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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

#171

Post by laserbeam »

esyir wrote: post #161
askafriend wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mention that because it emphasizes their other point. It's the equivalent of "I'm a vegetarian but even I drool at the thought of bacon". You don't have to mention that you're vegetarian....it's there because it places extra emphasis on how appealing bacon can be. sigh did I really to break it down like that

There's the other side of the coin though. You say that not to emphasise the point, but to protect yourself. "I'm not a racist because I agree with x", don't call me a racist for disagreeing with you.

Sort of, was an "I don't have to be a racist to agree with X". Or "Hey, I'm on your side, but you did X poorly."

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

#172

Post by NegativeLatency »

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.

Many school districts have increasingly hired more administrators and the like that aren’t teachers but he payed considerably more.

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

#173

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mjevans wrote: post #137
ipaddr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Easier to understand: Hogwarts. Harry Potter was pried from that little dusty cupboard closet beneath the stairs and sent to somewhere to reach success. Send kids that don't have a good home life to someplace where the adults care and have the resources to see that they do succeed.

Boarding schools aren’t popular in the USA. Where they are used for poverty reasons (eg China), racism is easily involved (Uighur kids are more often shunted to boarding schools than Han kids in xinjiang). We also tried this with Native Americans in the 20th century and that turned out really bad.

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

#174

Post by inglor_cz »

Lhiw wrote: post #152
thablackbull wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually on topic though, Asia is laughing at us. Are you really that self centered that you think that people around the globe care.

They don't have to care to laugh at us for dumbing down our kids.

This.

People in other places do not care that much (setting aside the worrying possibility that this kind of thinking may be later imported to their own countries), but given the prominence of English in worldwide communication and the massive role of American media, they will read the news and either laugh or frown.

American internal problems are much more visible to the outside world than, say, Italian ones.

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

#175

Post by wwilim »

A lot of the heated debate here is about racism. I'm not from the US, but in my experience people get terribly inequal opportunities in education even in environments where everyone has the same ethnic background. The most limiting factors as I see them are first and foremost a lack of love and care from one's parents, and second a wealth deficit.

Many commenters are also furious about alleged "lowering the bar". Remember than once we take away certain factors from grading, if we do it right, new factors will take their place - it's not just going to be all participation prizes. The idea is that the bar will be higher, but it will be positioned in a place where all students have to jump the same height to clear it.

The general idea is clear, but as for how that could be implemented, I don't know. I was hoping to find out in the article, but I was left terribly disappointed. The way it is written does make it sound like coaching baloney, which I think doesn't do the people trying to improve their education system any justice, it just makes it easy for them to be labeled social justice warriors.

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

#176

Post by hhaha88 »

Lhiw wrote: post #132
laserbeam wrote: post #101

I was really hoping this is a decent article about what some teacher or school did about the problem. It starts like that but then it goes kablookie... So, a certain Joshua Moreno is fed up with the system and did something about that, 2 paragraphs. GREAT. Then the rest of the entire article is about institutionalized racism and how the current system fails us. At no point do we get a good example about what mr Moren…

Why do you have to agree there is institutional racism in schools to think this is garbage writing? Worried you'll get called a racist for suggesting an anti racist is wrong? Actually on topic though, Asia is laughing at us. Removing homework and grading? Because "racism"? You shouldn't be penalizing well off people (white or not) with worse schooling because some lower class students (black or not) dont have enough…

Why did you see a link between their agreement with the premise of institutional racism and the writing is bad? Just to make this comment?

Who cares if Asia is laughing at us? What does that even mean? A geographical region has a sense of humor?

You’re anthropomorphizing maps, linking disparate ideas for no reason, and trying to solve institutional racism in 5 sentences that could have been copy-pasted off any number of long deleted message boards over the last 30 years (I’ve been online that long).

This is laughable discourse. This forum thinking it’s better than Reddit is great.

FWIW I don’t think any of you actually have a net worth. We’re just repeating the most commonly reinforced sentences of the last few decades.

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

#177

Post by scollet »

wyldfire wrote: post #56
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.

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…

That's untrue. I'll bet my life that the population of students uninterested in excelling is around 50 people in the entire US.

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

#178

Post by thioordc »

pcmoney wrote: post #143
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…

No it is fear I’ll be on the operating table with a surgeon who has been trained to think that if he botches something there is a do over.

Can you tell me the difference between a 4.0 and a 3.9? Usually I find it to be a ~1-2%! That 1% difference is just one sign error, rounding mistake or miss read question on a midterm! However that difference between how that looks on your transcript is extremely substantial. I feel like 1% is just waaay to “accurate” for teachers to handle! Finding a good teacher is much more important than working hard or understanding the material. I think it should just be pass or fail

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

#179

Post by jhoechtl »

laserbeam wrote: post #101

I was really hoping this is a decent article about what some teacher or school did about the problem. It starts like that but then it goes kablookie... So, a certain Joshua Moreno is fed up with the system and did something about that, 2 paragraphs. GREAT. Then the rest of the entire article is about institutionalized racism and how the current system fails us. At no point do we get a good example about what mr Moren…

Isn't the general intelligence level going down since like 20 years or so? I admit I have no factual proof nor a link to study, I only read and hear that from time to time so this might be an urban legend.

But if so, we face a large-scale societal problem we might not even be able to tackle, like leaded gas was likely a major contributor to soaring violence in the 60ies to 80ies.

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

#180

Post by endominus »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #133
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.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Public schools work. You can’t deny that.

Per the GP, in their area "the high school math and reading proficiency rate are 8% and 44% respectively, while the graduation rate is >95%". That sounds like an absolute denial that public schools are working, unless your definition of a working school includes ones that don't teach the majority to read and comprehend mathematics at an adult level. Spending on schools is higher than it's ever been, and the results are flat-lining - and have been for decades. See [0]. Perhaps the issue is something that throwing money at them won't fix? Perhaps it behooves us to look deeper and see if the education system is performing what we need it to do.

[0]: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/mar/02/dave-brat/...

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