NEW YORK STATE — The New York State Education Department announced today that it is cancelling the January 2021 Regents Examination due to the coronavirus. The exam will not count towards students' diplomas.
The Regents Exams are administered three times a year, in January, June and August, and are the final exams that middle and high school students take in various subjects. Passing Regents exams is required to receive a high school diploma in New York state.
All of the tests scheduled for January have been canceled, the Education Department said. No decision has yet been made about the June or August exams.
The Regents will meet in December to finalize changes in diploma requirements.
Class grades matter, particularlyif there are no Regents exams in high schools. The UFT Contract says teacher grades are to be respected. Let the principal change them if the school is a diploma factory. He/she must notify you of the reason for the change in writing. It is in Article 8D of the Contract.
Stand up for your professionalism. However, please make your standards reasonable.
So again a student can get a 90 in English who can barely read or write and there is no standard test to show the reality.
ReplyDeleteWhat is reasonable?
ReplyDeleteThe kids aren't writing their master's thesis. Expect work that is around grade level. However, if a student is misplaced in a class who may have missed two or three years of education for whatever reason in another country, there should be some discretion.
ReplyDeleteIf the kid does not show up, then he/she didn't do the class assignments given each day. Hence if that is a big part of the grading criteria, they really should not have much chance of passing.
ReplyDeleteIf a school has too easy grading standards, then use Article 24 and fight it through professional conciliation. I wrote a posting about how to do it. Some teachers would rather complain than stand up for their professionalism, sadly.
James, with all due respect, and I know your spouse in an active teacher and you have children in NYC public schools, you seem out of touch with the reality teachers are currently dealing with in the pandemic classroom. First, you say a kid can't pass if he doesn't show up or do any work, but this isn't true and hasn't been true since last Spring. Did you forget that no student can fail a class? No, of course you didn't because your blog covered this change to grading policy. We can't put a failing mark on a progress report or transcript. We can give the equivalent of an incomplete. Doing so only loads more trouble and work on the teacher who is up to her eyebrows in work, working, it seems, around the clock, doing non-teacher duties like data entry and solving computer problems and guidance work and whatever else the Admins can pile on and we have little or no recourse as our Chapters are not functioning, I mean who wants call a Chapter meeting and face the teachers, and so only the company union chapters call meetings to do the bidding of Admins and stuff their own pockets with per session and grab perquisites. It's a shit-show all round. Do you have any idea what it's like to teach on a Zoom? To work in the Matrix of machines and coordinated software systems that have turned the classroom into an infinite cyber wasteland where kids and parents expect us to provide services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Like Netflix you can click an APP on your phone, computer, tablet, anywhere, anytime, see your child's progress. Anyone can send a teacher an email and everyone does. Imagine a class where, when you respond to one student question no one else listens and puts their hand down, where you can't say, please put down your hands until I have finished providing instruction and if you still have questions I will take them up one at a time, where hundreds of students and parents and others can flood your various email boxes with correspondences, daily. It is madness. Looking at boxes on a screen with memes and names and no face, no body, No chance to use that old proximity teaching strategy, just move about the room and use your body and voice to establish order and respect. NO, this is not teaching, this is Kafka's dung-beetle, his legs flailing at the keyboard, at the screen, and all the while all poor Gregor can think of is how he is going to get to work and keep the bosses off his back.
ReplyDeleteI know my wife. She isn't passing no shows. I see my two kids live classes each day. They are learning. I also work with student teachers. Remote learning can work. It is not the same as in-person but I see it work each day
ReplyDeleteWell, your wife may not be passing no shows but she isn't failing them either. She can't.
ReplyDeleteAnd, let me ask her, or anyone else who has refused to give a passing grade to a student who failed a class what happens? I'll tell you, more work for the teacher. More and more work and more pressure from Admins to dot give NX or any other mark but pass. Admins are threatening excessing if we don't pass students because students will need to go to summer school and drain depleted budgets of money that would retain teachers.
Remote teaching is an abject failure. My population sample is much larger than a spouse, some student teachers and a couple-few kids. Again, you seem out of touch with what we are facing daily and how bad it is. It is a failure. I can't even fit all the names on a screen grid, can't connect with so many faceless names.
Sure, some kids, nice kids, children of teachers maybe, turn on their cameras, though this is obviously riddled with risks; a student does something lewd or someone else in the household does or the child feels belittled by the others who see her poverty etc.
It doesn't work We are spending countless hours typing. Most of us are poor at typing so it often takes hours to edit and fix things up, clear out the interference in our grammar from our native tongues to make sure we are not making errors we would not make speaking (we have accents not grammar mistakes in speech) to kids in a classroom.
