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I thought I qualified the statement about competition by including "that I observe". I know it sounds too good to be true and trust me, the school isn't perfect (no school is), but unhealthy competition among the students is something I can honestly say I haven't witnessed or heard about in my decade of experience. I do regularly witness students working collaboratively and cheering each other's successes.
I presume you are not a teacher at this school. Ask your kids.
Yes, "working together" is all the rage now. My kids did it too. But there was still plenty of competition.
its not fair some kids get A's while others get d's or fail..
you mean the A student studied and takes pride in his grade and wants to learn??? while the fail student chose not to study,,,,or partied all weekend..
seriously
top performance and achievement should be rewarded...
you make everyone the same no matter the effort then its socialism,,or redistribution,,,pretty much what democrats do with taxing.
whats the incentive to try hard/work hard if you don't get rewarded for it??
that's why I don't like unions,,,,you get rewarded for longevity not merit/performance
That is not the point and you know it! The reward, in high school, should be admission to a good college, or admission into a good profession, not your name in the local paper as Valedictorian or Salutatorian or whatever.
Is this whole issue overblown? I don't even know my ranking, although in high school it wouldn't have been good. But I worked hard in community college, transferred to the state university, got 3 degrees, ended up doing exactly what I wanted to do -- teaching, then became a well-respected principal...something I never originally even thought about. And what difference -- in the long run -- did class ranking have? You know what they say -- first world problem.
I teach at a similar school (public STEM magnet, no ranks, no weighting, 100% college, etc.) and kids still compete. They all know who the top kids are, they share their grades, they still compete for awards, etc.
And yes they absolutely compete for college acceptances. Friday was a big day at school with MIT admissions coming out...the results of the "competition" were in, and some "won" and some "lost". It is the nature of those who excel to compare themselves to some bar. A subset may use internal motivators, but the vast majority will use external ones, namely their peers.
And I am not sure why you think college admissions don't use simple screenings for these kids. A 100 pt scale grade, even if just "predicted" by the teachers, is calculated to GPA by a program, combined with SAT scores, and so on.
The kids definitely compete but I don't think removing competition is the reason that removing rankings is beneficial to kids. I think that rankings distort kids educational experience. They make decisions about what classes to take based on what it will do for their ranking. I think high school students are better off taking what they are interested in taking not what will raise their ranking.
My son is at a private day school with competitive admissions. The kids are all smart but there are still kids who are at the top and even without rankings the kids and the teachers know who the top kids are. They absolutely compete for college admissions.
its not fair some kids get A's while others get d's or fail..
you mean the A student studied and takes pride in his grade and wants to learn??? while the fail student chose not to study,,,,or partied all weekend..
seriously
top performance and achievement should be rewarded...
you make everyone the same no matter the effort then its socialism,,or redistribution,,,pretty much what democrats do with taxing.
whats the incentive to try hard/work hard if you don't get rewarded for it??
that's why I don't like unions,,,,you get rewarded for longevity not merit/performance
Top performance is rewarded by admission to great colleges. Class rank makes kids make odd choices.
The kids definitely compete but I don't think removing competition is the reason that removing rankings is beneficial to kids. I think that rankings distort kids educational experience. They make decisions about what classes to take based on what it will do for their ranking. I think high school students are better off taking what they are interested in taking not what will raise their ranking.
My son is at a private day school with competitive admissions. The kids are all smart but there are still kids who are at the top and even without rankings the kids and the teachers know who the top kids are. They absolutely compete for college admissions.
I am sorry if it seemed I was suggesting that removing ranking stopped competition. That was not my point. Removing ranking did not remotely stop competition. OTOH, we do not have the issues you bring up, because we also do not weight any classes, and the electives are limited to senior year. We don't rank because it is meaningless at a magnet school.
How does your attempt to take a discussion about the value of class ranking in high school and use it to paint broad, meaningless strokes about everyone in academia add anything to the discussion?
Well you prove the point about elitists in academia. Sorry the rest of us don't measure up to your standards.
There is a sickness in America's high-performing schools, and I see it every day in my community. Students opt out of really great non-weighted courses, those that have the potential to spark a life-long passion, so they can squeeze in yet another mind-numbing AP class to bump an already exemplary GPA. It's the ugly underbelly of elite high schools.
There is a sickness in America's high-performing schools, and I see it every day in my community. Students opt out of really great non-weighted courses, those that have the potential to spark a life-long passion, so they can squeeze in yet another mind-numbing AP class to bump an already exemplary GPA. It's the ugly underbelly of elite high schools.
I agree. I've seen students drop out of music (band, orchestra, choir, etc) because it's not "weighted". For courses they have to take, like PE, some schools feed into this nonsense by offering it "pass/fail", so it's not counted in the GPA. I'd like to see weighted grades eliminated. The colleges un-weight them anyway, for admissions purposes. I've also heard of teachers "double-weighting" classes, e.g. by changing the grading scale so that 80%-100% is an "A", etc.
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