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Everything old is new again

1:27 PM Mon, Feb 11, 2008 |
Kent Fischer   E-mail   News tips

recycle.jpgSo if you're been reading this blog for more than a couple of days, you're aware that a few Dallas ISD teachers have come forward recently to allege that their principals have pressured/forced/threatened them into changing grades for athletes.

The coverage prompted a long-ago DISD teacher to call our attention to a 25-year-old D Magazine article in which she was quoted. Click the jump to see how, like John McCain and those new Scooby Doo's, everything old eventually is new again.

(Normally, we'd link to the whole article, but it's so old that it exists only on microfiche.)

Why Can't Teachers Teach?
By Ruth Miller Fitzgibbons
D Magazine, August 1983

... But even the most dedicated among the DISD ranks are embittered over what they describe as bureaucratic harassment and bungling. Theirs is a litany of protests: unfair practices, undue pressure, unnecessary paper work, incompetent supervision.

To illustrate that point, [former teacher Linda] Mitchell details a story of a football player in her senior Fundamentals of Math class. When she failed him for the first six weeks of the year, she was summoned to a meeting with the student, his parents, the principal, the dean of instruction and the football coach.

"I explained that I devised a simple test of minimum competency that all my kids had to be able to pass," Mitchell says. "For the first six weeks, it was, 'Know your addition facts up to nine plus nine," plus two other things that any fifth-grader should know. Remember - this is a senior in high school. He didn't pass, so I gave him an F. The second six weeks, he failed because he couldn't multiply up to nine times nine. At the end of the year, I was accused by the dean of instruction of hindering the boy's future by standing in the way of his graduation. He had never had a passing mark in math. They insisted that I devise a special pass-fail exam. He failed. And they graduated him anyway."


And then, a few graphs later, was this:

"Every fall, there's a new gimmick," Mitchell says. "I guess this year it will be merit pay."

[Me thinking outloud: I wonder if that year's merit pay was anything like this year's merit pay?]



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