We spend hours entering data. Tailoring lessons to the new multimedium platforms. Trying to build the airplane as we fly it is not quite the metaphor, it's more learning how various systems tangle and mangle things and how to unravel what gets brird-nested. Teachers are spending countless hours diagnosing problems with machines and systems.
And we have no support from our Union that has tossed every protection we had out. We are having our wages cut and we are given more work to do.
Randi is pro tweeting biden all night, every minute...I wish she would focus this closely on students graduating high school unable to write a sentence.
ReplyDeleteI copied the policy on the blog. I get the NX is an incomplete but it is not a passing grade. Tell the administrator to change the grade. Put the blood on their hands. I understand learning the remote way is difficult and in some cases next to impossible but I see it succeed each day in elementary, middle and high school settings.
ReplyDeleteOur standards are too low. PERIOD.
ReplyDeleteThat's why people work from bed and show videos. Why bother?
ReplyDeleteIf the kid does the work whether they come or not they pass. James I agree with Shelley I love your blog and you do a service to teachers but you are out of touch on the issue of grading. The admins set up the grading policy where it is virtually impossible to fail the kid, and they have state and city regs backing the, up. As Shelley pointed out, we can’t give a failing score and if we give an NX it only causes more work for us. Didn’t stop me I gave half my kids NX last semester. But if the kid does the work whether they come to class or not they have to pass. The work is all on google classroom. They can do it without us. (Some of the more independent kids at least). Please don’t tell me about standards. They are fine but if a student does the work at a satisfactory level you have to pass them. It’s that simple.
ReplyDeleteYou can turn off accepting grades or mark it late. On the other hand, if the kids are doing work, they at least are learning something and it is a pandemic. My wife is telling me she still has leeway. Teachers have to exert their rights or nothing will change.
DeleteRandi is looking for a job in the Biden administration. She wants the Secretary of Education position. Randi has always promotes Randi. Randi always is about her own selfish concerns.
ReplyDeleteAny kind of teaching/learning works when you have students and their parents committed to their education. Education will never improve until we acknowledge that for the most part being uneducated is voluntary. You know why teachers get nowhere? Because the majority of teachers are turned off by the fringe left who have a stranglehold on the dialog. We don’t buy into the sjw warrior bs. Not all illiterate kids are victims because their illiteracy is self inflicted. We’re so busy worrying about bullshit issues that the good, hardworking kids who are struggling take a backseat to the losers who don’t want to learn. Those good kids are the only victims.
ReplyDeleteBye bye Betsy DeVos our sec of education who did such a stellar job promoting the charters and the state of Michigan where she just about screwed up their education system. At least Betsy lasted longer than some others like Kathy Black - I am sure everyone remembers her tenure in the nyc schools....bye betsy i will look for your yacht on the ocean which probably will be right behind trumps.
ReplyDeleteWhy not bye uft or bye mulgrew? You care about the wrong things.
ReplyDeleteSo if they get a 90 on every assignment and no show. 0 plus 90 is 90 divided by 2 is 45. Also, I found a work around to posted work, you post a blank assignment in Google and tell the students in class what the assignment is, that way, those absent can't do it. I am not failing due to attendance, it 8s because they are missing the important discussion and interaction. This is as per my grading policy.alao, I repeated sent messages every which way informing students that they cant just do the work, they must attend the live instruction. As previously stated, mayor and chancellor demanded every student be in front of a live teacher daily. I am listening to my bosses. If you allow students to pass without ever showing up, you aren't a very good teacher. I cant wait to see those students no show work and expect to get paid.
ReplyDeleteOK, so let the chancellor simply come out and say no shows can pass with 0% attendance. Then I will listen to my boss. I email him every single day about attendance, he refuses to respond. I dont give a damn what Google classroom says. I am the teacher. I am responsible for grades. I gave fair warning on my class guideline. I sent emails and messages and relayed the message every which way. You need to teach students responsibility more than you need to teach them math and science. Of course, students are getting 88 in English without being able to write a sentence. Why worry?
ReplyDeleteYes bye bye Devos and on to the next Arne Duncan or John King. Same shit, different political parties.
ReplyDeleteI emailed my AP about this specific issue. Can students no show and pass. Didnt even respond. Doesn't want to incriminate himself. There is your answer. Fail students who would be able to get away with it at a job. That is called teaching.
ReplyDeleteWe don't know who the Secretary of Education will be. Let's see what happens before we scream about another Arne Duncan.
ReplyDeleteI told students I dont accept late work. Late work is not graded, I put in 0. No-shows, I dont even bother to grade the work.
ReplyDeleteThe danger of passing a lot of students who are remote is it's going to give the illusion that remote learning is working for a lot of kids. This could put jobs in jeopardy. You have to think about the long term consequences.
