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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

#311

Post by dorchadas »

nitrogen wrote: post #310
dorchadas wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a teacher, I can name at least 50 that are uninterested in excelling. Mostly because they've been conditioned to be that way, usually by parents/community who see no value in education. You can work with them and get them interested, but it takes a lot to undo that conditioning (along with all the other stuff they've endured through their education years of being told "Well, you're just not an X person", etc.). It…

It's not the responsibility of and not within the capabilities of the education system to undo the cultural damage that has been done by the worship of sports and crime above all else in popular media. What's needed is a revolution in role models.

I wouldn't say it's just those things, though I agree it's not the schools' responsibilities and that we definitely need a revolution in role models and in our culture.

Reminds me of the Key & Peele sketch 'If We Treated Teachers Like Pro Athletes' [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYOg8EON29Y

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

#312

Post by visarga »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #295
visarga wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So there's at least one counter example.

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

#313

Post by pmdulaney »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #32
pmdulaney wrote: post #17

In Friends we laughed when Phoebe said, "I'd like to help you but I don't want to." Now kids say, "I'd like to do the work necessary to get good grades, but I don't want to."

Do they?

The hypothetical words I have placed in the mouth of a hypothetical student have not been vetted or approved by an educational professional.

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

#314

Post by scruple »

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.

> Private school waiting lists are a mile long.

And sometimes (many times?) the financial calculus is such that _leaving your job/career_ is the cheaper of the two options. Daycare is already more than our mortgage with 2 and the private school elementary age prices that I've seen in my area are _more_ expensive.

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

#315

Post by yuliyp »

bedobi wrote: post #156
yuliyp wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Granted, these are obviously exaggerated and hypothetical stereotypes, which I don't really want to contribute to perpetuating, but they illustrate a point. You don't exactly have to be some kind of bleeding heart social justice activist to see how unfair it is to Z to be "objectively graded" as lacking "performance" when compared to X. I don't think that it follows from this that it's unfair for Y/Z to have a lowe…

> I don't think that it follows from this that it's unfair for Y/Z to have a lower grade The unfairness is pretty obvious, if you don't see it I don't know what to tell you. > That doesn't mean they're a worse person / student > How you interpret that later on is a different question This is pointless semantics - we all know exactly how it will be interpreted and what it will mean for Y's prospects to have the worse…

I think you missed the point of my post. I am fine with accounting for the challenges that someone has due to their background and circumstances. I just don't think it should be done by changing how we measure things. I feel that we should measure objectively, even if that is "unfair". What we do with the raw data, and how we weight the circumstances around that is a separate question, and I agree with you that it would be unfair to judge someone purely based on a grade without taking their circumstances and the challenges that held them back into account.

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

#316

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

JPKab wrote: post #308
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Name a government agency that's good at hiring, or keeping good talent. How about NASA? I'm not a US citizen so apologies if I got that wrong but I figured NASA always had the goods, in terms of personel, even if they also had some bad apples in there.

I have a good friend who is a super talented software engineer. She's at Google these days, but has been at a lot of cool startups. When I met her, she was working at NASA. A super brilliant person, who can basically solve any problem you throw at her. NASA had assigned her to be in charge of a pile of shitty LabView code used to run a massive "freezer" whose purpose is to be used on rare occasions to test hardware a…

Mwell, that is reminiscent of my experience in $LARGE_CORP where I was hired with a few years experience as a soft. eng. and was given a completely nontechnical role (I was supposed to make wireframes in PowerPoint), while a new graduate who was hired at the same time as myself was put in a "hands on" coding position. That other hire was a guy. My explanation was that $LARGE_CORP simply thought that, hey, she's a chick, she doesn't want to code. Or something along those lines.

That was a private company, btw. I think large companies have problems with personel like that, whether public or private. They have problems, in that their understanding of the labour market has stayed in the 1930's. Anyway I think the same thing that happened with me happened to your friend in NASA.

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

#317

Post by WalterBright »

tzs wrote: post #252
WalterBright wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

A slight variation of that balloon question (it asked what happens to the balloon when the car starts moving) was on a Ph 1 homework at Caltech in 1977. I don't know if I'd call it a trick question, but there were large contingents supporting both "it moves toward the back" and "it moves toward the front", and a few going with "it stays where it is". Back in those days there was an annual organized bus trip to Disney…

> annual organized bus trip to Disneyland for Caltech students

Huh, I was in Page House in 1977, and never heard of that. I do recall the whole House trooping off to see the premier of Star Wars :-)

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

#318

Post by WalterBright »

mlyle wrote: post #297
WalterBright wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shou…

> obviously we want the student to know 10 * 10 by rote

Let's clear that up, make it: 1289 * 689

> they should be able to select a procedure they've used before and employ it.

And if they've already seen the question they know which procedure to use, and you're no longer testing "should be able to select".

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

#319

Post by WalterBright »

mlyle wrote: post #296
WalterBright wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> it tricks half of freshmen at Caltech

They are freshman, i.e. untrained minds. Me, I probably would have failed that question at the time, too. Such a question wouldn't have been on a test, however, as test questions always involved a lot of math.

I remember one inglorious physics midterm exam that over half of the students flunked. The prof had some angry words for the class.

> In 8th grade?

Sure, if you'd laid the groundwork in class.

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

#320

Post by brightball »

dorchadas wrote: post #302
brightball wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thin…

The thing is, it only expands the choice to those who are borderline on that group already. It doesn't magically make the choice be available to everyone. For instance, say you're a single parent household and you have to rely on buses. You don't really have 'choice' even within a voucher system. All it does it allow those who can transport their kids to take them elsewhere, making the school that's left behind worse…

The system would be different, but it can be done.

Most people hear vouchers and they think "the other large public school across town or the existing private school". The real goal is many more small schools.

Enabling "educational entrepreneurship" so somebody who has an idea that thinks will work really well for certain types of kids can start a school teaching exactly that way...and parents can sign up if they think it's best for their child. I want creative teachers to create schools to solve the problems that they see without all of the red tape that makes everyone feel like change is hopeless.

Even with larger schools and bus routes, the solution is to create hubs where you can get off one one bus and hop on the one that goes to your school.

It's certainly different, but it can absolutely be done.

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