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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

#211

Post by gs17 »

sien wrote: post #186
jhoechtl wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

You should look a few sections down in that article. There is evidence that it slowed down and possibly even reversed in recent decades.

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

#212

Post by kazinator »

> Others — often those who had to work or care for family members after school — would fail to turn in their homework and fall so far behind that they would just stop trying.

Work or care for family members after school — why, that's a new problem nobody had 25, 50, 100, ... 150 years ago. Gotta change grading!

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

#213

Post by rahimnathwani »

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…

If a system can't teach kids to read for $20k/student/year (SF) or $30k/student/year (NY), why do you think giving the same administrators even more money is a good idea?

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

#214

Post by Broken_Hippo »

DeathArrow wrote: post #204
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…

>Worried you'll get called a racist for suggesting an anti racist is wrong? That's a reasonable worry in these days.

I don't have an issue with it and spend zero time worrying about it. Why do you think it is reasonable?

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

#215

Post by Broken_Hippo »

hhaha88 wrote: post #176
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…

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…

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.

Everyone has a net worth, which will highlight some things and leave out others. Sometimes it is zero or negative, but you still have one.

But I'm guessing that wasn't an error but a thinly veiled way to call everyone poor as an insult.

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

#216

Post by bodhiandpysics1 »

b9a2cab5 wrote: post #60
lmm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. [1]: https://www.retrieval…

That's the real problem with the studies saying homework does nothing. Drill does improve learning! But that's not showing up in these studies for some reason...

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

#217

Post by alanfranz »

hintymad wrote: post #190

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 h…

I think that the point is not about lowering standards; it's about preventing unrelated variables to enter the equation.

Examples:

  - A lot of redundant homework is assigned, quantity over quality. Some students with external duties (e.g. family, work) are just unable to deliver all the homework, and thus get lower grades, even though less homework would be enough to demonstrate ability in a topic;
  - Deadlines are set too close to an homework availability date, so students with external duties are sometimes unable to meet them;
  - Students in affluent families could be helped by third parties with their homework; it's hard to verify that;
  - Students that do a bad homework or fail an exam should be able to retake it, since it's easier to have a "bad day" if your family has issues.
The point is measuring actual student ability, not busywork throughput or the willingness to meet arbitrary deadlines.

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

#218

Post by blub »

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…

Education is one of the places where institutionalized racism clearly exists in the US and Western Europe, but not in the way you think. According to Wilfred Reilly for the US: “Black (and Latino) students often receive admissions offers with test scores twenty or thirty percentage points lower than those of white or Asian applicants. At a typical top-50 educational institution, the “affirmative action edge” for minority applicants appears to be in the order of 300 test points.”

“the middle-class white male applicant to any good college or Fortune 500 job does not actually enjoy massive white privilege. Instead, he is at a 250–310 SAT-point competitive disadvantage relative to an identically qualified Black or Hispanic opponent.“

— Taboo: 10 Facts You Can't Talk About by Wilfred Reilly

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

#219

Post by toast0 »

WalterBright wrote: post #82
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…

> The value of homework has little to do with learning. I learned the hard way that skipping the homework means bombing the test. You don't learn problem solving skills by listening to a lecture or watching TV. It's easy to imagine you've learned it, till you're confronted by the test.

Depends on the class and the student.

I remember my highschool chem teacher harping on the class after every test "I'd like to tell you all that if you don't do the homework, you won't pass the test, but toast0 didn't do the homework and did the best on the test so do the work" (or something like that). To be fair, I'd look at the homework, I just didn't feel like writing it down and turning it in, most of the time, so for classes where grading let me skip homework and I felt I had a good grasp of the material, I skipped it.

But, for kids like me, we'll succeed im school as long as there aren't active roadblocks from staff (or other students or other life issues). I think the real question is how to help the kids that need help. How do we get them motivated and engaged and empowered to learn the material?

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

#220

Post by alanfranz »

The article is interesting, but I'm not certain what the schools are actually doing.

The point is measuring actual student skill, not busywork throughput or the ability to meet arbitrary deadlines. That's fine, IMHO.

But we still need an objective way to measure the skills - e.g. an exam, an in-class assignment or presentation, something like that. Students should be allowed to retake exams if they fail. But then, if students from affluent families do better (because they've got more time to study!), they should be given a better grade, otherwise things lose meaning. Maybe we could switch to performance-based learning, where students graduate later, but in the end they achieve a certain skill level.

The improvement should come from changing poor students' environment - try giving them enough room to study and the right tools - not by dropping the grade system.

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