Photo by DC_Loyal 2 The Soil on Flickr.

Washington Metropolitan High School, the subject of PBS documentary 180 days: A Year Inside an American High School, has successfully helped many students go onto college, but many others still graduate without the preparation to continue their education or find places in the workforce.

Of the 30 graduating seniors of the 2011-2012 class at DC Met, a note at the end of the films asserts “100% had been accepted to college.” Messages on the school’s outside bulletin board are showed frequently throughout the film. One message reads, “Never Mind Twitter … Follow Me to College.”

But what kind of college? The film follows some seniors like Raven Quattlebaum and Tiara Parker who win college scholarships. But this isn’t the reality for most students.

Any student with a high school diploma can be accepted to a community college with no other admissions requirements. Many never actually enroll in any college. Some only get their high school diploma thanks to social promotion.

Principal Minor pushes students, but also passes them

With 8 days before a list of seniors eligible to graduate is due at DCPS’ Central Office, principal Tanishia Minor walks with progress reports in hand to the corresponding teachers to inquire if there is “…any inkling they can still pass?”

Faced with the haunting reality of dashing an “F and initial,” many teachers clear their conscience and pass their students. Social promotion in which students cannot read the diplomas they receive is not fictitious. It is a grim reality that Minor knows but plays a hand in perpetuating — because the prospects of her students facing the world without a high school diploma is somehow worse. (From personal experience working as a poverty worker in Washington, for many men and women their graduation from high school is their ultimate academic achievement.)

Minor is not duplicitous pushing her students through the system. She cajoles, raps, and even shares steps she learned while becoming a sorority member to encourage her students to strive for academic excellence. After returning from a principal conference, Minor shares with her faculty that “relationships are the most important thing we cultivate in this building.”

DC Public Schools decided not to reappoint Minor before the results of the DC CAS Scores were released. This seemingly contradicts remarks in the film from Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who says, “The work it takes to dramatically improve our schools doesn’t happen overnight.”

In response Minor offers: “We may not have moved mountains, but it wouldn’t be for a lack of trying. End of statement.”

Is trying enough?

Having worked for a prominent after-school enrichment program for middle school students and taught at a DC Charter School, I have been at the crossroads where first-year teachers collide with 17-year old 9th graders reading at a 3rd grade level.

At worst, teachers deal with dead-end students who attend school for the singular reason of meeting the conditions of a court order. At best, teachers encounter students with a visceral desire to be the first in their families to attend college and understand the self-sacrifice that requires.

The gulf between student’s perceptions of their abilities and their actuality is deep and wide. 180 Days illustrates this when a young woman inquires about attending UC Berkeley. A counselor from DC-CAP gently shows the student that the average GPA for incoming Berkeley freshmen is nearly a 4.0. When the counselor asks if the student’s GPA is comparable, the student is uncommunicative.

Early in the film discloses the dynamics of the auditing process, where DCPS Central Office confirms the number of students attending a school. An administrator at DC Met says plainly that every student in the building is equivalent to $10,000 for that school’s budget. In order to fill the roster rolls, schools have open enrollment year-round. This is an act of self-preservation, practiced citywide, that while ensuring the school’s livelihood contributes to classroom chaos.

The film also alludes to the default role teachers at schools like DC Met fill as social workers. Teachers are paid to instruct, not be empathetic. Teachers who put academic rigor first and consider social work secondary would appear to be in the wrong place at schools like DC Met.

Students at DC Met and similar schools are already served by a cadre of social workers. What they need are teachers. In 180 Days, broadcast across the country, the greater public sees the circumstances within DCPS institutions like DC Met that graduate students unprepared for the demands of college.

Teachers at DC Met are honorable in their commitments to building trusting relationships with their students as they come and go. But at the end of the day, content knowledge is the criteria the world and DCPS use to evaluate what goes on in the classroom.