NYC Skools: 31% = Pass; 40% = Honors
My property taxes at work:
High-school students taking the Math A Regents exam this week must correctly answer fewer than one-third of the questions to pass — the lowest benchmark in at least six years — because of a revised grading scale that critics charge is too generous. Students are required to earn just 26 out of a total 84 points — or 31 percent — to reach the minimum passing grade of 55. To pass with “honors,” students only need 34 points — or around 40 percent.
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“There are somewhat more difficult questions on this exam, however, and so students need to get somewhat fewer questions right in order to pass,” said state education spokesman Tom Dunn. “Anyone who looks closely at this exam will see that it is not easy.”
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The raw score for passing has dropped 17 points since June 2003, when two-thirds of students failed the exam. State education officials eventually rescored that test and appointed a math-standards committee to analyze what went wrong.
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[M]athematicians say the benchmark for passing the Math A exam has fallen to the point that guessing could result in a pass.
I have a counterproposal: If “harder” exams should have lower passing grades, then why not test differential topology on the high school math exam? The average score will be zero, and everyone will pass.
New York is already of the verge of becoming a third-world city (not to mention a bankrupt one). And we spend more on public education than just about anywhere else in the country, with lawsuits pushing for even more.
The teachers, educrats and politicians who are complicit in scandals such as this are neither blind nor innocent.
Fifty years ago it was “separate but equal is inherently unequal.” Perhaps now we need a new campaign — “failing but equal is still failing.”
Something has to be done, and if I may steal another Brown v. Board of Ed. phrase: with all deliberate speed.
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