Passing while failing

Denise Oppenhagen
Published: August 16, 2008

Last Saturday, the Washington Post reported on a program in use in the Prince William County Schools (PWCS). The program, called NovaNET allows students to get credit for a course they failed
during the school year. The student doesn’t retake the course to learn the material missed the first time.  Instead, the student works with a computer program to answer multiple choice questions time
and time again until they pass the computer test. They are then awarded credit, although they still retain their “F.” Students are allowed to look up the answers to the questions and get to keep retaking
the test until they pass.

I have several problems with this program. First of all, the emphasis in the wrong place. Although It’s not entirely the school system’s fault — the federal and state governments are accrediting schools
based on graduation rates.  This emphasis means that the schools have to improve graduation rates. The NovaNet program does that, yes. But the student still hasn’t learned the material.  PWCS risks
getting a reputation as a diploma mill. And then the diploma would hold no meaning.  The purpose of education is to LEARN; this isn’t being accomplished.

The article did not address whether the students who failed their course had passed their SOL.  But I am a bit concerned about the attitude of the parent of the student who failed math. She seems to feel
that it is fine to trade community service hours for a math grade. 

But, does the student understand the math? Is it just a matter of the student “didn’t like the teacher?” Or didn’t turn in homework? Or does he not understand the math? As a society, we are greatly
concerned that our children cannot read and perform simple math calculations. By not repeating the course, this student risks failing every subsequent math class. 

And I have a couple of serious concerns about the student who failed World History. First of all, the two concepts cited that she didn’t understand were the meaning of “communist international
organization” and the philosophy of Karl Marx. These are two major concepts in world history, not just for Communists but for us to understand what the differences are between our form of government
and theirs.

How do we know our republican form of government is better if we don’t know what we’re comparing it to?

The second concern with this student is her ability to understand information. She says she went to Ask.com, typed in communist international organization, found a few links but “none that helped her.” I
repeated her search. Not putting the words in quotes led to more than a million hits. Putting it in quotes led to 143 hits. The first hit was a Web site called http://www.everything2.com. The site abbreviates
communist international organization to comintern and says “it was formed in 1919, with the mission statement of assistance to little Commie regimes all over the world.” 

That seems pretty explanatory.  If she were nervous about the everything2.com, she could go to http://www.smallwarsjournal.com which states the “Communist International (organization) was founded in 1919
(disbanded in 1943) with the aim of revolutionary overthrow of capitalist regimes around the world.” The description in the paper makes this student seem unable to understand basic information.

When deciding which corners to cut, we need to remember what the purpose of the school system is: to provide an education for our students so that they are able to be productive members of society.

Making sure they graduate in four years although they didn’t learn anything is not the way to do this.

Denise Oppenhagen is a longtime resident of Prince William County and can be reached at .