Many years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that students have First Amendment rights.
In 1969, in a decision called Tinker V. Des Moines Community School District, the High Court voted 7-2 that the school could not prevent students from wearing black armbands to protest the war in Vietnam.
Hillsborough County, Florida, never heard of that decision. At the high school graduation ceremonies, the principal of a high school cut off the salutatorian mid-speech and withheld his diploma. This was not a response to anything he said, but apparently retaliation against him for posting a YouTube video criticizing the condition of the boys’ bathrooms. Even the local media noticed.
Teachers responded by saying that they too had experienced the same top-down, heavy-handed approach. “All across the country, teachers are afraid to speak up. No where is that more true than in Hillsborough county, the countries 8th largest district. With 15,000 teachers, Hillsborough is home to the Gates Foundation’s EET teacher evaluation system. This system may look good on paper, but it has been overwhelmingly unpopular with teachers, More than anything, it has established a culture of fear that has effectively silenced teacher expression.”
Apparently, when Bill and Melinda Gates show up to check on their investment, they get smiles and adulation from the teachers at Potemkin Village High. But when they leave, business as usual means “shut up. “
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Really bad decisions by the principal.
I do believe these parents need a good lawyer- if they don’t have one already.
Business as usual = “Shut up” prevails.
I realize this isn’t the point of this story, but one thing jumped out at me: “Shaw, who graduated with a 7.31 grade point average, was forced to sit down and did not receive his diploma at the ceremony like the other graduates.”
A 7.31 grade point average? Can we stop with this nonsense? I don’t see resumes with high school GPAs listed, but if I did, and I saw a resume that listed a 4.0 GPA, I would be impressed. If I saw a 7.31 GPA, I’d toss the thing in the trash.
Agreed. Grade inflation is nonsense. It is also very difficult for teachers to resist individually.
FLERP,
I don’t know what the scale is. The boy may have had a 7.31 on a scale of 8. Best to get the information before judging.
A 7.31 grade point average? It is on a 4.0 scale. In Hillsborough County, students get .002 added for every honors class and .004 added for every AP class to inflate the GPA… Students also take on-line classes to boost their scores… Also Remember, the superintendent gets $ bonuses to supplement her $260,000+ salary for every student that registers and tests for AP with higher bonuses for minorities… It is twisted and sick…
DJ: In my day [cranky old man voice] you didn’t take honors classes for a GPA bump. You took them because you could. And thank God. If there had been this obsession with jacking up GPAs to the moon, I might not have taken metal shop or auto mechanics.
*superintendent bonus is for registration, … not passing! 🙂
I assume it’s one of these “weighted” averages that some schools seem to calculate nowadays in addition to the gold old 4-point scale GPA. Extra points for more difficult classes. A trend probably prompted by students’ insatiable desire to make their college applications look more impressive than the next applicant’s. Barf.
While I know there are well publicized attempts to game the system, it is wrong to assume that this student gamed the system to obtain these grades. I would guess than in far more situations than not, students who have high grade point averages have worked very hard for them. While it may not always be the reality, weighted grades are given for more demanding classes. Why shouldn’t a student get recognition for carrying a heavier load than average and doing well? Access to equal educational opportunities must also be balanced with the needs of the student. Why should I be forced into a class where the pace is too fast for me when there are other options that allow me to learn at my own pace?
That being said, this discussion is way off the blog topic. The actions of the administration cannot be defended. An attempt at public humiliation such as this incident, has no place in education. In the end, the actions of the administration only highlight their incompetence.
The reason for adding GPA points for honors and AP classes is that the classes are supposed to be harder, making the possibility of a lower grade more likely. Before they started adding boost points, a lot of kids avoided the harder classes and just took whatever they could sail through high school with. Personally, I’d rather my kid got a B or even a C in a harder class than an A in an easy class, so I’m fine with adding GPA points to encourage kids to try out the harder classes. If this young man has a 7.32 GPA, it means he took the most rigorous classes his school offered and got As in all of them – I find that impressive.
Too late, it’s in the trash already.
I agree Dienne! He obviously deserved the honor of valedictorian!
FLERP! – Your loss.
