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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

#121

Post by jim-jim-jim »

ipaddr wrote: post #98
wyldfire wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why would paying more for teachers fix the issue? The best teachers will still prefer private school because kids are more displined. You end up paying more for the same or worse now you attract a new group who are in it for the money. Education starts at home and without a learning culture with displine these children are setup to fail.

Anecdotal, but during my time as a teacher, the one variable that seemed to govern the success/failure of students was home life—especially whether or not the child had two loving parents. Poverty seems to be the common denominator in those unstable households. I think a broad and robust approach to our collective welfare can address the issue far better than "more money to education!" can.

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

#122

Post by JPKab »

brightball wrote: post #57
wyldfire wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm a parent of two kids and I couldn't agree more.

I went to mostly black and poor public schools my entire childhood. Back then there were a few teachers who clearly didn't care and were never held accountable. Most of the teachers were pretty good though. It's increasingly shifted towards the opposite.

I was blown away by how pathetically run my children's public schools are here in Colorado so I put them both in private school. They get less than half the money per student that the public school system I live in gets, and are vastly more efficient. The operations, the instructors, it's all just run correctly.

When my daughter was still in a public elementary school I walked in one day to try to get her iPad fixed when they were doing full remote learning due to the pandemic. There was a large meeting taking place amongst all the staff. None of them had bothered to return my calls which is why I had to go in person. They looked like they were having a party because I didn't see any work getting done.

At the end of the day it's a government school. Name a single government agency that is efficient with their money. Name a government agency that's good at hiring, or keeping good talent.

We should just do a voucher system and let the private sector deal with this. As a taxpayer I'm deeply resentful of having my money get taken from me and given to unionized teachers who refused to work for a full year and then had the nerve to take summer vacation as if it had been a normal year. These were the same folks who were put at the front of the line for vaccinations independent of their age groups. And then they proceeded to act like they were still in danger and couldn't open schools.

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

#123

Post by WalterBright »

> That makes each mark more meaningful than a grade that is a hodgepodge of factors that can vary from teacher to teacher.

Grades are always going to be a varying hodgepodge of factors. That's why there are standardized tests, but those are being dumped, too.

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

#124

Post by kqr »

lmm wrote: post #28
btheshoe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but are you really arguing that getting bad grades is a good way to learn how to deal with anxiety? Do you have evidence for that statement?

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

#125

Post by baron816 »

Would it be that complicated to just skip grades and only advanced students once they’ve mastered a subject? Why do we say “60% correct? That’s good enough you can start learning more complicated stuff”? Let’s just allow students to keep working on something until they’ve demonstrated mastery, and allow them to move at their own pace.

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

#126

Post by ahevia »

WalterBright wrote: post #120

> give students a five-day grace period to turn in work I don't see how that changes anything. It just means the homework deadline is 5 days later. > eliminate zeroes in grade books Meaning if one does well on the first assignment, the rest of the semester can be ignored. A savvy student, once they achieved an A, will be motivated to not turn in any more assignments or tests. > and re-do tests Once you know what is o…

I mean allowing multiple redos for tests doesn’t seem awful. Especially if the test questions can be mixed up. My physics and calculus classes did this with online software & I mastered those subjects pretty heavily towards the end. I understand this can’t be repeated for all subjects but the general idea doesn’t seem like the worse

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

#127

Post by bobthepanda »

wrycoder wrote: post #87
wyldfire wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We put a ton of money into the schools. It does not get to the right place, and what does is not spent on the traditional basics. In addition, for several reasons, teachers no longer control their classrooms. They have no authority. You can’t let students get ahead, because equity, and you can’t give special help, because it looks like condescension. Everyone’s a winner, everyone graduates.

depending on where you are, even the capital bill for improving schools is daunting.

NYC, for instance, regularly reports lead paint exposure in schools.

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

#128

Post by gjs278 »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #93

Glad to see school systems addressing the systemic inequities that have become visible due to the pandemic. There are other ways to grade. The point system has always been lazy, about as effective at predicting competence and success as standardized testing. What really predicts success is how rich your parents are. Sure there are rich fuckups, but not having to take care of parents or younger siblings while living o…

username is all I needed to read

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

#129

Post by gjs278 »

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…

sounds like you were a bad student. none of those excuses will work at work.

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

#130

Post by WalterBright »

mlyle wrote: post #115
WalterBright wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd get assigned homework all through school, but usually would complete it in 5 minutes in class, as did the others. I can't remember ever having to take something home to do. The teachers hardly ever filled up the class time, so there was always time to just do the homework.

I teach bell to bell. (Well, my students show up early to my class, so I teach more like 2 minutes before the bell to 2 minutes before the bell). Typical homework loads today are waaaaaay over 5 minutes per class in MS and HS. Current high school homework loads are on the order of 10 hours per week in many places. And in fairness, people like you or me, or most of Hacker News-- don't really count. We're outliers and…

If teachers really do assign more homework these days than in my day, this practice has certainly failed to move the needle on results.

If the school-by-zoom accomplished anything, it gave the parents a window onto what was actually being taught. They didn't like what they saw, hence the pushback in the PTA and school board meetings.

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