Kent Fischer of The Dallas Morning News received an e-mail on Monday from a teacher about new district grading policies for Dallas.

At first, Fischer didn’t think it was a big story, but he made a blog post about it anyway, asking readers what the impact of the new grading policies would be. His readers — many of which are teachers — knew more about this topic than be did, and he hoped they could shed some light on the situation.

His post prompted a reader to forward him some district documents that laid out how broad the new grading policies would be. The tipster told Fischer this meant new, lower standards. Fischer made a post that linked to the documents:

Color me skeptical, but there are enough loopholes in these rules to drive a grade-inflated truck through. Seriously, given all the second chances, fudge factors and wiggle room these rules enact, wouldn’t it take an act of God for a kid to flunk a class?

He even helped readers out by marking up a district memo (PDF) with a “quick and dirty” translation of some of the key points. He broke down a several hundred word memo into six key points.

A sea of comments formed at the end of his post from teachers who were almost uniformly denouncing the new polices. Those two posts led directly to today’s front page story, “DISD plan to ease grading standards angers teachers:”

Dallas public
school students who flunk tests, blow off homework and miss assignment
deadlines can make up the work without penalty, under new rules that
have angered many teachers.

The story already has more than 100 comments. A new district grading policy might not seem like a big story to an outsider or even a beat reporter, but to the people it affects, it can be a huge story. Fischer’s readers helped him realize the gravity of the situation and were the reason this became a big story in the Dallas area.

“In this instance, the blog really paid off, in that readers tipped us
off to a good story that was still mostly obscured from the public,” Fischer said.

The newsroom did stick to its traditional-media guns in one instance. The print edition would not allow anonymous comments from Fischer’s blog to appear in print. So, Fischer had to “go out and re-report what was already on the blog.”

Since I’m not tied to print conventions and superstitions, I’m going to post some of the gems left in the comments section on Fischer’s blog from teachers.

“This is unbelievable. More proof that our goal is to graduate, not
educate our kids. Are you really going to be ready for college or the
workforce if deadlines don’t matter and you are allowed to retake every
test failed? But wait, we don’t care if you flunk out of college the
first semester, as long as we pushed you through TAKS and gave you a
diploma (no matter how little you did to get it), DISD’s job is done.
If this is the best urban district in the country, we are all in real
trouble.” – Oak Cliff Teacher

“Wow. Congratulations DISD. I had actually considered reapplying to come
back after a year of teaching in the suburbs. Thanks for making the
decision so easy for me. I really feel like a fool for keeping my kids
in your school district. That’s two more high achievers that you will
be losing due to the Road to Broad mediocrity that you are
perpetuating.” – Pineywoods

“What a shock awaits our college ready graduates when they enter that
college classroom and find out that there are no retakes, there is lot
more than an hour’s worth of work outside the class, and deadlines must
be met. But then it will be quite a shock when colleges no longer
accept a DISD transcript.” – Taxedout