Agreed. All over the country significant percentages of hs grads are having to take remedial courses on entering colleges/universities. Many reasons for this, but part of the reason is too many students not taking challenging classes while in high school.
My state computes class standing and GPA based on straight 4.0 scale. A large proportion of high school valedictorians have not taken enough academic classes to qualify for admission to any of our state universities.
GPA in my state does not say a lot about academic preparation.
Is there a publicly available report stating that “a large proportion of valedictorians do not qualify…”
This is just based on the observations of graduation programs. It is the practice of the local high school to indicate when a graduate has fulfilled the minimum requirements for admission to a state university. They are four years of English, three of math, three in the social sciences. There are some distribution requirements within each of these categories.
A valedictorian can graduate without meeting those requirements? Mind sharing what high school?
The state requires only two years of math at any high school level while the college prep program requires a 3 with one that has algebra II as a prerequisite. The state only requires 2 science classes while the college prep curriculum requires 3 and one of the 3 must be chemistry or physics.
Many students are scrunched up at the GPA ceiling. A 3.85 puts a student out of the top 10% of the class.
All grades, grading systems and GPA schemes suffer the same problems as Wilson points out in his seminal study. Be that as it may grades have been and always will be a “game” to be played by all, students out of being forced and teachers out of being forced, although there are plenty who think that they can “grade” a student.
At the beginning of the year when I am going over the preliminaries I let the students know that grades are falsehoods, lies and bullshit, although the term I use in this rural district is bovine excrement, gets a good laugh out of them and catches their attention. All year I try to focus their attention on learning Spanish and not worrying about a “grade”. For “If you learn it, the grades will come”. (apologies to Field of Dreams).
Duane,
Your last quote surprises me. Given your position on evaluating learning, why would you say if you learn the grades will come? Rant they just as likely to not come even if you have learned it or come even if you have not learned it?
On a slightly higher (mixed blessing) note, the Florida Legislature and Governor have seen fit to fix a huge, gaping flaw in the ALEC/Jeb Bush written teacher evaluation law after the state was widely ridiculed and derided over the ridiculous tenets of the law:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/06/16/new-florida-law-teachers-cant-be-evaluated-on-students-they-dont-have/
Valerie Straus reported Sunday in the Washington Post that the state decided to fix the part of the law that required teachers (like me) to be evaluated on the test scores of students they had never taught and may have never met for the last 2 years.
Like New York City’s new teacher evaluation program, in Florida you can receive “highly effective” or “effective” ratings on the entire eval but if the school’s average test scores are low you are rated “ineffective” overall and face firing and loss of your teaching certificate after 2 consecutive “ineffective” ratings.
Each of Florida’s 67 counties had to come up with their own way to implement and score the evaluation plan so there is no real standardization at all nor is their consistency and fairness, with the exception of test scores really being 100% of the evaluation.
The VAM formula chosen by the state of Florida is so confusing and scattered that the first year’s evaluations weren’t even released to the teachers until the following year in most districts. My own district gave us 2 sets of evaluations — their own and the state’s because they weren’t sure which was more accurate or acceptable. We haven’t received this year’s evaluations yet; I don’t know if we’ll receive them around Halloween again or when school resumes in August. Know one seems to know.
The law doesn’t address what to do about the deeply flawed evaluations of the last 2 years, however, so the NEA/FEA lawsuit brought by 7 teachers against the state DOE continues.
The bad news is that the state will simply work that much harder and faster to invent untried, unscientific, and unmanageable testing regimes for all the teachers who don’t teach math, reading, writing, or science in grades 3 -12 (the current FCAT 2.0 test’s purview).
I dread seeing what they come up with in haste and without piloting to test Kindergarteners, 1st and 2nd graders, music/art/PE classes, etc. It is destined to be outrageously expensive, be riddled with problems and inaccuracies, and it will fail.
It is also guaranteed that the new system will be punitive and punishing to the teachers who dared object to the hair-brained eval scheme in the first place. That’s how the legislature and Jeb Bush “No Longer Governor But Running for President, So Still In Control” roll down here in the Sunshine State. Jeb has never forgiven the FEA for twice (once, and then again when he and the legislature did an end-run to ignore the law, which was slapped down by the Florida Supreme Court) defeating him on the state’s class size amendment by having voters approve it twice and having it written into the state constitution. He vowed revenge and boy, is he getting it. In spades.
