Unearned promotions cheat students

When it comes to education, South Carolina continuously finds itself placed at or near the bottom, and yet South Carolina educators are looking to require fewer credits needed for graduation and to eliminate school days. Instead of cutting education, state legislators should focus on what needs to be done to strengthen South Carolina's educational system.

As a state, we might have some of the toughest educational standards and difficult standardized assessments, but have we looked at how students are performing against those standards and assessments?

I teach in a district where students continuously perform below those standards and are still pushed through to the next grade, where eighth-graders are reading and writing on fifth-grade levels. We need the state Legislature and department of education to start requiring districts to accept responsibility for the low performance of students.

Why are eighth-graders passed on to high school when they haven't demonstrated the ability to meet most of their middle school standards?

We are too worried about being politically correct and not hurting anyone's feelings to realize that we are sending students into the workforce unprepared.

We are sending a negative message to our students.

Blame the communities, the parents, the circumstances beyond our control all you want, but the fact of the matter is, we have the power to set a standard. And it might be rough at first, but once the standard is set, people start to conform to it.

Hold back the students who don't perform and give them the help they need because in the long run, what's worse -- promoting a student without any skills, or forgetting about feelings and political correctness and giving them a chance at a bright future?

Stacy Zeiger

Teacher

Eighth Grade ELA/English 1

Wampee Curve

Summerville