Joanne Jacobs:

Shane Trotter was an eager beaver when he began teaching high school 10 years ago. He was working in what was considered the best school in a “destination district.” But his students were unprepared to take notes or write short responses on tests, he writes in Quillette.

I’d spend entire classes explaining what I wanted to see in the short answer responses. We’d practice writing the “who, what, where, when, and why this concept is important.” But little changed.

. . . Over half of my students would have failed if I gave them the grade they earned. But the unwritten, yet well-communicated, rule was that teachers should never fail a student if it could be helped. The onus was on the teacher to hound students for late assignments and find a way to bump them to a C.

Students had no incentive to work hard because they knew they’d pass, Trotter writes. “In most on-level classes, any student can get a B without the inconvenience of learning anything.”

Under pressure, he “eliminated homework, allowed test retakes, gave fill-in-the-blank notes, graded essays at a 5th grade level, gave test reviews that were basically the test, and intentionally made tests easy,” he writes. “Students might have learned more if they’d been allowed to fail.”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?