Who Benefits from New Rochelle High School Policy of “Rounding Up” Failing Grades to Passing Grades?

Written By: Talk of the Sound News

F6AF6C05-0242-4784-83ED-C520CA67E433.jpgIn speaking with a member of my family, it was brought to my attention that two friends of hers who have children in the high school were perplexed over their childs report card. It seems that when they added up the 4 quarters on the card, they came up with a lower average than the grade given. ie..one child should have had a 59 in math (recvd 65) a 63 in living environment (recvd 65)and the other child should have received a 60 in spanish(recvd 65). One parent called their childs counselor in House 4 and was told that it is not unusual for a teacher to give a passing final grade when he/she feels its warranted. The parent questioned this practice, asking the counselor if this was school policy. The parent expressed they wanted their child to take these courses over in summer school and that what the District is doing is in fact a disservice to their child. Allowing him to continue into the next sequential course for both subjects would be setting him up for failure. The counselor responded by saying that yes, teachers are given permission to increase grades at their own discretion, without any approval from higher authority, and this just seemed to be the standard policy of the district. The parent asked that the report card be changed and the actual grades be recorded.Counselor advised she has to get permission for that, and even if it could be changed, it wouldn’t be until September! This parent has enrolled their child in summer school.

I took this information to a former employee of the high school who worked under the direction of Kenny. She noted that in fact Mike Kenny has asked his counselors to give passing grades to “good kids” who are struggling.Let’s see…what defines a “good kid” and who benefits from this?? The children?? NO. The School District, Kenny, counselors and teachers are the ONLY ones who benefit from this “policy”. Increasing the percentage of passing students and inflating the number of graduates can only be a positive thing for the District!

I am wondering if this is part of the reason why our school is one of the only ones who do not have a certifiable graduating list come graduation time. Are they waiting to mess around with students grades and increase the percentage of graduates?

I call on Mike Kenny and the School District to justify the above story and to produce such “policy” that your employees speak so freely of as if it is written in a handbook. I call on ALL parents to check their childs report card, do the math (and we can..in our heads… cause we are from the old school) and when your childs final average doesn’t add up, demand an explanation.

You can reach Mike Kenny of the Guidance Department at New Rochelle High School at 914-576-4500 or send him an email at mkenny@nred.org.

You can reach New Rochelle High School Principal Don Conetta at 914-576-4500 or send him an email at dconetta@nred.org

Be sure to ask Conettta about his ironic blurb on the high school home page: “New Rochelle High School, home of the Huguenots, is a school of academic rigor and professional and cultural relevance, in an environment which fosters positive interpersonal relationships.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Readers interested in this story will want to read this story from two weeks ago:

As New Rochelle High School Graduation Day Approaches Ask “What Are We Celebrating?”

10 thoughts on “Who Benefits from New Rochelle High School Policy of “Rounding Up” Failing Grades to Passing Grades?”

  1. Gradeflation
    Teachers create tests. Are they perfect? How are classroom tests normed? Could there be some margin of error? Do students have bad days? Do teachers? Do you? If so, should the benefit go to the student or the teacher?

    How did 65% become the passing grade? Should it be 70%? Would 67% then be O.K. for passing? There is always room for improvement, but education cannot follow the buisness model. These are children. Our Children!

  2. Final grades are calculated incorrectly
    I had an experience last year where my sons final average was 30 points less than his final grade. We readded the four marking periods and showed that the final grade should have been an 89, but the report card stated a 55 failing grade. I was extremely upset
    and met with Mr Kenny for a 2 hour meeting to correct the matter. If I didn’t double check the figures my son would have gone to summer school. How many children is this happening to?

  3. if you read my previous blog
    if you read my previous blog on “teaching to the test” elsewhere you will see that the resistance to no child left behind with its requirements of teacher performance, preparing students to meet course and grade objectives, etc.. is strongly resisted by many “educators” at all levels as stifling classroom “creativity” and running schools “like a business” just to mention two. Of course there is little interest in preparing studengts for the future, be it SAT pre-college performance or simply doing better on mastering skill and knowledge levels. This would require strenuous adherence to standards, mastering course objectives, showing fewer videos, taking fewer field trips, burying junk like Heather has two mommies” for Edgar Allan Poe, burying social engineering and “diversity” for solid and proven results curricula, ending searches for new ways to present data and assistive software for simply knowing each child, h.her strengths and shortcomings, and developing appropriate lesson plans. Maybe taking an equivalent of a man-mpnth and adding to the 9 or so month work year mightmake this possible.

    Everyone seems to believe in the free pass, easy way out, and disguising less than acceptable results in school districts and New Rochelle gets an A in this area.

