...Hence the bizarre results Robert Weissberg reports from New York City’s 2007 school-grading program, which operated on just these hare-brained principles.Franklin D. Roosevelt High School scored an “A” though it graduated a mere 50.4 percent of its students. The South Bronx Academy for Applied Media is a museum-quality nightmare — half the faculty quits every year; crime and violence, including attacks on teachers, are commonplace; and New York State has classified the school as “persistently dangerous,” one of 52 in the state. Classrooms often lacked books, and a school focusing on the media had no website. Nevertheless it, too, got an “A.” Meanwhile, Bard College’s Early College High School received a “C” and was “under review” for possible closing. This occurred in spite of a truly outstanding academic record — students pass the tough State Regents Examinations by their sophomore year (a feat beyond most city seniors) and after four years those with diplomas have earned two years of college credit.
That extract, by the way, is from Chapter 7 of Bad Students, Not Bad Schools, chapter title: “Business-like Solutions to Academic Insufficiency.” The chapter shows, to devastating effect, that the brisk, businessy proposals of self-proclaimed “realists” like New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and the clueless Jeb Bush are just as stupid, vaporous, corruptible, and doomed to failure as the most rococo of the “oppression” theories promoted by the far Left . . . when they are not actually the same theories dressed up in ill-fitting suits and ties....
By all means, don't miss John Derbyshire's NRO review of Robert Weissberg's disturbing new book, Bad Students, Not Bad Schools. It's today's must-read.
