A friend pointed me to The LawDog who writes in Stop the planet! I want off! about amazingly stupid public school approach to grading:
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Under "effort-based grading" if a student turns in homework, and the grade received on said homework would lower the students grade point average -- well, that homework grade does not count. Only homework grades that raise the students GPA are to be recorded.
If a DISD student fails an exam, the teacher MUST allow the student to retake the exam, and the higher of the two grades will be the official grade.
If a DISD student misses a deadline on turning in an assignment, the teacher MUST accept the late assignment with no penalty to the student. If the teacher believes that a penalty for late work is appropriate, that teacher must inform the school principal, who will make the decision as to if a penalty is actually appropriate, and if so, the principal will set the penalty.
No DISD student will receive a grade of zero for any reason, unless the teacher contacts the parents of the student, and efforts made to assist the student in completing the work.
A grade of fifty is the lowest grade that may be recorded in a six weeks average for a DISD student.
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I love the comments. One points out that real life is not effort based, but performance based. People get paid for what they produce. Tiger Woods doesn't get applauded for tried. He gets cheers because he is great at golf.
Children who get passing grades for "trying" are being taught the wrong lessons. Some day in the real world they will get a boss who will laugh at them when they say "But I'm trying!" If all they do is "try" and never do the job, he will very correctly fire them.
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Technorati tags: children, government schools, public school, public education, education
2 comments:
It seems that you would need to be very poor at math to create a system like this.
Let's say the first week the student does solid B work and earns an average of 80%. Does that mean that no homework lower than 80% would be recorded for the rest of the class?
And this is probably filed under the "helping students prepare for college" column. I can't conceive of even one of my profs buying off on this sort of grading scheme.
Interesting thought! So if a student gets an A on the first assignment they can take it easy the rest of the year???
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