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Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

latimes.com

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Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

#21

Post by tayo42 »

grammarnazzzi wrote: post #2

> Los Angeles and San Diego Unified — the state’s two largest school districts, with some 660,000 students combined — have recently directed teachers to base academic grades on whether students have learned what was expected of them during a course — and not penalize them for behavior, work habits and missed deadlines. That lesson is going to serve them well in the workplace. Teach students that they are entitled to…

I think one of my most important work lessons was deadlines are almost always not real.

Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

#22

Post by s5300 »

throwaway23451 wrote: post #5

I’m sure every generation feels like the next is going to turn the world to hell… but what the hell? I find it absolutely bonkers that gifted classes, math, homework and objective performance assessments are suddenly under fire as instruments perpetuating inequality. Does our education system leave much to be desired? Absolutely! Let’s pay teachers more and improve access to quality education for all students, not co…

Education in the U.S. has been systematically defunded/chronically underfunded and bureaucratically shitfucked by one of the two major political parties in the U.S. for the last 50 or so years.

Our last secretary of education is the literal heiress to the largest MLM scheme in the nation.

Truly, I cannot imagine why you're at all surprised that our education system is in shambles unless you've been living under a rock.

I mean, we have kids that don't even get served lunch at school, for reasons quoted as "it would make them too used to communism"

Can you imagine why kids that don't even get to eat might not be giving a single shit about caring about school?

Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

#23

Post by derekp7 »

pmdulaney wrote: post #17

In Friends we laughed when Phoebe said, "I'd like to help you but I don't want to." Now kids say, "I'd like to do the work necessary to get good grades, but I don't want to."

It is more than that though. Let's take a kid who has a good feel for math, but make them do several pages of addition and subtraction problems every night for homework instead of teaching them that there is such a thing as "math" and what they are doing is simply "arithmetic". Run this into the ground until they get sick of the subject.

Now finally introduce some math formulas, but don't tell them what they are learning -- instead they just have to memorize these expressions without purpose. And since this kid isn't really good at anything artistic (can't even begin to draw anything recognizable because they haven't ever been taught some basic techniques), how about we have them combine the math with an art project "to make it more fun", then fail them in math because their art is sub-par, and the results makes it "obvious that they didn't even try" (not that they don't know how to do art).

Is it really hard to take a simple to understand concept such as the area of a rectangle (that the kid already understands) -- then instead of telling them that the area of a triangle is "base times height divided by two", how about drawing a box on the board, and drawing a line from corner to corner making two triangles. Now it is obvious why you take the formula for a rectangle and then divide it by two to get the area of a triangle.

Ok, lets take this one step further -- you need to figure out how many feet of siding strips are needed to fill in the peak of where a wall joins a roof. "Hey I know this, it is base times height divided by two". But then you order the materials, and you come up short, because you have waste at the ends due to overhang (so you really need to draw out your triangle with the base several inches wider [add 2x the height of your siding strips to the base]). That is where the simple schooling didn't translate to the real world simply because the kids are taught to memorize answers for a test.

Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

#24

Post by prostoalex »

cududa wrote: post #3

Mod: editorialized title. It's subtle, but it drives narrative with "equity" being such a trigger for folks lately, and isn't what the actual article outlines

This was submitted via the bookmarklet, which I believe just copies the

Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

#25

Post by lmm »

bodhiandpysics1 wrote: post #9
skyde wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you got to understand where this new guidelines are coming from. If a 5 years old student already can do algebra and calculus but his teacher give him 100 page of simple addition to do as homework and he decide to not do them… Should he fail the class ? I don’t think so, the class is already too easy for him! His grade should only be based on his score on exams! Why force student to waste hours at home doing busy wor…

The problem is that exams are often an extremely poor assessment of actual student learning, since they're such an unnatural format (no checking of oneself, strong time limits, extremely "easy" problems that can be done in those time limits). The other problem is that the only way to actually learn something is often to practice it. Attaching grades to "homework" is a method of forcing students to actually do the pra…

Typical homework does not enhance learning at all. It's given out because parents think seeing their kids suffering through drills means they're learning.

Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

#26

Post by mlyle »

throwaway23451 wrote: post #5

I’m sure every generation feels like the next is going to turn the world to hell… but what the hell? I find it absolutely bonkers that gifted classes, math, homework and objective performance assessments are suddenly under fire as instruments perpetuating inequality. Does our education system leave much to be desired? Absolutely! Let’s pay teachers more and improve access to quality education for all students, not co…

> homework

This is one issue that I'm passionate about. Research increasingly implies that homework is probably harmful in elementary; of dubious value in early middle school; and only valuable in high school and beyond.

