Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by laserbeam » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

wwilim wrote: post #150

Lhiw wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How is this penalizing well-off students? By making it harder to automatically get ahead in education just because your poor classmates are sliding off the slippery slope of a negative feedback loop? I wouldn't call it penalizing.

This is actually a fun thing to talk about, but an HN thread is insufficient. There are schools and countries out there who focus more on excellence and cater to the top students. They put a ton of effort and praise on the top % with contests, a dense curriculum. I think most of eastern Europe, possibly Russia and likely a lot of other places fall into this category. On the other side, you have places like Scandinavia where the curriculum is less dense, and teachers focus on getting everyone above a lower knowledge threshold.

It's a great topic to research if you want to actually improve the education system. Go have fun reading and learning about it, the more you understand about the tradeoffs of these approaches, the better! But that's clearly not what the author of the article, or the commenter referred to. _sigh_

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

#182

Post by jjeaff » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 7:13 AM UTC

Lhiw wrote: post #153

wwilim wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this penalizing well-off students? By making it harder to automatically get ahead in education just because your poor classmates are sliding off the slippery slope of a negative feedback loop? I wouldn't call it penalizing.

They're dropping the homework requirement. This is a huge amount of extra study time to absorb and practice what you've learned throughout the day.

Underprivileged or not, homework assignments are ridiculously over assigned. Kids go to school for 8 hours to learn, then they are expected to go home and ... work some more?

Just like I don't think it is fair for my employer to expect me to work when I go home, children should stop school work when they go home.

There is usually a 1 hour study hall period for students in high school. Teachers should either provide time in class to do any assignments or limit the time required to do those assignments to whatever share of that daily study hall hour they can negotiate among the other teachers/subjects.

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

#183

Post by inglor_cz » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 7:13 AM UTC

bko wrote: post #27

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 o…

School seems to fulfill at least three different purposes:

A. Give kids some education (or educayshun, depending on the quality of the school).

B. Act as a sort of daycare, so that both parents can go to work and keep the wheels of the economy turning (or the computer mice clicking, nowadays).

C. Job security for the staff.

B+C can be easily done without accomplishing much of A, and the only thing than can guarantee at least some A is pressure from the parents. But in some places, concerned parents with enough time and energy to do that are so few that they cannot move the colossus. Moving away or finding private school for their kids is simpler.

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

#184

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #158

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…

> > 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. Usually this is not by marking assignments "not required" or changing the denominator. Instead, many educators are giving a 50% for a missing assignments: not a zero, but a far less ins…

> But I don't seek to ever give students a test where what's on the test is a surprise/some kind of secret

The "secret" is applying the knowledge supposedly learned, not applying the solution you already know.

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

#185

Post by visarga » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

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…

> What really predicts success is how rich your parents are.

I personally know people who had poor parents and succeeded by education and hard work, don't dismiss what you don't know.

> The hate directed at this article is endemic of fear. Absolute fear that someone will get more than you.

No, it's your comment that's hateful. You think little of the individual, only the family and identity groups matter. That's why you are against tests and grades.

I think movements who value abstract ideas (critical justice, religion, communism, nationalism) over real flesh and blood humans, who over-generalise and ignore the specifics of each case, are leading us towards the reign of terror.

They all want uniformity, the individual dissolved into the group identity, all united in the same ideology. Like soldiers.

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

#186

Post by sien » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 7:15 AM UTC

jhoechtl wrote: post #179

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.

Nope. It's going up :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

Mind you, perhaps American High Schools are poised to stop this....

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

#187

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 7:15 AM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #167

WalterBright wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot of work to prepare a good physics exam, partly because you don't want to pose questions that the students are already familiar with.

At what level? Undergraduate physics / secondary honors track, sure. But in MS physical science and the intro physics HS class I'm familiar with-- doing simple, well-understood kinematics problems is where a whole lot of test effort is spent (while trying to build intuition and process that the best students will be able to use for harder problems). I mean, it's fun to ask "trick" questions, like what happens to a he…

I'm not suggesting "trick" questions. Let's give a simple example:

    10 * 10 = ?

If the student has already seen that question, he knows the answer is 100. If he hasn't seen it, he has to apply the the techniques learned to solve it.

Which of those two is a proper test question?

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

#188

Post by remarkEon » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 7:16 AM UTC

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.

"Hogwarts" reference aside, you are right that extremely structured environments (boarding schools are what I assume you are alluding to) can actually bring out the best in young bright people, especially young men, and it's unfortunate that we've basically done away with that in the United States as a way to educate children.

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

#189

Post by mjevans » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 7:17 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #173

mjevans wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That turned out really bad because only the problem (political problem) kids went there, and they also were often privately run and had very lax oversight.

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

#190

Post by hintymad » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 7:19 AM UTC

Some people seem not get it: dropping homework or objective assessment will not help under-privileged students but hurt them. Homework and object assessment are not used to oppress people (what kind of sick mind would think of that?). They are used to give students timely feedback on what they need to improve upon. Just reading books and listening to lectures will help students learn probably 20% or less, and it is homework or exercises in general that will take students to the next level. Remember the classic STEM textbooks? The authors will usually say that exercises are an important part of the book, and students should try to solve all of them? Let me guess, completing those exercises will be racist?

And why do you left think that lowering standards will help poor students? You think the poor students will get better education without pushing themselves? You think less trained students will do better in their future job? You think they will magically master advanced concepts and skills? You think they will suddenly become better problem solvers? On the other hand, you think the families with means will not send their kids to Russian School of Mathematics, to Art of Problem Solving, and to teach some kids advanced STEM and reading and writing with other like-minded parents and private teachers? You think that those with means won't send their kids to private school if public schools go to hell? Do you left even know that those with means do not need to go to tutoring schools or private schools if public schools have some common sense? Do you left even know that the best K-12 schools in China are always, I mean always, public schools? Do you left even know that the best teachers in each Chinese city are always, always, public school teachers? Do you left even ask yourself why the majority of Chinese students graduated from public schools yet they are so good at STEM subjects (they may not have as many geniuses as in the western world, but I'm talking about ordinary students here)?

Yeah, I'm sure labeling everything racism and everyone who disagree with you racist will magically improve K-12 education of the US. It's as if you left are trying to destroy the life of under-privileged by pretending to be righteous.