Pittsburgh Schools: we can't teach so give them better grades

The Pittsburgh Schools established a new policy that sets 50% as minimum score. (HT Grassroots PA). That is, if you missed all the questions on the test, you would get a 50%.

Only about one-fourth of Pittsburgh fourth- and eighth-grade students are "proficient" in terms of the NAEP standards, and their "real graduation rate" is around 50%, even though, at nearly $18,000 per-pupil, Pittsburgh is among the highest spending districts in the state.

Readers will recall that Pittsburgh dropped the work "public" from its name, because administrators thought that gave the school district a bad name.

As the Allegheny Institute recently pointed out, what Pittsburgh parents need is real school choice to save them from failing schools, not lower academic standards.