> and objective performance assessments

I think some of these radical experiments are crazy. But, there's valid reasons to consider e.g. not grading missing absent assignments as a zero. A few of them:

A) If our goal is for grades to reflect demonstrated student mastery --- a missing assignment doesn't indicate that proportion of mastery "missing." Especially if it has been demonstrated satisfactorily on an exam or by other measures.

B) A couple zeroes on a gradebook can be an insurmountable hill to climb-- leaving no further grade incentive at all for students to work hard in the class.

C) Grades are strong motivation for already-strong students with the most involved parents, but can actually be demotivating for the bulk of your class. An effective teacher needs to find other ways to motivate students. For many students, grades are something that can make one feel bad about oneself but not provide an opportunity for positive differentiation.

The classes I teach are "easy A's" in the gradebook for most of my students... and are incredibly demanding compared to normal MS/HS fare. This requires buy-in from my students. I work to build genuine curiosity and in-class competition (on a variety of axes where all students can excel, not just the top couple dunking on everyone else).

Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

#27

Post by bko »

throwaway23451 wrote: post #5

I’m sure every generation feels like the next is going to turn the world to hell… but what the hell? I find it absolutely bonkers that gifted classes, math, homework and objective performance assessments are suddenly under fire as instruments perpetuating inequality. Does our education system leave much to be desired? Absolutely! Let’s pay teachers more and improve access to quality education for all students, not co…

The crazy thing is that the bar is so low in the US.

Where I live, Hoboken, NJ, the high school math and reading proficiency rate are 8% and 44% respectively, while the graduation rate is >95%

What the hell are they doing if they're not even teaching kids math and reading? And why are they graduating them?

Grades aren't meant to be a feel good merit badge. They're supposed to be an accurate reflection of your level of knowledge relative to your peers. If it ceases to be that, then the selection just happens elsewhere. So now high school diploma isn't worth anything because everyone graduates. Hiring a high school graduate doesn't even guarantee you the person can read. Same thing happens in bachelors as schools become less selective and inflate grades.

Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

#28

Post by lmm »

btheshoe wrote: post #6
grammarnazzzi wrote: post #2

> Los Angeles and San Diego Unified — the state’s two largest school districts, with some 660,000 students combined — have recently directed teachers to base academic grades on whether students have learned what was expected of them during a course — and not penalize them for behavior, work habits and missed deadlines. That lesson is going to serve them well in the workplace. Teach students that they are entitled to…

When I fucked up in middle/high school, it wasn't because I was lazy. It was because I had no idea how to deal with stress/anxiety/deadlines. I had teachers who luckily were empathetic and I grew up eventually. I was lucky - I have fantastic parents in a loving, stable marriage and my mental health on the whole was not extraordinarily bad. Many kids are not that lucky. In my experience, the kids (my peers) who were d…

Dealing with stress/anxiety/deadlines is a vital life skill. At some point people have to face failures and consequences (even if the failure was "not their fault"!) and learn to handle them; if they don't do it in school they'll be doing it for the first time in college, or in the workplace, or with governmental requirements.

Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

#29

Post by coredog64 »

bodhiandpysics1 wrote: post #13
skyde wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in this case maybe force the student to complete homework during school hours. instead of expecting kid to do it at home.

There are a finite number of school hours! Teachers have to be paid! That being said, America is extremely unusual in the small number of explicit classroom hours students have, and the large amount of homework students are expected to do.

Students from France are absolutely laughing at this. Wednesdays are half days and the homework load at the lower grade levels is mind boggling.

Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

#30

Post by azinman2 »

js8 wrote: post #16
throwaway23451 wrote: post #5

I’m sure every generation feels like the next is going to turn the world to hell… but what the hell? I find it absolutely bonkers that gifted classes, math, homework and objective performance assessments are suddenly under fire as instruments perpetuating inequality. Does our education system leave much to be desired? Absolutely! Let’s pay teachers more and improve access to quality education for all students, not co…

Noam Chomsky went to a Deweyite high school with no grading and turned out more than fine (he actually enjoyed it). I am opposed to grading, I would replace it with a levelling system - you would have to show certain proficiency to gain a level.

All exceptional people are exactly that — exceptions. What happened to his peers?
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