Grasmick blinks on education reform

Fueled by sheer terror and considerable prodding I survived. In fact, during my last semester of senior year I decided to enjoy my well-earned ‘‘senior slump.” After all, I’d already been admitted to an Ivy League university, I was a big-shot athlete, student government leader, school magazine editor, yadda, yadda, yadda. If I flunked finals what were the Jesuits going to do, deny me my diploma? Ha, ha, ha!

Well, you know the rest of the story. I flunked the math exam, received a ‘‘certificate of attendance” at graduation and spent a few months in summer school so I could pass math. Always the knucklehead, I swore my kids would never go to a Catholic school, especially one run by Jesuits.

After growing older and somewhat wiser, I realized what a favor the Jesuits did for me. I don’t remember much from high school but I sure remember not getting my diploma. By the way, my son graduated from a Jesuit high school and a Jesuit university. And he received his diplomas at graduation, not months later in the mail like his old man.

All this flashed back Wednesday when I read about Maryland Schools Superintendent Nancy Grasmick’s proposal to let seniors who flunk the state’s graduation exams get a diploma anyway if they do a ‘‘project.” How tragic.

Remember ‘‘No Child Left Behind,” the celebrated national education reform aimed at fixing our dysfunctional schools? The idea was to measure the problem (standardized testing) and, then, to attack it (closing bad schools, letting kids transfer to other schools, teacher training, etc). We were finally blowing the whistle on the education industry’s criminal conspiracy of social promotions and graduating functional illiterates unable to read their own diplomas.

Well, we’ve done the measuring part. Now, face-to-face with the reform part, we just blinked. After years of delay, the state school board finally insisted that next year’s seniors, the class of 2009, pass proficiency exams in algebra, biology, English and government. These exams aren’t hard — they test eighth- and ninth-grade skill levels, say testing experts. Yet, students who repeatedly fail may still graduate under Grasmick’s new loophole.

Why? The given reason is that accommodations must be made for ‘‘those students who don’t test well.” But we already allow untimed tests for learning disabled kids. Now we’re talking about kids who ‘‘don’t test well” because they don’t know the subject matter. And after five years of holding firm on next year’s graduation requirements, how come we just now discovered that ‘‘some students don’t test well?”

No, the reason we’re blinking — backing down from true reform — is politics. If Grasmick and the state school board stuck to their guns up to 3,000 seniors, most of them minorities, wouldn’t graduate in 2009. It’s a scenario that the politicians and the education industrial complex can’t face. So we’re caving in and going back to social promotions. We’ll just pretend that these kids are proficient and ready to cope with life.

Perhaps Grasmick learned her lesson last year when she naively tried reforming Baltimore city’s four worst high schools by putting them under state control. But last year was an election year and politicians up for election don’t like high-profile reminders that their schools stink. The state legislature immediately blocked Grasmick’s takeover as politics trumped reform.

Let’s face it, the folks who talk school reform — the lawmakers, the teachers unions, the PTAs, the school administrators, the ACLU, the NAACP, the editorial writers — aren’t serious. They can’t stomach the kind of train wreck it takes — 3,000 non-graduations — to ignite public pressure for true reform. Instead, their answer to every education problem is always the same — more money.

Blair Lee is CEO of the Lee Development Group in Silver Spring and a regular commentator for WBAL radio. His column appears Fridays in The Gazette.