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To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

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Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#111

Post by throwaway-hn123 »

jacobolus wrote: post #34
Aloha wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think some feedback system is important, you need a mechanism to let the parents know Johnny is struggling and need something to help them. That said, letter grades are useless to gradeschoolers (K-5).

Letter grades are largely useless as an educational tool, even in high school – they provide delayed, coarse, not very actionable feedback, while inflicting a lot of unnecessary emotional stress/pain which directly interferes with learning. The real purpose of letter grades is largely bureaucratic and they are designed for the convenience of teachers and school administrators. What they are good for is sorting and la…

You millenials are utterly pathetic

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#112

Post by freeflight »

legionof7 wrote: post #7
seltzered_ wrote: post #2

Somewhat related, there was another article this week that mentioned kids (and parents) now get notifications sent over the phone of their grades: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/1/10/18174263/anxiety-... “As the retreat group started to tell me more about why they felt such a collective sense of stress and pressure, a few major themes emerged. All of them said they voluntarily get their grades pushed to their…

Yeah, I'm in high school right now and they have this system. They also had the same in middle school. There's no way this instant feedback system is mentally healthy. Also, a lot of times, teachers push a 0 as a placeholder grade and parents aren't in the classroom, so they see that and flip out. Also, with the notification system, both parents and students see each assignment grade in a bubble, so it affects them a…

> Also, with the notification system, both parents and students see each assignment grade in a bubble, so it affects them a lot more than if they saw the whole semester grade (i.e getting an F on a homework assignment isn't a big deal)

Could also show the average grade of the class for each assignment, to give students, parents, and teachers a reference for how well they are actually doing?

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#113

Post by geomark »

jacobolus wrote: post #34
Aloha wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think some feedback system is important, you need a mechanism to let the parents know Johnny is struggling and need something to help them. That said, letter grades are useless to gradeschoolers (K-5).

Letter grades are largely useless as an educational tool, even in high school – they provide delayed, coarse, not very actionable feedback, while inflicting a lot of unnecessary emotional stress/pain which directly interferes with learning. The real purpose of letter grades is largely bureaucratic and they are designed for the convenience of teachers and school administrators. What they are good for is sorting and la…

A lot of the schools where I live do the detailed progress reports. The thing is, the quality of the reports varies a lot from teacher to teacher. Some of us parents share the reports with each other and there are always lots of questions about what the heck the teacher is trying to say. Some teachers just are not good at writing assessments. Some reports are so weasel-worded you can't get to the real meaning of it. I used to write a lot of performance appraisals when I worked at a government contractor where we were strongly discouraged from directly criticizing certain classes of employees. So I got good at writing and decoding weasel-worded assessment.

Fortunately we have one-on-one meetings with the teachers when the reports come out so we can get straight answers from them.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#114

Post by Broken_Hippo »

hvindin wrote: post #105

I do wonder if there is any chance that the reason that there is a spike in reports of abuse on the Saturday following report cards coming out on a Friday is because it is more likely to be reported? It's not mentioned anywhere in the article, but if someone said to me that 2 things are true: 1. There is some correlation between report cards being returned and child abuse 2. There is a spike in reports of abuse on Sa…

This isn't something designed to solve the problem. The actual problem is really, really complicated and solving it is difficult.

It is unlikely that all the abuse simply shifts to during the week and stops getting reported.

What it actually is, however, is a change schools can make to lessen child abuse, even if it is just a little. It isn't something difficult or expensive to do.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#115

Post by moreira »

trevyn wrote: post #102
ddebernardy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A number of developing countries ban all forms of corporal punishments on children. Swaths of Latin America does so, as do a few African and Asian countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_corporal_punishment_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment

All developing countries have ineffective enforcement of laws, as well — that’s one of the defining criteria.

