As a New York City public high-school teacher, I\u2019m all too aware that our grading standards have been crumbling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But even I was stunned when I heard of a student at a friend\u2019s school who received credit for all his classes despite failing to show up for an entire semester \u2014 with an English credit, for example, awarded based merely on poems he\u2019d written at home.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an extreme example, but hardly an isolated one.<\/p>\n
Our schools have been corrupted by lenient policies ostensibly intended to make grading more \u201cequitable,\u201d but are in truth a means of artificially boosting graduation rates<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kamar Samuels, Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s new schools chancellor<\/a>, has made vague promises to bring \u201crigor\u201d back to the city\u2019s education system.<\/p>\n If that\u2019s true, he must undo the attendance and grading mess<\/a> his predecessors have left him.<\/p>\n Ever since the COVID pandemic, the Department of Education has essentially made attendance optional<\/a>, by forbidding teachers from factoring it into students\u2019 grades.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a policy that somehow remained after students returned to the classroom, even though it no longer made sense.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, many schools have eliminated zeros and imposed an artificial minimum grade \u2014 usually 55% \u2014 for all assignments and assessments.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some have even eliminated late penalties, allowing work to be turned in months after the due date for full credit.<\/p>\n Taken alone, each policy is damaging.<\/p>\n Combined, they are disastrous.\u00a0<\/p>\n Students now can skip months of class and still pass with a minimum of work, especially if they rely on artificial intelligence to complete missed assignments (as many, many do).\u00a0<\/p>\n And with no minimum attendance requirement, teachers lack an important check on administrative pressure to inflate passing rates.<\/p>\n Class-cutting has exploded under these perverse incentives, as students pick and choose which classes they feel like attending.<\/p>\n But you\u2019ll have to take my word for it: The DOE-released data shows only the percentage of students present during each school\u2019s daily \u201cattendance\u201d period.<\/p>\n We simply don\u2019t know how often they attend their actual classes.<\/p>\n Just this week I heard from a student I\u2019d never met before, a senior on my roster since the semester began in January, inquiring about doing \u201cmakeup\u201d work so she could pass.\u00a0<\/p>\n She has an official attendance rate over 90% \u2014 so she\u2019s in the building almost every day \u2014 but never felt the need to show up in my classroom.<\/p>\n To emphasize its dismissiveness about class attendance, the DOE has removed the comments \u201cExcessively Absent\u201d and \u201cExcessively Late\u201d from the report-card options available to teachers, and eliminated the PupilPath program that once let parents track their kids\u2019 attendance for themselves<\/a>.<\/p>\n If Samuels is serious about rigor, he needs to turn this around \u2014 and fast.<\/p>\n Attendance must return as a component in grading.\u00a0<\/p>\n Schools need to stop giving near-passing grades for missed assignments, and ban end-of-semester \u201cmakeup\u201d packets for students we barely see.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Samuels should also add transparency:\u00a0The public deserves to know how many classes students are cutting at each school, and how many kids receive credit for classes they hardly attend.<\/p>\n Stuck in an upside-down world, teachers are deeply frustrated by the lack of public discussion of the policies I\u2019ve described.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s cause for optimism.<\/p>\n After years of ignoring teachers\u2019 complaints about cell phones in the classroom, the public demanded action when noted psychologist Jonathan Haidt publicized the many ways electronic devices harm young people.\u00a0<\/p>\n Soon schools around the country, including here in New York, were enacting phone bans.<\/p>\n We may be nearing a similar breakthrough regarding performance expectations in our high schools.<\/p>\n Witness New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof\u2019s February item blaming \u201cequitable grading\u201d policies as a reason that blue states have fallen behind in public education.\u00a0<\/p>\n