ReplyDeletegoodbye leftist blog. i just cant watch this train wreck anymore.
ReplyDeleteforgive them father, for they know not what they do.
i just cant forgive.
may you get what you deserve.
unlike the progresso-fascist elite, im really leaving.
10:12, Is that a promise? If so, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
ReplyDeleteI sat there everyday for 2 months doing live instruction. For what? To pass everybody? To get no responses? To pass no shows? To look at blank boxes? Get the fuck outta here. I'm showing vids. Make some rules, set some standards, then I will go back to "teaching."
ReplyDeleteYou set the standards 10:45.You need to grow a set.
ReplyDeletelol 9:03. You are going to post a blame assignment for a student to make up. You all really make me laugh. As if you are gonna hold the line against the students irresponsibility. No you aren’t. They will get passed by someone else. Remote is coming and increasing whether you like it or not. And a 90 average on classwork does not equal a 45 overall if the students also complete the assessments. So they show up and their name is there and they don’t say anything and then they play video games while you teach. Is that much better? You can’t make anyone do anything. You are putting a finger in one hole of an huge dam breaking.
ReplyDelete10:52, Same comment as to 10:45. Grow a set.
ReplyDeleteI did set the standards. Students didn't show up or take part. They fail. What is the question? They will get passed by doneone else is the fault if someone else. I did grow a set by sticking to my grading policy.
ReplyDeleteSo mastery is now students looking up answers on the internet and copying and pasting?
ReplyDeleteNo mastery is copying another student's work who did well on the assignment. At another school one of the APs told her department that if the student clicks on attendance that that student should be given 65 because he/she is doing something.
ReplyDeleteI am asking for both attendance and the work. Just work is insufficient.
ReplyDeleteThen you are a sucker for obeying.
ReplyDeleteYou record a lesson and post it or post a lesson for students or meet with them on Zoom or some other live instruction platform or do some combination of these. Or, you go to a building, in some cases every day, in others a day here or there, and use the same methods described above only you also have students in classrooms on computers or, in some cases you meet with students in classrooms and do more traditional instruction because your school is special in some way, your kids have to have in-person instruction. This is basically what's going one across the system of schools.
ReplyDeleteStudents and teachers report their own attendance, of course, the systems of connection also record who is in the class or meeting, though of course there is no way of knowing if people, students or teachers are actually there or have merely signed in, connected and left. One could, call on students or teachers to check, but since they are in their opwn homes they have hundreds of reasonable reasons and/or excuses for not answering or responding.
You don't know what your attendance is for once taken, and even if taken throughout the class period or meeting period, it can change and you can't know for certain if anyone is there, unless you are looking into a camera and see someone on the other end looking back at you. Of course no one is obligated to do this.
Grade policy are set and Admins are using the tools or teachers are, though not this teacher, to fix the grading policy and set entered grades into a formula that is shared with systems that Admins ands parents have easy access to and that Admins can lock and change as they see fit and teachers have no recourse. The notion that an Admin is going to request a grade change and explain it in writing is foolish nonsense. It won't and doesn't happen under the current dispensation made possible by the Union.
We are so fucked. Stuck tp chairs looking at screens and entering data and responding to emails and Invites to meetings. This is not teaching.
There is little educating going on even by the most dedicated professionals. Distance learning is not good for children. It is a death knell for our trade.
We are training students to swim in the shallows, to turn to Google and the Internet rather than something deep and long.
see here---->
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127370598
"I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more."
Tell google classroom to allow us to stop accepting assignments after due dates.
ReplyDeleteOk, mandate cameras on...Oh, we can't. Just like we can't even mandate students go to class. But face to face live instruction is the best, says the mayor and chancellor. So what must students do to fail?
ReplyDeleteI have a student who has a baby. She got pregnant as a teen, not me. She can never come to class, cant complete the work either...So she automatically passes and I should work with her. LOL. I guess that will be her excuse forever, right? When she doesn't go to her job, they will just pay her, right? Or she will just get free welfare and free medicaid?
ReplyDeleteA girl emails me with "why did I get NX, I was in your class everyday and I did most of the assignments" What is everyday and most? She had 50% attendance and did 4 of 9 assignments with an assignment average of 27%. Good enough for the DOE. Oh, and she is 19 with 19 credits.
ReplyDeleteSmart, the uft must be very helpful for them...Success Academy, NYC’s largest charter network, to stay remote through March 2021
ReplyDeleteand uft dropped another bomb on a friday night...
ReplyDeleteThe DOE has mandated educators to complete trauma-informed professional development. The deadline to complete the workshop is Dec. 31, and staff will earn CTLE hours for participation. 1/2
https://trepcourses.thinkific.com/courses/trep-nyc-doe-understanding-trauma-and-trauma-responsive-educational-practices
Notice no rioting. How interesting.
