New York Teachers Claim Schools Forces Them To Pass Failing Students

Teachers accuse superiors at Flushing High School in New York of forcing them to pass students who fail math classes.

Educators at the school say students earn passing grades despite being chronically absent, failing to turn in homework or participating in classroom activities, and routinely failing tests, including state exams, three teachers told QNS on condition of anonymity. Despite this, teachers are required to give students passing grades.

Only about 30 percent of students passed the New York State Regents exams in the previous school year, but 70 percent of them are still pushed to graduate, teachers say.

“It seems like expectations have become lower,” one teacher told QNS. “It’s getting easier and easier to get a passing grade simply based on what the administration expects of teachers.”

The city’s Department of Education announced in an email to QNS that it had opened an investigation into the matter on January 5.

“In New York City Public Schools, academically rigorous instruction is a top priority,” New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) told QNS. “To support this, we have a robust, publicly available grading toolkit that schools use to create their individual grading policy.”

Flushing and NYCPS did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Teacher Denise Severing praises a child during a math class at the federally funded Head Start school September 20, 2012 in Woodbourne, New York. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Flushing teachers worry the grading policy sets a bad example for others, noting that students who put in effort are often discouraged, knowing their peers will receive similar grades without much work.

“Students mentioned that it’s not fair that they try and then see their classmates come in half the time and get almost the same grade,” one teacher told QNS. “They’re frustrated, which discourages them from working because they think it’s an unfair policy.”

Per the Flushing Mathematics Department’s grading policy, even students who earn a 1 for class participation on a scale of zero to four will earn a passing grade of 65. Students who earn a zero for attending class but fail to participate still earn a 55, and students who fail to even attend class receive a 45, according to a December 2024 guide obtained by QNS.

Some teachers have suggested that one factor that may be influencing the school’s chronic absenteeism is its predominantly Hispanic population, saying that some students’ parents may not speak English well enough to understand the problems their children are having or the school’s schedule and attendance policy. (RELATED: Skyrocketing levels of non-English speaking students could cause national reading test scores to plummet)

The school’s “mastery grading policy” used in the 2024-2025 school year gave students multiple opportunities to complete assignments until they earned a 100, simply allowing them to make in-class test corrections after initially earning a low grade, and did not include any assignments that did not earn a 100 toward a student’s final grade. Teachers pointed out that this meant students only had to receive a grade of 100 on a single assignment to pass the course, and the standard was dropped the following year, QNS reported.

Students were also not penalized for late or incomplete work.

The latest grading policy still allows students who get less than half of the answers correct on an assessment to receive a grade of 55, according to an October 2025 email obtained by QNS. Answering 50% or more of the questions correctly would result in a passing grade.

“Every effort students make is a step toward growth,” the grading rubric says while warning teachers that students may exert little effort.

The lowest grade a student can achieve in any category is 55%.

Teachers who failed were required to justify their failure by detailing the steps taken to improve the student’s grade, and sometimes they were then placed on teacher development plans.

“It’s often seen as a punishment,” one teacher told QNS. “The administration cares more about numbers than actual teaching accountability. They claim to want students to be college ready, but when we try to do that, they punish, penalize, and make teachers’ lives miserable.”

Teachers who have tried to raise concerns with school administration have been told to simply let students who come to class pass, even if they are not doing any work, QNS wrote. Discussions with parents, teachers’ unions, guidance counselors and school officials have yielded no results in changing these policies.

“We want them to be proactive and play a role in their education,” one teacher told QNS. “I feel like it will be a total disaster in the future if these same students act like this in the real world.”

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan news service, is available free to any legitimate news publisher capable of delivering a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and DCNF affiliation. For questions about our guidelines or our partnership, please contact licenses@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.