Students Are Always Half Right In Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Public Schools officials have enacted a policy that sets 50 percent as the minimum score a student can receive for assignments, tests and other work. District spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said, the 50 percent minimum gives children a chance to catch up and a reason to keep trying. If a student gets a 20 percent in a class for the first marking period, he or she would need a 100 percent during the second marking period just to squeak through the semester. The district and teachers union issued a joint memo to ensure staff members' compliance with the policy, which was already on the books but enforced only at some schools. At this rate, it won't be long before schools institute double extra credit Mondays and Fridays to ensure students don't take three day weekends.

Comments

Or more reasonable policies

[Helios1182]

Or they could work on policies that reward significant improvement throughout the year. A rough start can be just that. Mandating that everything is at least 50%, even when a student gets a 0%, is a terrible idea.

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[Loki_1929]

Cool, now if I'm really good in that subject (math comes to mind), I can just skip the entire first half of each semester and still get a B in the class!

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[Anonymous Coward]

How about simply this, guarantee that all quizzes and tests can be made up after hours (before/after class) that were taken in the first half of the semester for a maximum score of 80% of the total points awarded (gotta at least give a small late bloomer penalty)? Higher of the 2 scores will apply. Thoughts there?

Teacher: "Hmm, that sounds like it might^W^W work."

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[feed_me_cereal]

Cool, now if I'm really good in that subject (math comes to mind), I can just skip the entire first half of each semester and still get a B in the class!

Um, if you're that good at math, why would you settle for a B, and why wouldn't you deserve at least that high of a grade anyway, in recognition of your talent?

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[Surt]

Given the fact that one makes a successful career in America by gaming the sociopolitical system at work, I see nothing wrong with teaching kids how to game the system. Successfully manipulating through your environment to your own advantage is one of the most important skills a kid can learn to do good in life.

To do well in life. To do good in life, you need the opposite set of skills.

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[Kid Zero]

If you can slide by with a 50% for doing nothing, people will do exactly that.

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[Loki_1929]

In my high school, there was a kid in the class that graduated the year before my class came in as freshman who only showed up to classes for quizes and tests all four years. He graduated with a B or B- average.

After he graduated and it was brought to the attention of parents and school administrators, a new rule was put in place that any student absent from a class more than a certain number of days during the year (I think it was 20 or so) for any reason could (at the discretion of the teacher) be failed.

Anyway, the point is, there are kids who'll use something like that to skate by while doing even less work. Those kids shouldn't be skipping school; they should be found out and set aside for advanced studies that can actually push them. Otherwise, we're giving up the notion that we're actually trying to teach anything and accepting that all we're looking for is some basic cookie-cutter standards for well-disciplined automotons.

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[WTF Chuck]

On a good day I would half-ass pay attention in my math classes and never bothered doing homework unless it had serious potential for affecting my grades. All honors classes, all tests aced.

This 50% minimum is bull shit any way you slice it. Sure, give the kids a chance to fix-up their fuck-ups by getting with the program and doing the work, although late, but don't give them grades better than the shitty one they earned. There are no breaks like that after they get to the real world, it will only hurt them later in life if they learn to expect them.

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[flyingsquid]

In my high school, there was a kid in the class that graduated the year before my class came in as freshman who only showed up to classes for quizes and tests all four years. He graduated with a B or B- average.

That's not an example of a school failing to challenge a student. That's an example of a lazy student. Maybe he's a smart slacker, but at the end of the day, he's still just a slacker. What the hell does it matter if he's smart if he won't apply himself?

As Edison said, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. You'll get much further in life being moderately smart and really hardworking, than extraordinarily brilliant but too lazy to do anything with your intelligence.

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[Macgrrl]

Sitting listening to some idiot talk about something you already know is a valuable life skill that will stand you in good stead throughout your working life.

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[TheLink]

So that you have a better chance of brainwashing them, and also giving them "culture".

Of course it seems the US high school culture is mostly crap. So probably that's not a good idea.

Quite a waste. Just like you need to domesticate dogs so that they can live usefully in modern society, you also need to domesticate humans.

They don't just pop out of their mom's ready to go.

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[tsa]

But why should you work hard at school if you can get by like this? I know of no school that has the time and resources to challenge students like that one. If I were him I'd be somewhere else than at school too, working on problems that interest and challenge me. Who says this kid was doing nothing while not at school?

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[HungryHobo]

Imagine you were put in a classroom with a load of infants chanting basic sums "2 plus 2 is 4, 2 plus 3 is 5" etc.

