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OK--this is the skinny
The administration in all these places are just worried about two things in this debate
1--having po'ed parents in their offices bitching and moaning about their kids failing AND blaming teachers vs the kids...
2--having to recycle all failing students which will raise their budget costs, failure rates (which are clocked by the state), and clog their system for passing kids through...
That is why so many of them come to Jr high or high school and can't read and do basic math in many cases...
Education does not happen like osmosis---
Sitting in class and hearing the lessons doesn't automatically translate into KNOWLEDGE--
It is not like paper towels sopping up spilled water on countertops--there is WORK involved in education...
I taught in high school
Retired early at 55--that was 15 yrs ago now
My district's policy changed in the last 3 yrs or so before I retired (so quite while ago) to where no student could get below 50% on their semester average--first semester--because that was supposed to give them incentive to do better 2nd semester and actually pass the class...
The idea that any student who didn't care enough and would actually GET a 50 could have the incentive and skill to do better and raise that average to a passing grade was pretty unrealistic...
So word came down NO grades below 50--on any grade--
Daily work, major test, incompleted/missing work---all got 50 in the grade book
Because teachers in my school were required to send grade sheets home with students who were failing at half way point
(I sent mine home with ALL students--not to stygmatize those falling or close to) and parents got mad to see grades like 44 or 18 for assignments...
I actually sent grade sheets home every 2 wks and gave extra credit if students brought them back signed by parents
Kept those as proof
Also made phone calls home to parents and documented the calls for reference
So am I in favor of failing kids--sure
But I also got to school by 720 every morning
Was in my room until 5 and school ended 315
To work with students who needed to do makeup work, needed tutoring
No student had to fail my class unless they really didn't care...
I let them do makeup work and extra credit--
Some kids were just self destructive and their parents were not much better
When you have to explain to your district why giving kids an automatic 50 for 0 work product is a really bad idea--
that is proof the Admin and Board have NO CLUE about the education process...
PS--I taught English---the two most popular teachers in my Dept were the worst at giving bogus grades for weak effort
They taught AP/pre-AP and just sat around and bs'ed with students
Did no difficult work like teaching/writing/grading the AP type papers they need to pass their AP exams with better than mediocre grade...
And those kids' AP test scores proved they had bad teaching--scores dropped year after year for kids in those teachers' classes
But the kids wanted the easy grades because it raised their GPA and looked good on college applications since AP scores aren't tracked by colleges...
So they never ran afoul of the Admin---
I, however, because I was trying to actually teach and expected performance results to justify A's and B's--gave out highest level of failures just about every semester--
Of course I was teaching the regular/ground level sophomore English classes
Lot of those kids who hate school have already failed at least one year and could leave school at 18 before graduation--
Which was find with the Admin---so many fewer kids to worry about...
But failing kids who don't know the material means they have to recycle because English is a required for graduation subject...
Got flack for that...
Last edited by loves2read; 09-26-2018 at 03:17 PM..
Thank god I teach in a University. If a student does nothing, they get a 0. If they continue to do nothing, they get booted out of the University. If I were told that I had to give a student any grade (other than what they earned), I'd be gone immediately.
Does passing a deficient high school student prepare him or her for life in a university? Responsibility? Effort? No. It doesn't prepare them for anything other than becoming a ward of the state, a taxpayer burden, or a homeless person in a gutter somewhere.
And now you know the reason I quit teaching last year. My school's grading policy was 50% minimum on all assignments, quizzes, tests, and projects. We also counted homework for 40% of the overall grade, and was encouraged to grade homework for work attempted not actually correctness (Algebra). They were allowed to retake tests (the same test, after we gave the test to them so they could see what they got wrong) and were encouraged to give multiple choice tests in order to prepare them for the state tests.
And still, despite these amazing gifts they were given we still had a 60%+ failure rate the first quarter... then I noticed after I quit that they fudged the numbers so that kids I knew failed the semester somehow magically passed with 60% exactly.
I love being a teacher, but they just won't let me teach, so I sadly had to give up (stress was killing me anyway).
And now you know the reason I quit teaching last year. My school's grading policy was 50% minimum on all assignments, quizzes, tests, and projects. We also counted homework for 40% of the overall grade, and was encouraged to grade homework for work attempted not actually correctness (Algebra). They were allowed to retake tests (the same test, after we gave the test to them so they could see what they got wrong) and were encouraged to give multiple choice tests in order to prepare them for the state tests.
And still, despite these amazing gifts they were given we still had a 60%+ failure rate the first quarter... then I noticed after I quit that they fudged the numbers so that kids I knew failed the semester somehow magically passed with 60% exactly.
I love being a teacher, but they just won't let me teach, so I sadly had to give up (stress was killing me anyway).
It's interesting that the grading policy at my university math department is just the opposite. The final exam has to account for at least 35% of the grade (and it is actually graded with no retake possible) and the midterm for 15%. The homework is generally 5 or 10%.
I wonder how long it will be before the SJWs make their way into university department policy and education is lobotomized at the post secondary level as well?
At some point when bridges and buildings start collapsing, computers malfunction, cars fall apart, our very vulnerable supply mechanisms fail, and we are a nation of dolts... perhaps "educators" will see why (for real) education is important.
And now you know the reason I quit teaching last year. My school's grading policy was 50% minimum on all assignments, quizzes, tests, and projects. We also counted homework for 40% of the overall grade, and was encouraged to grade homework for work attempted not actually correctness (Algebra). They were allowed to retake tests (the same test, after we gave the test to them so they could see what they got wrong) and were encouraged to give multiple choice tests in order to prepare them for the state tests.
And still, despite these amazing gifts they were given we still had a 60%+ failure rate the first quarter... then I noticed after I quit that they fudged the numbers so that kids I knew failed the semester somehow magically passed with 60% exactly.
I love being a teacher, but they just won't let me teach, so I sadly had to give up (stress was killing me anyway).
The public grade schools in our town were doing the bolded above in the 1990s with not only math but spelling. And they went from letter grades to Pass / Fail so students wouldn't feel competitive with one another which might negatively impact their self-esteem.
My kids didn't go to those schools. They were taught phonics, had to diagram sentences, and participated in spelling bees. Their papers had points shaved off if there were spelling errors, and their math problems were marked down if they got the answer right but the steps they showed to get to that answer weren't complete.
Nobody's self-esteem suffered when they didn't ace something. They simply tried harder the next time.
The public grade schools in our town were doing the bolded above in the 1990s with not only math but spelling. And they went from letter grades to Pass / Fail so students wouldn't feel competitive with one another which might negatively impact their self-esteem. .
But even a Pass/Fail could affect someone's self esteem if they fail.
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