Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading
51–60 of 359 posts
Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading
#52Mod: 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
As prostoalex pointed out, it was the HTML doc title - which is a perfectly legitimate option. But I think the page title is a bit more neutral, so have changed it.
Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading
#53I’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 o…
They're babysitting them so that the parents contribute to their employer's bottom line.
Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading
#54I’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 o…
A lot of people say things like this, but then with their actual voting power, elect to put leaders in place who pursue exactly these outcomes.
Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
HN isn't a place for every conversation, and this is one that people can't go slow enough to digest properly.
Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading
#56Earlier 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.
Public education is one of those rare positive externalities. I think it would be a mistake to abandon it.
If we wanted to succeed here, we would likely need to invest more money to hire more or superior teachers that could work individually with these students that struggle to meet the requirements. The worst part would be that even with that investment it may not even be enough. Some portion of the students who don't achieve are not interested in excelling, and individual attention may not help much there.
Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading
#57Earlier 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.
Public education is one of those rare positive externalities. I think it would be a mistake to abandon it. If we wanted to succeed here, we would likely need to invest more money to hire more or superior teachers that could work individually with these students that struggle to meet the requirements. The worst part would be that even with that investment it may not even be enough. Some portion of the students who don…
Public education is a net good but the implementation model of that education is what’s such a problem right now. There’s a reason so many more kids are home schooled now than ever before and it’s a complete lack of confidence in public schools. Private school waiting lists are a mile long.
Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading
#58I’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…
I don't think pay is the issue. Teachers are already reasonably well paid considering their benefits (e.g. summers off). I think the problem is that we have to pay and fire teachers based on seniority instead of ability.
Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading
#59> 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.
But some level of work ethic is certainly important. You don't need to work 80 hour weeks but you need to actually get your work done within a ballpark of when you said you'd get it done.
Re: Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading
#60Earlier 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.
Retrieval practice and attempting to solve problems before you know the solution to them _does_ improve retention [1]. At least in my high school, those drills definitely exercised these two ideas. In college I copied half my homeworks from answers or exercised the option to make my grade entirely dependent on exams and I definitely retained less information than if I had done the homework.