<p>New Jersey high school teacher Peter Hibbard flunked 55 percent of the students in his regular biology class the year before he retired. There were no failures in his honors classes, he said, but many of his regular students refused to do the work. They did not show up for tests and did not take...</p>
<p>I think most teachers deliberately make their class really hard the year before they retire. It gives them something to evilly laugh about for the rest of their lives.</p>
<p>^ I think you’re right. My 4th grade history and English teachers retired right after I had them. It was the only time I’ve ever gotten a C on a report card. The history teacher was brutal, she snapped at everything, and deliberately put us down…most horrible year ever…</p>
<p>But wow…55%? That’s a lot to fail…something had to be up in that class…</p>
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<p>The kids don’t do the work, get 0’s on tests, and people are somehow surprised that they’re failing? And to top it all off, the principal isn’t addressing the problem, emphasizing the grades over the actual learning. This is partly to blame why the American high school education system as a whole is so crappy.</p>
<p>^I agree with jamesford. In Canada and Europe, an “A” or the equivalent actually means something. Over here, it feels like an A is actually just an arbitrary way of saying you passed the course. Granted, I do have some really hard classes where an A is well-deserved, but I think that the US system is characterized by really heavy grade inflation. An A just doesn’t mean an “A” anymore when everybody and their mother, as well as their mother’s dog and their mother’s dog’s boyfriend, gets one.</p>