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

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

#291

Post by brightball »

dorchadas wrote: post #253
bruceb wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes how dare they take vacation as already negotiated in their contract. Darn those teacher hanging at their mansions Also anyone who works at google should not be allowed to take vacation if they worked from home. Sure that would go over well. The vaccine wasn’t really available till a few months into 2021, and I can understand the hesitation on some to be the first to take a new vaccine. Yes private schools might r…

> Yes private schools might run better. Shockingly richer and generally two parent families are going to have children that been primed to respect learning and have less trauma so much easier to deal with. Public schools teachers don’t have this luxury. Exactly. OP acts as if it's such a great surprise they're run better. Obviously they would be, because they can pick and choose who they take and usually only get tho…

They only get kids whose families are well off enough to afford it, specifically because only people with a lot of money have a choice.

You can either afford to:

1. Pay out of pocket for private school

2. Afford to have 1 parent be responsible for participation in some type of home school education (group or otherwise)

3. Relocate your house to somewhere zoned for a “good school”

If you can’t afford any of those things, you don’t have a choice. That’s why people want vouchers.

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

#292

Post by danaris »

endominus wrote: post #180
stjohnswarts wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Some public schools that we have right now aren't working well (ie, the implementation is a problem, not the idea), because we have, for decades, been siphoning money away from them to fund private schools, refusing to provide funding for necessary materials (textbooks, classroom supplies, building maintenance, desks & chairs that don't break when you sit in them), underpaying and under-hiring teachers so that many people who want to go into teaching feel that they can't because it's unaffordable...

Just "throwing money at them" isn't going to work, no, because the money needs to go to the right places. But there are so many places where it's pretty clear that extra money will make a huge difference that arguing that schools are overfunded—or that "public schools don't work"—is just ludicrous.

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

#293

Post by hhaha88 »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #215
hhaha88 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would you accept a Christian forcing you to recite their Bible and behave within their tradition? Why must I accept your view of worthiness?

What is reinforced in ones neurology becomes the most probable ideas one will work with.

I get I have to work within the concept socially, but I’m pantomiming belief.

If I die there are millions of others who can replace my effort. The same is true of any of us; all these tech enabled companies aren’t running on just your effort.

Why should the concept that makes you feel warm and fuzzy be mine?

I’m guessing that wasn’t an error, but that you’ve simply never considered others might sincerely not give fuck about your personal perspective of how things work socially.

You get a vote. Otherwise you’re just 1 of 7 billion. It’s not written in a contract we’re all friends

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

#294

Post by jimmygrapes »

dls2016 wrote: post #289
cbozeman wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I'll say what apparently everyone else is terrified of mentioning, for some reason. Black people score lowest on IQ tests than any other population group in the world. It's been repeated the world over, dozens of times, over a minimum of 30 years, and psychometricians are dying to somehow disprove it, but have so far been unable to do so. You'll see a lot of assholes who've done absolutely zero reading on this…

Yes, I've also read The Bell Curve. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with designing an education system. Lots of kids aren't going to be professional athletes, but they still manage to have fun kicking a ball around. The same is not true in mathematics, for instance. Of course there should be a small part of the education system capable of identifying and guiding the geniuses... but it should be in the context…

The missing piece is media-driven culture. But video games don't cause violence, according to studies, which clearly leads to the belief that music doesn't cause drug trafficking or gang violence or hyper-machismo otherwise all other cultural music would do the same for their respective demographics. Surely media depictions of success aren't emulated. There's no way that success in sports as a way out of poverty could be hijacked not just from the top down but from the bottom up as well. There is definitely zero association between complexity of sound and complexity of thought. There is no causal link between any of this, it's simply systemic oppression over the course of decades, no, centuries. We should, in fact, celebrate this culture more.

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

#295

Post by SavantIdiot »

visarga wrote: post #185
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…

"I personally know..."

Stop there.

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

#296

Post by mlyle »

WalterBright wrote: post #194
mlyle wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> like what happens to a helium balloon in a turning car Is that really a "trick" question? The balloon drifts to the underside of the roof on the inside of the turn. > I wouldn't assess based on them I would. I expect physics students to get past their knee-jerk intuitions and think about the principles they've been taught. Otherwise what's the point of learning physics?

> Is that really a "trick" question?

Sure-- per a sibling comment of mine, it tricks half of freshmen at Caltech. Throwing it at a random 8th or 9th grader can be expected to be even worse.

> I would. I expect physics students to get past their knee-jerk intuitions and think about the principles they've been taught. Otherwise what's the point of learning physics?

In 8th grade?

A) To learn a little bit about the world works

B) to get a whole lot of practical experience with dimensional analysis, applying formulae, and drawing diagrams of simple systems

C) to begin to decide if deep study on this track might be for you, hopefully building a little bit of wonder that might inspire you to study it more deeply and pay attention to physics in the world around you.

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

#297

Post by mlyle »

WalterBright wrote: post #187
mlyle wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think your example is a curious one, because obviously we want the student to know 10 * 10 by rote. Indeed, arithmetic is one area where (almost) everyone favors rote.

To be more general: if you're giving an 8th-9th grade kinematics test, there's two or three families of easy inclined plane problems, and hopefully your students have seen a few of all types. They shouldn't know the answer is "3.5 m/s", but they should be able to select a procedure they've used before and employ it.

