We're short on evidence, but a hunch tells us that middle school students aren't their sharpest during the days leading up till the last day of school on the 27th. This hasn't stopped a few parents of graduating 8th-graders from complaining that their children aren't learning anything, despite it legally being summer when listening to anyone over the age of 15 is 100% optional. "It's a system-wide problem," one Queens parent tells the Daily News, presumably referring to the innate human desire to be released from the fluorescent-lit bondage that they will endure long into adulthood.
After the students' textbooks were collected last week (we recall that being a particularly joyus day) Queens 8th-graders were reportedly "playing cards and watching movies."
In Brooklyn, an administrator at the School for International studies just flat-out told 8-graders to "stop coming to class a week before the last day of school." Of course, a DOE spokesman says that it's official policy that students attend school until the very last day. Frankly, anything that prevents repeated viewings of Independence Day and October Sky sounds reasonable to us.
