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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

#351

Post by Lhiw »

jjeaff wrote: post #182
Lhiw wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

This is how you fall behind on the world stage.

I'm not suggesting Japan's approach to homework is a good thing to model, but I am suggesting Korea's approach to teacher superstars is.

Homework is a tool, you can use it to your advantage or abuse it. I'm not going to suggest I know the net best outcome for all students but I suspect, more time practicing is going to help for a lot of students. Especially the ones that don't learn well around others.

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

#352

Post by mlyle »

angelzen wrote: post #329
mlyle wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a mountain of research. I'll cite the classic pro-homework paper by Cooper which synthesizes a whole bunch of moderate to low quality studies. https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Does-Homewor... , because I think it shows how lacking the optimistic case is and lets you get to a whole lot of the rest of the research both ways. A small (effectively zero) positive correlation was found between the am…

"Research increasingly implies that homework is probably harmful in elementary; of dubious value in early middle school" You are citing research that apparently is stating the obvious, namely that good students are faster at completing homework than poor students. Not sure how that supports the statement that homework is harmful for either group. Skimming the lit review you linked, homework appears to have a moderate…

I feel like you didn't read my comment.

AS SAID: I deliberately sent you the most pro-homework review. Despite being confounded in almost all of the component studies (being based on reported homework completion times rather than amount of homework assigned), no real benefit was shown in elementary.

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

#353

Post by mlyle »

tomp wrote: post #268
bedobi wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you and people like you say it superficially true ("just grade on objective performance!") ...but also completely disingenuous. Student X is an only child, has educated and well paid parents who instill work ethic and have the means, time and ability to commit to helping X get the best grades, including hiring tutors for things they can't or don't have time to teach. X lives in a safe, affluent area and associat…

Grades are good for 2 reasons. 1. Y is worse than X. If you give both of them a math task ("how should I launch this rocket so that it lands safely"), then X is more likely to get it right. The reason why is irrelevant; results are relevant. 2. In contrast to what people like you usually think, performance and context are two different variables. If you measure performance objectively, that gives you a chance to infl…

> Y is worse than X. If you give both of them a math task ("how should I launch this rocket so that it lands safely"), then X is more likely to get it right. The reason why is irrelevant; results are relevant.

Note that this isn't really exactly what grades measure much of the time. In an ideal world they measure mastery-- but they often measure a whole lot of classroom conduct, who's able to spend extra time on assignments at home, details of information presentation, etc.

My students who I'd judge most likely to get a critical problem right aren't always at the top of the gradebook. Sometimes they're near the bottom. And this is despite me weighing demonstrated capability and mastery very highly.

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

#354

Post by mlyle »

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…

> 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.

Kids in my classes who are probably not going to be engineers are still having a lot of fun tinkering with engineering problems. Kids in my classes who are probably not going to be computer scientists are having a lot of fun tinkering with ARM-Thumb machine language. Kids in my classes who are not going to be number theorists or statisticians are still going to have a lot of fun playing with elements of number theory and frequencies of elements in English text in my elementary cryptography class.

Some will be superstars and decide they want to do things close to this in the future. Others will decide they want to do something completely different, but understand more of these different paths. And everyone can come away knowing that maybe they won't be at the top but they can still do hard things.

The key is: A) not having a preconceived idea of who's going to be good at something, and B) creating many axes students can differentiate themselves in the classroom, so that someone who is not at the top still has areas to strive and can be a valued member of the classroom community.

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

#355

Post by angelzen »

mlyle wrote: post #352
angelzen wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Research increasingly implies that homework is probably harmful in elementary; of dubious value in early middle school" You are citing research that apparently is stating the obvious, namely that good students are faster at completing homework than poor students. Not sure how that supports the statement that homework is harmful for either group. Skimming the lit review you linked, homework appears to have a moderate…

I feel like you didn't read my comment. AS SAID: I deliberately sent you the most pro-homework review . Despite being confounded in almost all of the component studies (being based on reported homework completion times rather than amount of homework assigned), no real benefit was shown in elementary.

no clear benefit on short term metrics != probably harmful

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

#356

Post by CryptoPunk »

lmm wrote: post #342
kqr wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one is easy! Stress/anxiety is a condition that makes all kinds of learning significantly more difficult. A small amount of urgency can be helpful, but ideally it should be intrinsic (i.e. someone screaming at you or giving you letter grades is nowhere near as motivating as feeling that you can almost do it) and it's very easy to overshoot.

OK, but that doesn't answer the question of how to teach kids to deal with stress/anxiety. I agree that placing them under stress/anxiety probably damages their learning. I still think it's vital life experience to gain before adulthood.

Moreover, with no pressure, many kids will simply not put in effort to learn. That something so common sense is now neglected is bizarre.

Good scholastic performance by students in East Asian is not because schools in East Asian countries are low-pressure academic environments.

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

#357

Post by mlyle »

angelzen wrote: post #355
mlyle wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you didn't read my comment. AS SAID: I deliberately sent you the most pro-homework review . Despite being confounded in almost all of the component studies (being based on reported homework completion times rather than amount of homework assigned), no real benefit was shown in elementary.

no clear benefit on short term metrics != probably harmful

We could look at the studies showing evidence of behavioral and emotional harms in elementary-- I figured "look at how weak the evidence from advocates is" was a decent opening to the discussion (and introduced it as such). But it seems like you want to just snipe.

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

#358

Post by ycombinete »

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…

all extensions/grace periods ever gave me when I was at university was worse time crises later on when I procrastinated a second time.

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

#359

Post by brightball »

dorchadas wrote: post #344
brightball wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smaller schools will happen. This will make it possible for all of the huge home school groups that already exist to form real, funded schools. Big players owning the schools also becomes a huge risk since parents can easily just go elsewhere. Those big players would have to be doing a very good job to keep everybody, compared with the current situation where most people seem to do it because they have no choice. Whe…

> Big players owning the schools also becomes a huge risk since parents can easily just go elsewhere. You seem to keep assuming this, but it's just not true. Parents with means can go elsewhere, and even then to a limit. But all that does is leave the schools and kids that are left behind even worse off . And the big schools can keep buying up the other schools. There's only so many places within a range where parent…

Where in rural United States? US is a big place but I can’t imagine a 2 hour bus route getting approved anywhere.
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