I think there's a significant difference between the practice being banned but there being "ineffective enforcement of laws", and being somewhere where it's still allowed and seen as perfectly acceptable.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#116

Post by geomark »

freeopinion wrote: post #62
jacobolus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letter grades are largely useless as an educational tool, even in high school – they provide delayed, coarse, not very actionable feedback, while inflicting a lot of unnecessary emotional stress/pain which directly interferes with learning. The real purpose of letter grades is largely bureaucratic and they are designed for the convenience of teachers and school administrators. What they are good for is sorting and la…

Our school district administers SBAC tests. Students are given a general score, but nothing specific. Nobody is allowed to know which questions a student was given, let alone which ones they got right or wrong. The tests are completely adaptive, so every student gets a different set of questions. The school district uses cumulative results to assess students, teachers, and entire schools. But it's all meaningless. Yo…

That sounds a bit like the InCAS assessment[1] used in the UK and some international schools that follow the British system. In my experience, the teachers are a bit reluctant to share the results because it takes some effort to get reports out that are parent-friendly, and it takes a bit of explaining what the reports mean. But I have been able to get them upon request. Perhaps it is the same issue with SBAC tests, too much effort for the teachers to provide meaningful reports.

1. https://www.cem.org/incas

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#117

Post by baq »

mberning wrote: post #43
xupybd wrote: post #9

>“It’s sad, but the good news is there's a simple intervention — don't give report cards on Friday.” Yeah that avoids the one instance of child abuse but that's not the big picture here. How is it that there are that many people that struggle to cope that this is common enough to show up in this research. I feel for both the parents and the children here. If something like grades are causing the parents to lash out a…

This reminds me of ads they ran in the UK about domestic violence going up when a team lost a football match. I’m not sure what to make of it. Are we going to have an ad for any and every generic stressor in this life? If a report card or sporting event is enough to induce a physical beating there are some more serious problems going on. https://hyperallergic.com/450815/uk-national-centre-for-dome...

If there’s a fire, you don’t try to put it out with gasoline. The proposal makes perfect sense.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#118

Post by owens99 »

geofft wrote: post #49
xupybd wrote: post #9

>“It’s sad, but the good news is there's a simple intervention — don't give report cards on Friday.” Yeah that avoids the one instance of child abuse but that's not the big picture here. How is it that there are that many people that struggle to cope that this is common enough to show up in this research. I feel for both the parents and the children here. If something like grades are causing the parents to lash out a…

> If something like grades are causing the parents to lash out at the kids it's a sign that the parents are struggling to cope. I think that's starting from a mistaken premise. Why expect parents to cope? Parenting takes an amount of empathy and patience and care that many people simply do not have and will not have. In pre-modern society the nuclear family made sense, but at what point do we say, being someone's bio…

> If you look at the much bigger picture—children who are gay or trans, children who date outside their race, children born into cults or to antivaxxers, children born with disabilities that expect particularly uncommon levels of support from parents, etc. etc.

I'm confused about what you are saying is the connection between these four groups?

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#119

Post by kwhitefoot »

ddingus wrote: post #80
ddebernardy wrote: post #75

> 19 states still allow schools to hit students As one living in a country that bans parents from hitting their own children, I find that number shocking. Do they actually hit the kids in practice, or is this some left-over regulation from the past (like the French ban on women wearing trousers in Paris that got formally repelled a few years ago)?

As a kid, living in a time and State where that was permitted, I found the idea so basically wrong that I made it perfectly clear that day would be my last day if required, as in no holds barred, do what it takes. Looked that guy right in the eye, ready... told him it was not gonna happen. It didn't, and I was the only one that it did not happen to. Let's just say the events that followed after I made that statement…

This seems to me like a sincere and uplifting post; why was it downvoted?

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#120

Post by house_atr »

geofft wrote: post #49
xupybd wrote: post #9

>“It’s sad, but the good news is there's a simple intervention — don't give report cards on Friday.” Yeah that avoids the one instance of child abuse but that's not the big picture here. How is it that there are that many people that struggle to cope that this is common enough to show up in this research. I feel for both the parents and the children here. If something like grades are causing the parents to lash out a…

> If something like grades are causing the parents to lash out at the kids it's a sign that the parents are struggling to cope. I think that's starting from a mistaken premise. Why expect parents to cope? Parenting takes an amount of empathy and patience and care that many people simply do not have and will not have. In pre-modern society the nuclear family made sense, but at what point do we say, being someone's bio…

We can start by patriating children from parents who believe their children should be pushed into homosexuality or who hold beliefs that their political umbrage with vaxxers or any other group gives them the right to decide who gets to keep their children. See that? Your walking on muddy ground and the idea that the people who self appoint as the ones who get to decide what is and isn't politically correct should also be the ones to decide if people can keep their families is a disgusting dangerous idea. Luckily it goes both ways, so tread carefully.
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