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

Post by aidenn0 » Tue, Nov 30, 2010, 12:41 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #44

rdtsc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by aik » Tue, Nov 30, 2010, 12:55 AM UTC

caryme wrote: post #14

px wrote: post #10

I'm glad the NYT is shedding light on this topic but, perhaps the most important aspect of standards based grading is almost burried in this article. One of the basic premises of SBG is that students know exactly what knowledge and skills they have to master. They are assessed and then encouraged to address weaknesses so that they can be re-assessed. This is opposed to a "gotcha!" based assessment system. This approa…

Very true. My mom started using standards based grading this year in her IB & honors chemistry classes. She's been very successful so far with it and her students have been rising to the occasion with their re-assessments. From her, it sounds like defining all of her tests and assignments in terms of the standards (knowledge and skills) they cover and grading them as such has been difficult, but effective.

Post by MichaelSalib » Tue, Nov 30, 2010, 1:19 AM UTC

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?

Post by xtrycatchx » Tue, Nov 30, 2010, 1:31 AM UTC

Post by ShardPhoenix » Tue, Nov 30, 2010, 2:39 AM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #70

dkarl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's all well and good, but the fact is "Honors" and "AP" classes are not well-defined as more difficult than the other classes. Also, it still penalizes students taking larger course loads. I had a friend who was robbed of Valedictorian basically because their A in Choir was pulling down their GPA, while they was taking all of the same courses as the Valedictorian in addition to choir, and outperforming the Valedi…