This is the way this county works… Administration is horrible. It starts with the barriers to entry. In the 8th largest district in America, with 15,000 teachers, you must have an MA in educational leadership to apply. So many self-serving clowns chasing money apply. Nepotism is everywhere. There are many admin. that have no classroom experience! Most have clown degrees from for profit universities! And man oh man, they stick together. In the old days, great teachers moved into admin. Not anymore! This single issue is someone’s Pulitzer Prize if they would write it! Ahhh, but the county has an army of people whose sole job is to control the media! AHHHHHHHHHHH!
“Apparently, when Bill and Melinda Gates show up to check on their investment, they get smiles and adulation from the teachers at Potemkin Village High. But when they leave, business as usual means ‘shut up.’“
A powerful statement. It reminds me of the scene in _Antigone_ in which Haemon tells his father, King Creon, “Everyone will tell you only what you like to hear.”
Now, I realize I just quoted fiction, a “non-Common Core” practice, but it readily came to mind. You must forgive me. I have been teaching literature for most of the last decade.
Next time I promise to be better versed in Common Core test administration manuals. Perhaps then I might draw a more reformey connection.
Ha 🙂
Literature? Didn’t you get the memo from Mr. Coleman?
We’re sorry, but that’s a check in the Ineffective box..
As they used to say in the mob (now that racketeering has moved into the edu-sphere), it’s nothing personal; it’s just business.
Well stated. I am a math teacher and the story that comes to mind is one from my childhood: “The Emporer’s New Clothes”.
It reminds me of when some authoritarian dictator comes to visit. Everyone is on edge, yet, puts on a dog and pony show with all smiles. Afterward, people fear for their jobs. This is an awful time to be a teacher, especially in Hillsborough. I feel for the teachers at Hillsborough. Charter schools often have a “culture of fear”. I once sat through a pre-test rally and felt like I’d witnessed a Fidel Castro rally celebrating our glorious leader. Bizarre.
Ah, pre-test rallies. What a wonderful waste of instructional time! Can’t get much better in the “reasons to interrupt instructional time”.
DeeDee & Duane Swacker: ever notice how so many of the cagebusting charterites/privatizers are on the extremely conservative side of the political spectrum—and seem to have forgotten that not long ago the term “Potemkin Village” sent them into hysterical fits of laughter and derision?
Perhaps it was not aversion, but envy, of Stalinist deceits that moved them?
Just a thought for the day from one most Krazy TA.
🙂
Now now Krazy TA, their aversion and revulsion were only towards “those” Potemkin Villages, ours had better be in order for the proper dog and pony shows at all times. We live in their Potemkin Villages. I am evicting myself and I’d like to light the storefront on fire on my way out.
Old Teacher: in the best interests of teacher-aide relationships everywhere, I must caution you that you seem to have misunderstood the observation by Yeats that
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
I don’t think he meant the kerosene and matches kind. It would be kind of weird and unsettling seeing students’ heads, er, literally on fire.
😦
See what happens when you immerse yourself to the exclusion of everything else in the all breadth/no depth of the Common Bore Misstated Standards?
Perhaps it will be clearer when you see what Yeats riffed off on:
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” [Plutarch]
But hey, if you’ve got a moment, I hear that a hoop and a holler down the road from Potemkin Village is a Centre of Student Compliance in Rheeville that excels in finger wagging $tudent $ucce$$.
Care to take a look? I’m sure if we visit everyone will act just like they do when there’s no outsiders present. At least, that’s what Bill tells me.
And I know—to a 98% certainty of satisfactory—that he would never exaggerate or lie.
🙂
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but I need to point out that quoting Yeats as saying “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire” is a misattribution. Nowhere in the written words or recorded speech of the great poet will you find this sentence (I challenge you to prove otherwise). It’s a myth that’s gained currency on the internet, but has no foundation in reality. Don’t perpetuate it.
Sounds like this principal need a little “attitude adjustment”.