Carlin. George’s work has gone through changes over the years, and that’s to be expected. It pays to be topical. Lately, he’s tended toward rants, and some people might consider those rants extreme. There’s an undercurrent of profound intelligence in what the man says, though. We don’t laugh at anything that doesn’t have at least a pinch of truth in it.

Some months ago I heard Carlin do a routine in which he discussed the sad state of education in America. He made some pretty wild assertions, or at least that’s how I saw them at the time. Surely, I thought, schools don’t improve their success records by lowering their passing grade thresholds. Surely they don’t simply push students through whether they’re ready or not. It certainly didn’t work that way when I was in school, and if you’d suggested such a thing to any educator at that time, you’d have gotten a rightfully indignant reply. I simply couldn’t wrap my mind around such a concept, and despite Carlin’s clarity on these points, I dismissed them. It just could not be that way, I thought.

I share my life with an educator now. To say that that experience has opened my eyes would only hint at the change in perspective brought about by what I now know. It’s very vertical knowledge, specific to one school and relevant in a more general way to one county school system, but even that thin slice of knowledge has had tremendous impact.

Before I start, let’s clarify some terms. While I won’t give complete names that would allow the principal characters to easily use Google to find this rather sharp indictment, I’m not going to protect the guilty, either. So, for the record, the county we’re in is within the state that is on Ray Charles’ mind, and is named after a native American tribe after which Jeep named a vehicle. The middle school’s principal … let’s refer to him simply as Dolt, because that’s a part of his surname. [Update: Because no one I know works for this school system now, I don’t mind revealing that I was talking about Woodstock Middle School in Cherokee County, Georgia, and its former principal, Richard Landolt. Landolt has since been replaced.]

There was a time when good students scored highly and bad students got low scores. At most schools, one would hope, that’s still the policy. At this school, it is not. Teachers are still required to maintain records, of course, of every score earned on each test or assignment. At the end of each nine week grading period, though, something interesting takes place. If the average of a student’s grades over the last nine weeks is lower than 65%, Dolt’s policy requires that the grade be adjusted to 65%. In other words, any grade lower than 65% is required, by school policy, to be falsified.

That in itself is shocking. Parents rely on grades to gauge the progress of their children in school, if one is to believe a January 1994 Department of Education report.* A falsified grade gives a parent a completely inaccurate measure of progress. In gross cases, where the student (for example) did little or no work and scored 35%, the 65% for that nine weeks will look absolutely stellar compared to the real picture.

This isn’t, as one might assume, a secret. If I were so bold and unencumbered by ethics as to find myself willing to order grades falsified, I’d probably be ashamed and want to hide it. In this school system, teachers, parents, and students are, for the most part, aware of this policy. It should surprise no one, in fact, that students have found ways to take advantage of the policy. By earning an average of only 75% in two of the four nine-week periods of the school year, a student can then take the rest of the year off, essentially doing nothing, and still pass and be promoted to the next grade level. Of course, the odd parent might still be confused by the policy. Interim reports, sent at the 4-1/2 week mark in each grading period, show the actual, unaltered grade. If a student is doing consistently bad work, each 9-week grade will look like a remarkable improvement over the interim report that preceded it.

So far, we’ve been talking only about mainstream students. Let’s explore how this policy affects special needs children. Suppose a student earns a 45% average for his first 9-week period. Because special needs children are required to be served under what’s known as an Individualized Education Plan, or IEP, a federally mandated report goes home to the parent at the end of that nine week period. That document will carry the adjusted (read: falsified) grade of 65%. The teacher, operating under school policies mandated by Dolt, is required to falsify a document regulated under federal guidelines. Even if this were not patently illegal, it’s wrong, because the student’s progress is misrepresented to the parent. That same altered grade is also recorded for IEP purposes, and the student’s future IEP recommendations will be based (at least in part) on that artificially inflated progress indicator!

I think we can all see what this is doing to the students. What of the teacher? What position has he been placed in because of this policy? As one might expect, teachers in this school system are required to read and affix their signatures to a code of ethics, swearing or affirming to uphold that code. In part, that code requires teachers to “exemplify honesty and integrity,” and forbids them to “falsify, misrepresent, omit, [or] erroneously report information regarding the evaluation of students.” Under Dolt’s directives, teachers are basically ordered to violate this code of ethics. They are, in fact, threatened with letters of reprimand, sanctions for insubordination, or even loss of their jobs if they refuse to follow the policy and fail to break the law.

It’s quite a dilemma, isn’t it? Dealing with cognitive dissonance is no picnic, and eventually something snaps. At least one teacher has resigned from the school system during the 2006-2007 school year over this very issue.

One must also wonder what’s become of the parents in this situation. Sadly, I’m afraid some of them might actually be happy with this policy. It’s hard to believe they’d stand for such madness, but those who want to be are aware of what’s happening. Either there’s been no righteous uproar, or I’ve somehow missed it.

Let’s not stop at the grade-fudging, though. Even if that lunacy weren’t law in this school, a few other policies definitely deserve to see the light of day.

How about the late work policy? At this school students are allowed to turn in any work completed at any time prior to the end of the nine-week period in which it was assigned and receive full credit. Didn’t turn in a project at the beginning of the year? No problem. Put it off for eight weeks and turn it in at the last minute with no penalty. I’d like that deal at my job, please.

There’s no such problem with homework assignments, though. That’s because homework isn’t allowed. Yes, you may believe your eyes. Teachers at this school are not permitted to assign homework at all, not even for extra credit. What’s the rationale for that, you might ask? Hold on to your hat. Apparently, not all students have parents who are equally capable of (or available for) assisting with homework. Thus, assigning homework will supposedly put the students with less capable or available parents at a disadvantage.

The school system’s superintendent is aware of some or all of these policies. I’m not sure what might be happening in the upper echelons of the system itself, but it’s a fact (and a matter of public record) that Dolt will not be a middle school principal next year. Can we hope for better luck and a return to sanity with his replacement? I hope so. [Update: No such luck.  See this entry, this one, and finally this one to see why I shouldn’t tempt fate.]

In the United States, no one man is ever given the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. Two people must concur. Why? Because lives are at stake.

Here, the futures of a large number of young people depend on a single man who clearly has–at the very least–some controversial ideas. He’s been given free rein. I’m frightened.

George, I’m sorry I doubted you. You were right. It’s called the “American Dream” because you have to be asleep to believe in it.
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* Office of Educational Research and Improvement, “Educational Research Report”, OERI Research Reports, January 1994. Not available online to this writer’s knowledge.