Its no secret that the DOE puts pressure on school administrators to meet questionable metrics rather than have students meet real and relevant academic goals that best represent actual academic achievement. The DOE's pursuit of the "holy grail" of meeting the questionable metrics has resulted in administrators committing academic fraud, be it"credit recovery", grade changing, or pressure on teachers to pass failing students. Presently, the average school is funded at between 89% to 92% of their fair funding and as the DOE's budget increases year after year and the City has a 6 billion dollar budget surplus, schools are still underfunded as if the recession still exists. To appease their DOE overloads, school administrators resort to sacrificing real student learning to meet the questionable goals that the DOE demands.
For example, the DOE places great emphasis in the graduation rate of a school. To the DOE it doesn't matter what tricks are played to achieve that goal, as long as they meet it. Sure enough, every year the school graduation rate inches up and the Mayor and Chancellor proclaim that the schools are improving. However, the real educational metric is the "college and career readiness" metric has shown little improvement and every two out of three New York City graduates are not ready for the adult world.
Another example of the warped DOE priorities is how they give schools credit for enrolling students in Advanced Placement courses. To the DOE it matters little if the students eventually fail the test and get no college credit for the course. The more students taking the Advanced Placement courses the higher the DOE grades the school. Passing or failing is irreverent. The result is that school administrators stuff 34 students, many of them not capable or uninterested in being in the Advanced Placement courses just to get a higher school score from the DOE.
In Science, the DOE gives a higher grade to schools who emphasis the harder Sciences of Chemistry and Physics. Then again, the DOE cares little if the students actually pass or take the Regents for these two Sciences. Just taking the course gives the school a higher grade by the DOE. Therefore, quite a few schools force struggling students to take the harder Science courses, knowing full well, that these students will probably fail and certainly not pass the Regents. While Earth Science and its Regents is the perfect Science course for students who struggle, schools rather get a higher grade from the DOE than do what's right for these students. Bayside high school is a prime example of this flawed thinking.
In Math, far too many struggling Math students are forced to take Algebra II (Trigonometry) because the DOE gives the school a higher grade. Here again, it matters little if the students pass or fail the Regents. Just taking the course gives the school the higher grade from the DOE.
The bottom line as schools suffer from tight, recession like budgets and school administrators try to meet the questionable metrics imposed on them by the DOE, real student academic achievement is sacrificed but then its children last...Always at the DOE.