Feb 12, 2018 12:00:00 AM
by Erika Sanzi
Since publishing our initial investigation, we have found this story playing out in schools across the country. We have heard from teachers in Vermont, West Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, South Carolina, Massachusetts, New York, Wyoming, Ohio and Pennsylvania. It’s clear that schools everywhere are promoting and graduating underprepared and chronically absent students by pressuring teachers and using shortcuts.This should be a clarion call to school boards across the country to ask tough questions about their districts’ own graduation rates and how they’re achieved. [pullquote]A sham education has to draw our ire no matter where it’s happening and on whose watch.[/pullquote] Whether it’s the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow online charter school network in Ohio that abruptly closed its doors a few weeks back or all but two Washington high schools giving out diplomas based on lies, political ideology should have nothing to do with our response. There is no justification for railing against one and staying silent on the other.
Erika Sanzi is a mother of three sons and taught in public schools in Massachusetts, California and Rhode Island. She has served on her local school board in Cumberland, Rhode Island, advocated for fair school funding at the state level, and worked on campaigns of candidates she considers to be champions for kids and true supporters of great schools. She is currently a Fordham senior visiting fellow.
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