    Why are any of you surprised.

    warren gross

  4. Grade inflation
    Grade inflation is certainly not unique to the New Rochelle school system. It is, unfortunately, a widespread practice even among prestigious institutions. It is the reason that we have people with graduate degrees who are unable to hold down a job in private industry where actual performance is demanded. It is a pernicious practice that goes along with the “I’m OK, you’re OK” philosophy that grants an award to everybody that shows up, does not keep score and accepts trying as a substitute for performance. It is a major contributor to the fact that in fifty years the U.S. has moved from #1 in the world in science and mathematics to #23. Nor is the student’s failure to perform a critique of the teacher. Education is not soup that a talented teacher can pour into the empty heads of his/her students. Education requires the active participation of the student. The teacher can point the way but the student must climb the mountain.
    If we really seek excellence we must permit students to achieve or fail on their own merits and we must set the bar high enough so that achievement has some meaning.

    Dr. Jack Wagner

  5. Charter Schools
    What would it take to create charter schools in New Rochelle? First a middle school on the south end and then a high school?

  6. Score in the 50’s Now a Passing Grade?
    I had a discussion with school officials about this topic not long ago. At the time I was told that it was “school policy” to round up a grade of 62 or better to a 65 so the student can be said to have passed the course. When told this I asked for a copy of this policy and no one could or would produce it. Meanwhile I know of at least one student who was struggling in a class with a grade of 64, primarily due to the failures of the teacher, and when the parents sought to have the student drop the course, were told that if the student withdrew his transcript would read “withdrew failing”. That’s the danger in these sorts of “flexible” policies and very typical of the school district — they establish rules and “policies” and then enforce them at their discretion which leaves students and parents subject to the whims of petty and often vindictive administrators.

    This is not “grade inflation” but flat out cheating which benefits students who did not pass a course at the expense of students who did the work and passed the course. In the short run it may help the child who failed a course “feel better” but obviously the school district has lost sight of what the grade is supposed to measure — mastery of the subject matter. This is just another example of social promotion intended to mask the inability of the school system to educate students in its care and to artificially inflate the schools own grades on the New York State Report Card.

    The real purpose of this supposed “charity” is to allow administrators and school board members to “cite the data” which shows what a great job they are doing. That the data is lie stacked upon lie is immaterial to them so long as the facade they present to the public holds.

    At some point the public might start to ask rather obvious questions such as this.

    1. Why do students who graduate in June not get their diplomas until October?

    2. How is that the District can claim that 95%+ of students leaving the high school attend college when less than 75% graduate?

    3. Why is that only about 50% of Latino students graduate on time from the high school and yet there is not a single program at the high school specifically designed to address the needs of Latino students with a goal of their graduating on time.

    You can play “hot potato” with these kids for many years but eventually they age out of the system and the chickens come home to roost. Pretending many of these kids are passing courses when they do not and pretending they have “graduated” from high school so they can have the “experience” of marching in a graduation ceremony when they have not earned a diploma (even the largely meaningless “local” diploma many “graduates” receive) is harmful not helpful of these students.

    These despicable attempts to make board members and administrators appear to be doing their job comes at the expense of children and families who leave the New Rochelle school system with a worthless piece of paper — if that.

    1. Will their future employers be satisfied with “close enough”?
      If these future employees fail to show up to work on time, will they expect that their boss will let them slide? If they don’t get that promotion, will they blame it on their supervisors or co-workers? What about that report the boss wanted? It didn’t turn out so great, but it’s “close enough”. Will he notice that it’s late and some important things were left out? When they’re fired, will they wonder why “close enough” was always “good enough” before? Will they question how they got this far and yet can’t seem to get any further?

      We are just hurting ourselves, our children and the future of this country if we keep lowering our standards.

      1. We need to take a stand
        to make a difference..it is time that the people of our community hold accountable the responsible people. The time of ‘its who you know” should be killed once and for all. The demoting of Freiman, the doing away with the locksmith position, the paper shredders, the GPS that was installed on some workers phones just to be able to locate them all says something. WE ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE. The is much much more to be done. There ARE positive things as well as negatives, however, the negatives are far more outwaying the positives. While we all want to be proud of our communities, our schools, we have to realize that not all have the same agenda. Step back and ask yourselves whats really going to matter when we are all under the ground (or on a mantle piece if you prefer)….the children and grandchildren that we leave behind. WAKE UP PEOPLE!

      2. What is the story here?
        Do we actually know these things? Is there paperwork on any of this?

        Freiman demotion

        Locksmith positions

        GPS on phones

        And what is the deal with paper shredders, what does that mean?

        If we ARE having an impact how do we document that impact. Are there resolutions for all this?

      3. Will it be good enough
        I can assure you that it will not be “good enough”. From personal knowledge of current business conditions I can assure you that people are being discharged from high paying jobs every day because they will not show up on time, they will not do as they are told and they can not perform the tasks that their educational documentation suggests that they should.

        Dr. Jack Wagner

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