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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

#151

Post by JeanMarcS »

freeflight wrote: post #112
legionof7 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The average grade could be an idea, but being the worse in a upper high good class doesn’t mean you’re bad.

And I personally think that grades should show how you progress. If you get better with time it’s good.

And also we all agree that one grade out of any context should’nt mean anything

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

#152

Post by kabouseng »

padolsey wrote: post #139
kabouseng wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed for that statement. Corporal punishment has been a part of human societies for thousands of years, so you need stronger evidence for such a statement.

What's funny is that your comment alluding to the generational persistence of punishment indicates the very cyclic nature that you are seeking proof of. Its persistence does not prove its worthiness ('appeal to nature'), only its ability to survive as a trait. What we have to decide is, whatever the mechanism of its survival, what is its efficacy and moral value in today's society.

I didn't make a statement as the parent as to the effects of punishment. Making statements requires proof, making extraordinary statements requires exteaordi ary proof.

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

#153

Post by geofft »

owens99 wrote: post #118
geofft wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Those children are quite often mistreated or abused by their parents in often quiet ways, and offering resources to the parents to learn how to parent better is unlikely to help.

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

#154

Post by kijin »

antsar wrote: post #137
ceautery wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system should prevent 0 from being pushed as a notification. Each teacher or school should be forced to deal with 0 in some other way, preferably erring on the side of helping students, rather than punishing them.

Teachers already seem overworked. Wouldn’t they just invent a new magic number, maybe “1”?

101 would be a relatively safe number to use as a placeholder. Since these people aren't programmers, trying to use NULL or NaN or -1 will probably backfire.

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

#155

Post by FakeComments »

antsar wrote: post #137
ceautery wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system should prevent 0 from being pushed as a notification. Each teacher or school should be forced to deal with 0 in some other way, preferably erring on the side of helping students, rather than punishing them.

Teachers already seem overworked. Wouldn’t they just invent a new magic number, maybe “1”?

It wouldn’t stop a 0 from being entered as a grade — just not push that notification.

This would actually makes teaching easier, as they can use a 0 as a placeholder without having to decide about accidentally pushing a notification.

I don’t think the teacher’s goal is to cause a panic with a transient 0 that’s later replaced — so I don’t see why they’d stop using something that better accomplished their goals.

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

#156

Post by pbhjpbhj »

tempestn wrote: post #82
saagarjha wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From another viewpoint, I spent a significant amount of time in high school reverse engineering and retrofitting grade update notifications onto our school's (well, School Loop's) existing gradebook, which I shipped as part of my app for accessing this system. For privacy reasons, I would not display any grades or scores in the notification itself, opting for something like "your grade in $course has changed". This g…

I don't know if that's all that much better. As soon as you get the notification you're not going to be able to think of much else until you check.

But that's no different to the status quo, you know that a grade is coming right from when you sit the test; and IME a teacher will say roughly when the marking will be done, so there's always anticipation.

It sounds to me like this is the sort of thing that needs to be fixed by each person (for themselves) at some level.

Sure, the provider can give multiple options (message with|without grade, message once a week, no message, etc.) but it's still up to the person to choose.

If you're fretting over a grade coming you're going to fret, you need to fix your own notification system.

You could get messages sent to a parent/carer instead, block the number and check them once a week, wait for the teacher to tell you, etc..

Just because food is put on your plate doesn't mean you have to eat it.

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

#157

Post by Intermernet »

notus wrote: post #21
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…

I feel like we are kind of doing a disservice to children by even having grades K-8. I don't really see what the value is in having them. Parents over focus on it and seem to measure their own child's worth based on grades and children also seem to measure their own self worth based on grades. IMO there is no case where a child that young should be failing anything, if they are failing a class that young there is som…

This week I had 2 assessments. Firstly I did my HR truck licence (large trucks, non articulated) and secondly I upgraded my industrial rope access certification. Neither of these have a grade on the official record other than pass or fail. On both examinations I actually had much finer grained assessment, and specific feedback on areas that could be improved.

I'm not sure why adult assessment works this way but school doesn't.

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

#158

Post by nathanlied »

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…

Huh, given all the answers here - I guess I might be different from the average, I never considered a different experience.

At my Alma Mater, we were always "mass-mailed" when grades were released. The email didn't have our grade specifically, but we could go on the University's portal, navigate to that class, and see whatever grade just got released - tests, exams, projects, anything we could be graded on, really. I loved this system, because the alternative was the grades being released and me not knowing about it, which would result in either having to check every X period of time, or, most likely, coding my own script to do it for me.

I've been told by family that my old High School also works similarly nowadays, as well as other high schools and middle schools in the same district. I can't imagine it working any other way, given the increasing integration of technology.

I'd like to know, though, isn't it just as anxiety-inducing to go in every morning after an assignment, knowing this could be the day it's delivered? Mine were delivered that way back in HS, sometimes at the beginning of class, others in the middle, sometimes we thought we weren't getting it that day, and the teacher would remember at the very end of class, or be reminded by someone. Is it because it's an "it could come at literally any time" thing, instead of being restricted to the class schedule?

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

#159

Post by nailer »

yogeshlor wrote: post #70
Hello71 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wouldn't it make more sense to use 1 as a placeholder

how about hyphen -

How about using an integer where an integer is needed and false where no grade has been produced, with the teacher and student UI showing 'Not yet graded [x]' rather than using magic numbers?

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

#160

Post by [deleted] »

Hello71 wrote: post #61
legionof7 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

wouldn't it make more sense to use 1 as a placeholder

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