When there is no purpose in you being there how long before you get so sick of it that you stop turning up?

That isn't lazyness. Lazyness is being unwilling to work. The "work" in this case is learing math and if he already knew all the material that well then it just means he did all the "work" long before everyone else.

I hope to god you're not a teacher.

I slept through most of my 1st year computer sciene lectures and still came top of my class. Why? I read the books, did the assignments and studied the material as soon as I got them rather than wait to be pushed to leaving me painfully bored in class. But if you want to call that lazyness...

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[cduffy]

Like anything else, college is what you make of it. A decent state university, even without a big name, provides a fine education if one takes advantage of what it has to offer; one just needs to be more on top of things by way of networking than would necessarily be the case elsewhere.

(I speak from experience, having gone to one of the better schools in the CSU system -- while another school I was considering certainly had more big-name appeal, faculty at the CSU school deigned to give me the time of day when touring as a prospective student; my decision was made between that and economic factors, and I've not regretted it once).

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[BitZtream]

Because he/she is smart enough to realize that grades matter exactly 0 after you get your first job anyway? Because he/she is smart enough to realize the field they intend to go into doesn't depend on having a A in math?

There are plenty of reasons not to waste your time doing something and being 'good enough'. Thats why, although I can cook, I don't bake my own bread. I'm good enough at cooking for most of my needs and I have baked bread in the past, but I specialize in other things and let someone else make far better bread that I can buy for a price less than the cost of making it myself.

But in reality, when I was in highschool, I did this exact same thing, IN honors classes. I did it because it was far more enjoyable for me to 'get by' and go half fun out side of school than it was to sit in some class listening to some teacher drone on about shit that he/she barely understands better than I do. I know its an odd concept, but kids are thinking about having fun and a social life, not their career. Well okay, the balanced kids are, there were kids who only cared about school work, had the best grades, all that stuff that makes you the most likely to be someone great. The valedictorian at my highschool went off to Yale, and returned less than a year later because she got knocked up by the first guy who looked at her. The salutatorian went to the University of Florida, only to be kicked out after the first semester because she became a total drunkard. They had absolutely flawless grades, but 0 social skills which resulted in the not lasting the first year, now last I heard they both live back in the town we grew up in, with several kids and basic, meaningless jobs. Theres more to succeeding in life than school.

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[BarryJacobsen]

they should be found out and set aside for advanced studies that can actually push them.

As someone who's worked for a public school for the past year, I can definitively say that if there's one thing public schools are entirely unable to do it is detect and promote excellence. We're too busy leaving no child behind (and I assure almost all of the ones that would have been left behind WANTED to be left behind and are resentful (at least now, maybe when they grow up some they'll be thankful), and as sad as it is their parents would generally be perfectly fine with them being left behind, too). We're a society hell bent on having everyone be normal - whether that means dragging up the under performers by lowering our standards or neglecting those who would love some extra guidance - and it's absolutely shooting ourselves in the foot.

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[tist]

If the kid can pass the class without being in it, why are we forcing them to take it anyway?

The idea of our education system should be to make the smartest members of society that we can. It doesn't make any sense to have them take that class, they have already mastered it. It makes sense to have them take a more advanced class and keep them learning. The policy of letting them just skip it drives those kids back the the average rather than providing for them to excel.
Obviously "No Child Left Behind" simply means "Lower the standards so everyone passes". The combination of these two policies just produces kids with ever less education.

Re:Or more reasonable policies

[residieu]

It could be argued that wasting time with idiots is very likely to be a signficant part of any future career, and it's important that you learn how to do that.

I KNEW IT!!

[Eggplant62]

I'M SURROUNDED BY ASSHOLES!!!

Yep, the Idiocracy is well on its way to becoming a reality. Let's not grade on a child's actual performance in school, let's make certain they can at least "catch up." Yep, way to go. This mollycoddle society just irks the living shit outta me.

Re:I KNEW IT!!

[Eskarel]

The idea, and whether it works or not is debatable, is to not discourage kids from trying.

In the old system, if you tank badly enough in the beginning you have to do extraordinarily well to get a passing grade.

With rare exceptions, most kids who are going to get less than a 50% on something are never going to get the grades in the second semester that will give them a passing grade.

They might be capable of improvement, and hard work may help them, but excluding certain exceptional cases(i.e. good student with something major going on in their life) which should be handled in other ways, they're not likely to get 100%.

If you're going to fail anyway, then anyone who isn't a total idiot is going to realize that putting any sort of effort in whatsoever is a big fat waste of time. There's no reward for that effort.