ReplyDeleteThe candidate who has four million more votes is going to win. What a novel concept.
ReplyDeleteOnly dems riot and loot, was the point.
ReplyDeleteNo evidence of fraud?
An election-software glitch in Michigan's Antrim County that had incorrectly directed Democratic votes to presidential candidate Joe Biden was fixed Friday, putting thousands of votes correctly into President Trump's totals.
The software had reportedly caused a significant number of votes to be allotted to Biden in a county that has for years been reliably red. In the presumed final count, Biden had originally led in the county by roughly 3,000 votes. Revised totals show that Trump won the county by around 2,500.
Addressing the alleged software glitch, Michigan GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox said Friday during a press conference that "47 counties [in Michigan] use this same software in the same capacity."
Fixed computer glitch turns losing Republican into a winner in Oakland County
Bill Laitner
Detroit Free Press
A computer error led election officials in Oakland County to hand an upset victory Wednesday to a Democrat, only to switch the win back to an incumbent Republican a day later.
Oakland County Commissioner Adam Kochenderfer, R-Rochester Hills (Photo: Oakland County(
In Oakland County’s 15th county commission District -- representing Rochester and Rochester Hills -- the initial count gave a 104-vote margin to the Democrat, Melanie Hartman, amounting to a razor-thin majority of 50.08%.
That stunned the incumbent, Adam Kochenderfer, giving him a sure sense that he’d lost in a district long deemed a Republican stronghold.
“I thought that was that,” Kochenderfer said. “Those were the results, and I said I would not seek a recount.”
But what a difference a day makes – in weather, love, and the 15th District election for Oakland County commissioner. On Thursday, Kochenderfer was stunned again, this time by a call from Oakland County’s director of elections, flipping the outcome to him.
I love when teachers say, I passed him because he's a Senior.
ReplyDeleteDon't state regulations say 90% attendance?
ReplyDeletehttps://nypost.com/2020/11/06/suny-to-transition-to-remote-learning-after-thanksgiving-break/
ReplyDelete“SUNY is also going to cancel the return from the Thanksgiving break and do remote learning for the rest of the semester,” the Democratic governor told reporters during a conference call.
Success Academy, NYC’s largest charter network, to stay remote through March 2021
ReplyDeletehttps://ny.chalkbeat.org/2020/11/6/21553396/success-academy-remote
I got it. If a student has a baby or they are due to graduate or they don't show up they pass. Right?
ReplyDeleteI have another...I was in Georgia so I couldnt attend class or do the work...Ok, you fail. Hard luck stories, even if true, dont get you free grades.
ReplyDeleteI wish the doe made ALL educators take a psychological exam. It's not perfect but it sure can help weeding out folks.
ReplyDeleteIf you ask them to do anything, they refuse. They expect everything handed to them. then they wonder 10 years later why they are forever at minimum wage. The bar is on the floor and they need it lowered further.
ReplyDeleteThe sham of remote teaching and learning is going to have consequences for decades. Is it just NYC that has no standards?
ReplyDeleteA nyc hs diploma doesn’t mean a damn thing. Give it to all. Hell give them all degrees from Columbia or NYU too. Who cares. They’ll never pass an interview or hold the job even if they manage to con their way through interview. The free market will reject them in the end. Even if AOC took control and forced nyc businesses to hire them, the business would soon be out of business. In the end capitalism still wins.
ReplyDeleteIts almost like this is a 100 year pandemic and no one is prepared for it. Everything is upside down. Everyone needs to chill out and soon we will be back in the school with a full population complaining about other things...be thankful for something this year.
ReplyDelete6:39 nomstate standard I know of says 90% attendance. If it does it is in direct contradiction of their other mandate which says lack of attendance can’t be held against a student when determining grade. Oh there I go again using facts. I forgot you like to make up your own.
ReplyDelete647,
ReplyDeleteStandards in education? That’s adorable.
How many school days can you miss in New York State?
ReplyDeleteThe department called this a "hidden educational crisis." Definitions of chronically absent vary. In New York, the State Education Department (SED) defines chronic absenteeism as missing 10 percent of school days - or 18 days or more per year in a 180-day school year.
90 percent attendance sounds good but it's not like 90 percent on an exam or in a class. 90 percent attendance means you have one absence roughly every two weeks or two per month. What job is going to tolerate that?
ReplyDelete2PM, Of course, it shouldnt be good enough. But even at 90%, I have about 0 students who would pass based on that. i cant even get them to 65% attendance. That is how pathetic it has become.
ReplyDelete