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Many teachers...grading...for compliance - not for mastering course material

nytimes.com

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Re: Many teachers...grading...for compliance - not for mastering course material

#41

Post by rdtsc »

drblast wrote: post #16

"Should students be rewarded for being friendly, prepared, compliant, a good school citizen, well organized and hard-working? Or should good grades represent exclusively a student’s mastery of the material?" Because it would be tremendously difficult to grade the students on both things separately. One of the problems with schools and our society in general is the idea that you can take something complicated and dist…

Interesting. When I was going to school in ex-Soviet Union we did have a 2 grades. A 'behavior' grade and an academics grade. There was a strong correlation between both but not always. I guess one could distill the behavior grades into other sub-categories as well.

Re: Many teachers...grading...for compliance - not for mastering course material

#42

Post by sudont »

dkarl wrote: post #34
sudont wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that they were taking AP physics. In Wisconsin, the valedictorian gets a full-ride to anywhere in the UW system. Due to this, many valedictorians I've seen take easy classes and graduate with a 4.1, whereas many of those with lower GPAs--due to difficult classes--end up going to better schools. One year the valedictorian went to UW-Whitewater, and the Salutatorian went to Yale.

In my school, any grade in an "Honors" or "AP" class got a ten-point boost (equivalent to a full letter grade) for GPA calculations. My graduating class had at least three kids with GPAs over 100, which would be impossible to match without taking honors classes. An A in an honors class always beats an A in a non-honors class, so it's hard to beat a kid who takes more honors classes than you.

That definitely seems like a better way to do it.

Re: Many teachers...grading...for compliance - not for mastering course material

#43

Post by eru »

drblast wrote: post #36
slyn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In addition to an academic grade, the 950 students at the school will get a separate “life skills” grade for each class that reflects their work habits and other, more subjective, measures like attitude, effort and citizenship." page 2

This doesn't really address the problem; the "life skills" grade isn't standardized and will be meaningless for just about anything beyond the report card. Its value is as a signal to parents. So why not have a comments section? Is it too much to ask that a subjective assessment be spelled out in a written sentence or two?

I guess in the US you have to worry about litigation.

Re: Many teachers...grading...for compliance - not for mastering course material

#44

Post by eru »

rdtsc wrote: post #41
drblast wrote: post #16

"Should students be rewarded for being friendly, prepared, compliant, a good school citizen, well organized and hard-working? Or should good grades represent exclusively a student’s mastery of the material?" Because it would be tremendously difficult to grade the students on both things separately. One of the problems with schools and our society in general is the idea that you can take something complicated and dist…

Interesting. When I was going to school in ex-Soviet Union we did have a 2 grades. A 'behavior' grade and an academics grade. There was a strong correlation between both but not always. I guess one could distill the behavior grades into other sub-categories as well.

Former East Germany also used to have grades for behaviour (averaged over all subjects): Ordnung, Mitarbeit, Fleiß und Betragen.

Translated: order/tidyness/organized-ness, participation in lessons, diligence and conduct.

Some people still moan that this system was given up, and there are occasional discussion about re-introducing it.

Re: Many teachers...grading...for compliance - not for mastering course material

#46

Post by xiongchiamiov »

dkarl wrote: post #34
sudont wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that they were taking AP physics. In Wisconsin, the valedictorian gets a full-ride to anywhere in the UW system. Due to this, many valedictorians I've seen take easy classes and graduate with a 4.1, whereas many of those with lower GPAs--due to difficult classes--end up going to better schools. One year the valedictorian went to UW-Whitewater, and the Salutatorian went to Yale.

In my school, any grade in an "Honors" or "AP" class got a ten-point boost (equivalent to a full letter grade) for GPA calculations. My graduating class had at least three kids with GPAs over 100, which would be impossible to match without taking honors classes. An A in an honors class always beats an A in a non-honors class, so it's hard to beat a kid who takes more honors classes than you.

For us, a A in an Honors course got 5 grade points (rather than the 4 standard), so doing really well in Honors courses put you above someone who did really well in non-Honors courses. The amount of work required, however, for a B in an Honors course was far more than for an A in a non-Honors, so for anyone who wasn't going to be getting top grades, their GPA would suffer.

Of course, they are the ones who were more successful in university.

Re: Many teachers...grading...for compliance - not for mastering course material

#48

Post by xiongchiamiov »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #38
shasta wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I wasn't supposed to read the title as William Shatner?

The periods indicate text I removed to make the title < 80 chars.

Ellipses, if you'd like to be technical. Periods pretending to be ellipses, if you'd like to be even more so.

Re: Many teachers...grading...for compliance - not for mastering course material

#49

Post by ShabbyDoo »

Allowing teachers to choose the metrics upon which grades are based is much like a Third World dictator being able to print currency at will. Don't have the budget for classroom Kleenex? Just issue an incentive. Want your students to be compliant? You have an incentive that most of them (or at least most of their parents) will value. Until this school in Austin audited Teachers' ability to turn on the printing presses at will, there was no disincentive to abuse the currency. The benefits of currency inflation are local to a classroom, but the downsides are macro in nature. Outsiders looking at a high school report card can't tell if a particular "A" was due to mastery or compliance, but those same observers will base the value of those grades on the aggregate of their correlation to competence over time.

Re: Many teachers...grading...for compliance - not for mastering course material

#50

Post by xiongchiamiov »

bradley wrote: post #39
solson wrote: post #26

Watch out, I am going to generalize here... In my experience, in the US, EMPLOYEES in marketing, sales, management, finance, and operations do much better if they have high "life/social" skills even when their level of intelligence or knowledge are lower than others. However, this pattern doesn't fit IT/software and engineering (hard sciences) where creativity and knowledge are required. Some of the best engineers ha…

> The question we need to ask about education: > What are we trying to produce? K-12 education as we know it today was first mandated/implemented by the King of Prussia in the 1860's to jump into the Industrial Revolution. We sent envoys to study and copy his schools. He sought 3 products: Compliant citizens, efficent factory workers, and obedient soldiers. We in the US have added a 4th purpose: free day care so both…

Sir Ken Robinson talks more about this in his classic TED talk, "Do schools kill creativity?". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
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