This system, and again, implementation may not give this result, is designed so that if a kid screws up the first half of the year, that they still have the opportunity to at least pass if they work hard and apply themselves.

50% isn't a passing grade, so it's not like they're going to skim through, all it does is reduce the depth of a failing grade so that kids can pull themselves out of it.

A good analogy would be being under 6 feet of water as opposed to 600. If you don't do something about it, you're still going to drown, but it's possible to swim to the surface.

If implemented correctly, it could ensure that certain members of your "Idiocracy" actually learn something, and maybe improve their knowledge, this is a good thing.

Of course that does't mean that this system might not be flawed(haven't read the details) or that it's implementation may not cause it to run counter to the intention, but the intention is good and has nothing to do with lowering standards or any sort of "idiocracy".

When people have no hope of improving their lives, they don't try to improve them. You can't, and probably shouldn't, improve someones life for them, but you can give them a hand up so that when they do try to improve themselves(and I mean genuinely try) that they are rewarded for it.

Re:I KNEW IT!!

[maxume]

The solution to kids falling behind is to de-emphasize social promotion, not to give them more chances to keep up.

Also, I'm pretty sure that making it harder to fail is pretty much exactly the same thing as making it easier to pass.

Re:I KNEW IT!!

[camperdave]

In the old system, if you
tank badly enough in the
beginning you have to do
extraordinarily well to get a
passing grade.

Wouldn't it make more
sense to weight the tests
and assignments so that
the early assignments
wouldn't have as big an
impact?

Re:I KNEW IT!!

[Firehed]

With rare exceptions, most kids who are going to get less than a 50% on something are never going to get the grades in the second semester that will give them a passing grade.

Most students who get less than a 50% don't deserve a passing grade. A for effort is bullshit - if you don't know the material, you shouldn't pass the class.

Maybe it'll help a few people who got a rough start. It'll also allow anyone of even moderate intelligence to coast right through every class. This mentality of doing something that helps a few while creating a massive loophole for everyone else (see: no child left behind) serves no purpose but to accelerate the growth of stupidity. It certainly wouldn't be much of a stretch to call it a government conspiracy (as an educated populace is far harder to swindle and control), especially given what else we've seen happen as a result of this administration.

Re:I KNEW IT!!

[Eskarel]

Well personally I'd rather the kid spend the second half the semester working their ass off and not distracting the other kids as opposed to quite sensibly sitting their for 5 months with nothing productive to do and causing everyone a head-ache.

This isn't about passing kids who don't deserve it, a 50% isn't passing. The whole point of something like this is to reduce the depth of an F so that it's actually possible to dig out of it.

You're not going to get yourself an A you didn't deserve out of this, you might get a B if you work your ass off, and realistically you're probably going to get a C or a D. If you slack off the second semester you're going to get an F just like you did the first semester(simple math says that in about the best case scenario you'd have to get yourself something on the order of a 70% the second semester to even pass, which isn't an insubstantial improvement even if had a genuine 50%.

The problem with your attitude is that these people don't go away. They don't miraculously disappear from your life when they flunk out of school. You can let them rot and say "I earned my grades, you didn't so go screw yourself", but they don't go away. They grow up, and they take shitty jobs, or they become criminals and steal the shit you earned. Then they vote in elections, and they generally don't have particularly high opinions of education, or of folks like you.

Far better to try and help them when they're just kids who maybe don't know any better as opposed to when it's too late.

Re:I KNEW IT!!

[Belial6]

Bing! Bing! Bing! That is exactly it. Social promotion is an admitting that the schools don't care if the kids actually learn anything.

Great Life Lesson

[clang_jangle]

District spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said, the 50 percent minimum gives children a chance to catch up and a reason to keep trying.

Yes of course, and while we're at it, let's make it the law that everyone gets at least $50k/year, whether they actually work or not. That way we all get a "chance to catch up" and a "reason to keep trying".

Re:Great Life Lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

All I can think of is the rant Pixar inserted in to the Incredibles between the parents. Praising mediocrity and condemning truly exceptional people in the process is exactly how this country has gotten as fucked up as it is.

Brilliant minds are not needed for success! Don't worry! You can be amazing without ANY reason! Just because you were born in the USA, you have the not only the right, but the ENTITLEMENT to be rich, successful, and pampered!

There isn't a teacher alive

[Troy]

If a student gets a 20 percent in a class for the first marking period, he or she would need a 100 percent during the second marking period just to squeak through the semester.

