It all started with news in the spring that Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose and three other athletes at Simeon High School had benefited from some creative grading. Teachers started calling their union to admit they too felt pressure to inflate students’ grades. And then this weekend, news broke that following a survey conducted by the CTU and the Chicago Sun-Times, one out of five survey respondents admitted giving in to that pressure.

Our education reporter Linda Lutton learned about that behavior back when she was imbedded at Robeson High School for our series, 50/50: The Odds of Graduating. Here’s what Robeson principal Gerald Morrow told his teachers then at a professional development day:

MORROW: Whatever you put down in Gradebook as the grade, that’s what YOU put down in Gradebook as the grade. Nobody can tell you what to put down. They can just give you a scale. If Gerald got a 55, but you know the last time Gerald took an exam he got a 35…yeah, he got a 55, and he’s still failing. But you see growth. You see improvement.

Morrow told Linda that he wanted teachers to give grades based on that improvement. Linda reported that Chicago Public School officials know grade inflation happens at schools across the city. One district official told her some principals have told teachers outright not to give Fs. CPS is pointing to an auditing system it’s started to detect grade tampering, and the district is asking teachers to call an anonymous hotline to report pressure to change grades. But The Chicago Teachers Union is calling on school leaders to do more to stop grade inflation in the district. CTU president Marilyn Stewart joins us.

Music Button: Quiet Village, “Can’t Be Beat” from the CD Silent Movie, (K7 records)

Related:
CPS Hit with Claims of Grade Inflation
Chicago Sun-Times: Survey results