CPS Teachers Claim Pressure To Change Grades

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Aug 29, 2009 7:00PM

It shouldn't be a surprise at all: teachers pressured to change grades for students. A Sun-Times investigation revealed reasons such as:

• "to avoid parental conflict. The parent is a CPS teacher."
• "graduating senior who needed to pass and parent pressure."
• "principal wanted graduation rate to increase so she would not be reprimanded."
• "not enough parental contact before assigning a failing grade."

And that, of course, is just scratching the surface. About 20 percent of CPS teachers reported changing grades. One teacher told the Sun-Times, "You can't completely be honest in grading students, otherwise the failure rate would be off the chart.'' Check out the full report here.