NYC Schools are Letting Down Teachers and Students — It’s Time to Hold UFT’s Michael Mulgrew Accountable

Voting is currently taking place to elect the President of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City. Michael Mulgrew, in his role since 2009, appears to anticipate an easy path to another term.

However, during his tenure, schools have increasingly lowered expectations for students—making attendance nearly optional and passing grades almost universally granted.

Brooklyn-based Social Studies teacher Mike Dowd argues that it’s time for a shift towards reinstating basic discipline.

Officials often proudly cite the 84% graduation rate among New York City public school students.

However, if you believe this figure accurately reflects student achievement, I have unfortunate news. The grading practices in high schools have become so flawed that class credits are now practically meaningless.

Recently, the Department of Education and many schools have implemented “equity grading” practices meant to assist disadvantaged students.

Yet by making it nearly impossible for these students to fail—even if they do not attend class—our education system discourages hard work and accountability for those it seeks to serve.

The United Federation of Teachers, led by the disconnected Michael Mulgrew, has not addressed the detrimental impacts of these policies publicly, leaving many New Yorkers unaware of the alarming decline in school standards.

Those of us who taught under Mayor Bloomberg recall the pressure to raise passing rates or face consequences. There was a crucial safeguard in place—attendance was considered a basic requirement for passing.

Yet, under Mayor De Blasio, this safeguard vanished, as his equity focus led to the elimination of “seat time” as a graduation prerequisite.

Consequently, schools have begun awarding passing grades to chronically absent students, regardless of their effort, alongside those who are diligent.

Later, Mayor Adams made attendance entirely optional by upholding remote-learning policies that prohibited any reduction of a student’s grade due to absences.

Today, educators who wish to penalize students for absences must assign makeup work for every missed day and often need to accept submissions—even those that seem AI-generated.

Moreover, various schools have encouraged absenteeism through an equity policy—minimum grades.

In such schools, a missing assignment or test with no correct answers can receive a score as high as 55—just shy of passing—rather than a zero. Thus, students can (and do) skip numerous classes in a semester and still receive passing grades, even without completing makeup work.

Unsurprisingly, high school attendance rates have declined. However, the situation is even worse than reported. Students only need to be present in their “attendance” class to get marked as present each day, enabling them to skip other classes while maintaining seemingly good attendance records.

How prevalent this is remains unclear, as the DOE conceals this information.

The DOE also employs other strategies to downplay attendance.

When students fail courses, teachers are required to choose prewritten comments for report cards.

However, “Excessively Absent (More than 2 days/month)” has been removed from the options, providing no suitable descriptors for chronically absent students. The label “Excessively Late” has also been eliminated, implying that former standards no longer exist.

We’ve transitioned from identifying three absences per month as excessive to denying that absences can even be excessive.

Meanwhile, the DOE’s attendance application obscures attendance records from both parents and teachers. As a coach, I can no longer determine if my wrestlers are attending school, forcing me to keep manual records to track my students’ attendance history.

A cultural shift is taking place, as attending class is increasingly viewed as a mere lifestyle choice rather than a shared responsibility. Frequently absent students sincerely ask me how they might improve their grades, some even seek college recommendation letters.

As students offer increasingly flimsy justifications for their lack of attendance, it’s evident that these policies teach them to capitulate in the face of challenges. During a pivotal stage in their development, our future workforce is losing its self-discipline, reliability, and resilience.

However, the implications extend beyond work habits. Allowing students, especially those with insufficient academic skills, to skip essential classroom instruction deprives them of the comprehensive education they deserve.

Indeed, a recent assessment of equity grading by the Fordham Institute, an education think tank,indicates that “lenient grading leads to less learning.”

My colleagues and I ponder how the DOE can completely overhaul established norms of student accountability without public dialogue and why our union leaders maintain their silence while our credibility is compromised from above.

It’s imperative for Mayor Adams to put an end to these detrimental policies or clarify the rationale behind supporting them.

In the interim, the DOE should provide comprehensive attendance data to highlight the severity of our absenteeism crisis and reveal how many chronically absent students receive credit. We must identify the schools facing these significant challenges and formulate strategies to address them.

We have postponed addressing teachers’ concerns regarding student cellphone usage for far too long. Let’s not allow a similar delay with regard to lax attendance and grading policies.