Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 359 posts

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

#41

Post by adventured »

uejfiweun wrote: post #35
bko wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

How on earth do we de-escalate from here? I feel that in the US it is impossible to summon the political willpower to make it HARDER to graduate HS or go to college, even if these things would make society better off. My personal opinion is that the government should get out of education, just lower our taxes and let the free market handle the rest. Never gonna happen, however.

> How on earth do we de-escalate from here?

You increase the chances to succeed at the same time you make it more difficult, to overwhelm that aspect.

Reduce the binary outcome slightly so it's not just a cycle of fail and be thrown / throw yourself to the wolves (dropout).

Dramatically increase vocational education training.

Shift to a year-round school system. So you don't fail and abandon. Instead, you never stop until you succeed.

High school et al stops being N year pegs/separations that you must pass each of to move on annually (start year / pass or fail / break / next year). Instead it's year-round, fluid, continual. You are failing at this thing, continue until you are not, no break, no year markers.

The rigid year system is largely bullshit, it's an exceptionally idiotic approach. It's overly simplistic and lacks the nuance of an individual's context and needs.

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

#42

Post by jimmygrapes »

dls2016 wrote: post #39
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…

Most of what you're saying seems reasonable... but then I see a statistic like this: "Black Americans receive about 7 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded each year across all disciplines, but they have received just 1 percent of those granted over the last decade in mathematics." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/edray-goins-black-math... And this is the current production! You don't want to see the statistic…

There are questions that are not allowed to be asked and addressed because they are (often rightly) deemed racist. There are also questions that need to be asked that despite the racism still need to be addressed. But because there is no one size fits all, it doesn't matter. The only answers that avoid the questions are those which cannot be answered for many, many generations, and which also require racist policies to be enacted in order to be considered legitimate questions.

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

#43

Post by bodhiandphysics »

coredog64 wrote: post #29
bodhiandpysics1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Students in France go to school 6 days a week and have a longer school year.

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

#44

Post by [deleted] »

lmm wrote: post #25
bodhiandpysics1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#45

Post by dls2016 »

jimmygrapes wrote: post #42
dls2016 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of what you're saying seems reasonable... but then I see a statistic like this: "Black Americans receive about 7 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded each year across all disciplines, but they have received just 1 percent of those granted over the last decade in mathematics." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/edray-goins-black-math... And this is the current production! You don't want to see the statistic…

There are questions that are not allowed to be asked and addressed because they are (often rightly) deemed racist. There are also questions that need to be asked that despite the racism still need to be addressed. But because there is no one size fits all, it doesn't matter. The only answers that avoid the questions are those which cannot be answered for many, many generations, and which also require racist policies…

Sorry, I don't follow.

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

#46

Post by bodhiandphysics »

lmm wrote: post #25
bodhiandpysics1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who knows? Studies show relatively little influence of homework on achievement. But education studies are as a rule terrible. https://www.almendron.com/tribuna/wp-content/uploads/2016/02...

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

#47

Post by dllthomas »

mlyle wrote: post #40
II2II wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of homework has little to do with learning. Yes, students can learn from it. On the other hand, it is mostly intended to promote a certain type of work ethic where those who devote additional time and effort have more opportunities for success. Whether this is desirable is a different question. For those in a more supportive environment, it can lead to a narrowness of vision (with respect to both learning a…

> Yes, students can learn from it. Largely the evidence points towards it being harmful to learning in early educaiton. > On the other hand, it is mostly intended to promote a certain type of work ethic where those who devote additional time and effort have more opportunities for success. I think if you ask what homework is "intended" to do, you'll get a million different answers from different stakeholders. I think…

> Largely the evidence points towards it being harmful to learning in early educaiton.

Do you have a sense of whether that's harmful at the margin (a small reduction from typical produces better results), harmful in total (our results are presently worse than if there was no homework at those ages), or harmful in any quantity?

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

#49

Post by mlyle »

dllthomas wrote: post #47
mlyle wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, students can learn from it. Largely the evidence points towards it being harmful to learning in early educaiton. > On the other hand, it is mostly intended to promote a certain type of work ethic where those who devote additional time and effort have more opportunities for success. I think if you ask what homework is "intended" to do, you'll get a million different answers from different stakeholders. I think…

> Largely the evidence points towards it being harmful to learning in early educaiton. Do you have a sense of whether that's harmful at the margin (a small reduction from typical produces better results), harmful in total (our results are presently worse than if there was no homework at those ages), or harmful in any quantity?

This is a very good question. No, we don't have a good clear dose-response relationship.

> harmful in total (our results are presently worse than if there was no homework at those ages)

Most studies compare schools / classes assigning no homework to various "normal" levels of homework, so they imply that our results are presently worse than if there was no homework.

I do assign homework to middle school students. But I don't do it often, and it's typically of the form "think about an idea on the topic of _____ we can discuss" or "do the first couple items of this lab worksheet so that we can use our time in the classroom more efficiently tomorrow." I enforce its completion with social pressure, not the gradebook. "Dude, you were supposed to do the first couple questions on the lab worksheet!"

I have a feeling that there is better homework we could assign that would be useful. But we don't have a lot of evidence of what that would be. Proponents of flipped classrooms think that is the path forward, but the research quality is very dubious in primary education.

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

#50

Post by uejfiweun »

adventured wrote: post #41
uejfiweun wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How on earth do we de-escalate from here? I feel that in the US it is impossible to summon the political willpower to make it HARDER to graduate HS or go to college, even if these things would make society better off. My personal opinion is that the government should get out of education, just lower our taxes and let the free market handle the rest. Never gonna happen, however.

> How on earth do we de-escalate from here? You increase the chances to succeed at the same time you make it more difficult, to overwhelm that aspect. Reduce the binary outcome slightly so it's not just a cycle of fail and be thrown / throw yourself to the wolves (dropout). Dramatically increase vocational education training. Shift to a year-round school system. So you don't fail and abandon. Instead, you never stop…

I love these ideas and I agree with them for the most part. But I am pessimistic about US society's capacity to make such far reaching changes to a system that has largely stayed the same for almost 100 years. There are just too many forces pulling these government officials too many ways - the best we will get is some compromise that satisfies nobody.

That's why I say we should move to a more free-market based solution. It would be EASY for a private organization to completely revamp the way the school year structure works! I went to public school myself, but I believe I've heard of such "progressive" or "nontraditional" private schools that offer different structures than the standard "grade" approach.

Of course, the issue with private schools is cost, but I think direct subsidies a la stimulus checks as well as tax cuts could help.

Of course, this would cause mass disruption in the education labor market, but the nuances of that escape me.

Post reply on HN