Is Makeup work worth it?

I recently read an article from the New York Times titled, "Makeup Work Allows Students to Slide by, Critics say." The article claimed that many schools are allowing students who fall behind to complete makeup work to earn credit. While this may seem like a good idea, the article mentioned one boy who had been promoted to to the twelfth grade and could not write a complete sentence or read a line of text but had earned credit through after school programs. This is a real issue! 

I believe that schools have become so focused on test scores that they forget what the real purpose of education is. Schools are meant to educate and what good is it doing anyone for a student to makeup meaningless work? So what if a school has the highest test scores? Is it producing productive and prepared people to put in society? This is what the goal of education should be! Not allowing students to slide by with less than mediocre grades so they can simply graduate!

While most agree that credit recovery can be a good tool when used correctly, school systems have to decide just what the right way is. States are planning to assign new regulations to credit recovery this fall, including things like limiting the number of credits recovered a student can earn and not allowing students at low performing schools to be eligible for credit recovery. 

For more information visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/nyregion/13credit.html?ref=education