The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Esther Jones the Principal of Saddlebrook High School in Santa Ana California. She wrote a memo last week asking teachers to give D grades to failing students all because of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Ms. Jones seems to have forgotten her job is educate students not to worry about herself. I'm sure her concern was more for she would look if too many of her students rather for the students who are being set out into the world without a proper education. Just another instance of school officials looking out for who is really number #1. Themselves.

The whole article can be found at- http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/11899678.htm



Principal urges teachers to pass students to meet federal quotaAssociated Press

SANTA ANA, Calif. - The superintendent of Saddleback High School has told teachers to ignore a memo from the school's principal urging them to pass failing seniors so the school could meet federal graduation requirements.

"I felt this was a serious violation," Santa Ana Unified School District Superintendent Al Mijares said. "Principals and teachers are expected to hold the line with regards to grades that are necessary to the high school diploma, and under no circumstances will teachers be pressured to change a grade."

On June 9, Principal Esther Jones wrote teachers a memo asking them to reconsider the grades of 98 failing seniors. The note asked teachers to "please review your records for these students and determine if they would merit a grade of 'D' instead of a failure."

Jones added in the memo that the school needed 95 percent of its seniors to graduate to meet federal requirements under the No Child Left Behind law. In fact, the school needs a graduation rate of 82.8 percent and will graduate nearly 84 percent of its 500 seniors on Wednesday, school officials said.

Jones did not return calls for comment.

Teachers said they were outraged by the memo.

"We do everything we possibly can to pass them. To be asked to go beyond that is ridiculous," social studies teacher Larry Collier said. "I've never seen anything like that in my 44 years of teaching."