Bringing the Best and Brightest into the Classroom

Dan Lips / April 30, 2009

Derrell Bradford of Excellent Education for Everyone highlights a disturbing finding from the New Jersey Department of Education at NJ.com—a majority of NJ students who failed the high school exit exam (described by state education commission as “middle school level”) had apparently taken and passed courses in Geometry, Algebra I and II, and Biology. This is evidence of rampant social promotion:

We have argued that New Jersey has two education systems. One you attend if you are white and live in an affluent suburb, and one you attend if you are poor, minority, and live in a city. The DOE report frames this differently. There is one system you attend where the classes are what they say they are, the teachers understand the subject, and students actually pass the classes. And there is one–typified by urban high schools that abuse the [Special Review Assessment]–where the name of a course is just “a name.” (more…)