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

#298

Post by edanm »

alanfranz wrote: post #217
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…

Just wanted to say thank you for providing actual, reasonable things to think about. As someone who is very skeptical of movements to ignore grading/etc, as are many others here, it's nice to have good counterarguments against my default view.

(That said, and agreeing with the above completely, I think many people are saying things that are far less reasonable than everything you say above.)

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

#299

Post by dorchadas »

alanfranz wrote: post #290
dorchadas wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to not penalize students (.i. homework grades) if they have to work to help support their family, or have so many other trauma issues. GP here really seems to have an idealized version of how school works, ignoring all facts that actually influence learning and stuff (.i. socioeconomic ones). Homework just compounds those problems, and I'd also say there's no such thing as "objective assessments" as well.

> And to not penalize students (.i. homework grades) if they have to work to help support their family, or have so many other trauma issues Just to explain my point: if a student has worse skills, whatever their reason is, they should have lower grades. That's what a grade is for. Then, you may want to address the causes of such low grade. What you don't want to do is penalize students for arbitrary reasons like dead…

> Just to explain my point: if a student has worse skills, whatever their reason is, they should have lower grades. That's what a grade is for.

This, I absolutely agree with. Last year I implemented a standards-based system. If you could prove to me you knew the material, you got the points. If you learned it later and proved to me you knew it then, your grade changed.

I did do homework grades (I was required to have one grade a week, and there's no way I could do enough continuous assessment), but it was solely participation and as long as you turned it in and tried (.i. didn't cheat), you got full credit.

Generally, I completely agree you don't want to penalize them for arbitrary reasons; to me, that includes homework. I had to do it, but as long as it was turned in eventually, and honestly attempted, they got full credit (it was like 10% the overall grade). To me, that's how it should be done.

Basically, I completely agree and didn't mean to seem as if I was disagreeing with you!

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

#300

Post by dorchadas »

dls2016 wrote: post #287
dorchadas wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, I'm one of them. And I too use to think it was all me and my aptitude and merit and hard work. Now, it makes me cringe how I could ever think that. With age I've realized how privileged I was, and how many people who really worked far harder than me and still didn't get ahead. Same. For me, though, it took going back and becoming a teacher to see how privileged I was. Mom was a teacher, both parents at home a…

Exactly. I'm sure you put in a lot of hard work to become Valedictorian! But a lot of other responses seem to take any critique of the system as an attack on their own hard work. Realistically, people like you and I who had a stable upbringing probably would be successful in any reasonable system. I personally attended a poor middle school and didn't learn algebra until 9th grade, but still managed to end up as a mat…

> I'm sure you put in a lot of hard work to become Valedictorian!

Sadly, no. I hate to sound like one of those 'gifted' people, but a lot of it just came naturally. I never learned how to study; university was a rude awakening, though I still didn't really learn until after graduating there when I started self-studying things.

> Realistically, people like you and I who had a stable upbringing probably would be successful in any reasonable system.

Exactly. I'm thinking now to all my classmates and what they did after. The ones who didn't struggle in school (not necessarily excelled, but they didn't struggle), were all those who had stable households. As far as I'm aware, minus a few who got into opioids (rural America!), most are doing well for themselves. It really does impact a lot.

> I personally attended a poor middle school and didn't learn algebra until 9th grade, but still managed to end up as a mathematics postdoc at a very nice place.

Awesome! Mathematics is what I've started self-studying (I did physics, now dong a physics/applied mathematics masters), and it's super interesting. Just proving stuff is so much fun.

> I cannot wrap my brain around the reluctance to make changes to the system in the face of statistics like the one I mentioned elsewhere and have observed with my own eyes (that is, there are very, very few African American PhDs in mathematics).

Exactly! Part of me thinks it's because it forces us to look behind the curtain, so to speak. If we look at why, we realize it's because of the socioeconomic factors, and then we have to look at what caused that, etc.

> although you can teach college without knowing any formal pedagogical methods,

Sadly, I sometimes wonder the validity of education research. Formal pedagogical methods certainly helped me (I did a MAT while teaching, and there was a noticeable difference), but I really didn't become a decent (wouldn't say I'm good yet) teacher until I had a coworker who really was great and took and interest in explaining things and working with me. It really changed my whole outlook on teaching.

> And I've come to the conclusion that backing away from homogenized curricula most hurts 1) bad teachers and 2) textbook companies.

Absolutely. I'm a huge proponent of public schools, but part of me has really wanted to start a charter school. There would be one major requirement when hiring: the teachers have studied the subject. So your math teachers all have math degrees, English teachers have literature degrees, etc. I think this would really work for lower levels, as you get teachers who are interested in it (instead of being taught math by a teacher who isn't a 'math person', which rubs off on the kids), but because they also understand it at a deeper level and can hopefully find new approaches to it. No textbooks, either. Hopefully it'd be small enough that they wouldn't be needed. Also, at least at a younger level, no homework and let the kids actually be kids and play. I'd argue at least an hour or more recess a day, and a long lunch.

I'd certainly be interested to hear some of your ideas for moving away from the homogenized curricula, and will be looking into those two you mentioned. Thank you!

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