Elizabeth Brown

What a Passing Grade of 65% Looks Like in the New York Public School System — I’m Guessing. Hypothetically, a New York City public school student can earn a 65 without ever attending class or completing any of the assigned work—if the teacher can’t provide evidence that it isn’t their fault the student failed. This is the prevailing model in NYCPS since COVID. I’m guessing. I, like thousands of other former teachers, no longer work in this system. But from what I remember, it is incredibly difficult to fail a student. It is made difficult by design. What matters to schools is data, not students. They want the data to reflect strong passage rates, which the schools can use to recruit students and secure a larger budget. Schools’ budgets are based on student enrollment. So the fact that this policy hurts students becomes a second priority. By extension, educating the child becomes secondary to securing enrollment numbers—by any means necessary—to get the funding needed to provide educational services. Teachers who dare to fail students because they did not or could not do the work to the required standard must be prepared to defend that decision. Those who try to ensure a student doesn’t graduate without the skills needed to succeed are often met with the full weight of the administration. Administrations engage in well-coordinated pressure campaigns focused on framing student failure as a result of the teacher’s failure to provide the student with everything they needed to pass. The teacher’s pedagogy, professionalism, and attendance are called into question and weaponized so that the failing grade reflects on the teacher rather than the student. In some schools, teachers must allocate time during the work week to conduct outreach to parents of failing students. They must call the homes, log the entry into a database, and submit the outreach log to the administration weekly. This blame culture has become so entrenched in the teaching system that it has been written into the collective-bargaining agreement. Tax-payer money that should be used to provide a public education is being spent on a system that is more focused on negotiating the allotment of professional development time, than it is on whether students have the ability to read and write at grade level. Rather than use that time to focus on pedagogical objectives that will benefit the student and the school, teachers are shoring up evidence in preparation for justifying a failing grade. The end product is a failed education where students learn the lesson the NYC public school system actually teaches: by blaming others, they can deflect responsibility for not going to school or doing the work. I’m guessing. 🤷🏻‍♀️ nypost.com/2026/10/31/us-new…