There isn't a teacher out there who wouldn't pull the 20% kid aside and say "Look. You bombed. But, over next quarter/semester, if you do all/most of your homework and manage to get a C/B/whatever, I'll pass you."

My school district is looking at a similar policy, and I'm not happy with it. I don't mind putting a "floor" under students in freefall (especially when there are out-of-school forces in play), but its something that you do on a case-by-case basis according to the needs of the student.

If a district's teachers are not looking out for their kids this way, you have a deeper problem than a grading policy.

Re:There isn't a teacher alive

[globaljustin]

I certainly didn't make that much as a software developer.

One teacher is worth more than 5 software developers. You would have never become a software developer if it hadn't been for teachers.

Re:There isn't a teacher alive

[dkleinsc]

It's not a ridiculous starting figure for a field that more often than not requires a Master's level degree, not a Bachelor's. You need to be thinking more along the lines of pay grades for civil engineers, not software developers.

Re:There isn't a teacher alive

[stewbee]

I think you may have just proved his point. Chances are that if you are a computer programmer, you have a propensity for math and science. If you could see that you could make more money as a teacher, then you would likely become a teacher, but you would also have the desired math and science skills instead of English teachers pretending to be math teachers.

I would likely teach if I could get paid as well as I am working for private industry. For full disclosure: I am an electrical engineer with an MS.

Grading system is broken.

[arcade]

This indicates a broken grading system with a bad kludge of a hack on top.

If someone gets 5% at first half, and then majorly improves during the second half and gets 80% - and would easily be able to redo the tests of the first half and get 80% on them too at this time -- then of course the final grade should be around 80% - and the first grading should be ignored completely.

It's the actual knowledge at the end of the semester that should be graded - not the performance throughout the year. It's the knowledge one possesses at the end that is important.

Bleh.

Broken sysem with a bad hack .

Re:Grading system is broken.

[biryokumaru]

As much as it would be nice for learning to matter, from an real-world standpoint doing the work is more important. Regardless of level of knowledge, I want someone coming out of an academic institution to have a GPA reflective of their professional dedication, not their ability to slack off for a year and cram it all in in one night. I don't care what you know, I only care how hard you'll work. If you're willing to work, it's easy to learn.

This is a frightening stopgap to a rising lack of work ethic in this country.

I know, don't be a lazy teacher

[nick_davison]

So, the problem is the teachers can only be bothered to test twice per class... Meaning a student getting 20% on the first test has to get 100% on the second to get a 60% average.

As a radical suggestion, somewhere in the long summer vacations, after the 2pm finishes... Get off your lazy asses and come up with say ten tests throughout the course.

Now a 20% on the first test only knocks 8% off the total grade, not 40%, and is quite surmountable without needing pity grades.

I realize this is clearly advanced rocket science so take your time to fully digest the idea. I'm freely offering it for the good of ull duh stoodnts in pitsbug.

Let's try not to make their being even stupider any more acceptable. One of these kids could end up becoming president one day and the last thing we need is a moron spending eight years in the whitehouse, driving the country, its military and its economy in to the ground. Let's keep that an unthinkable impossibility people!

Re:Good Preparation

[moderatorrater]

I have a hard time figuring out how this qualifies as an idle story. This is a serious subject with potentially far reaching effects since bullshit policies like this tend to spread like wildfire by school boards who believe dumb kids can be loved into knowledge.

Is it that they want us to suffer through a comment box that inhabits 10% of the page's width? Do they not like the quote tag? Is this a power struggle between samzenpus and the other editors?

I would have skipped everything and passed.

[Jason Pollock]

Has anyone thought of what this actually means? Mathematically?

For example, let's say there are 5 assignments and 2 tests. The tests are worth 25% of your final mark.
The assignments are worth 10% each.

Additionally, let's go with the ABCDE scheme, and the student needs a 60% to pass with a D.

What's the minimum mathematical grade needed to pass?

First the tests: 0% on either test.

We've now got 25% on the course.

Then the assignments:

3 assignments: 0%

We've now got 40% on the course.

2 assignments: 100%

We've now got our 60%, D grade for the course.

That means even though the student received a mathematical 20% when their entire coursework is taken into account, they would receive a D.

That is definite grade inflation.

Based on my behaviour in high school, I would have most definitely gotten 100% on the first two assignments, and then skipped the rest of the term, walking out with my 60%. Would I have known the material? Definitely not. Would I have known 60% of the material? Definitely not.

Re:I would have skipped everything and passed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that math, would you really have got 100%?

Your example is way off. Given the parameters (2 tests worth 50%, 5 assignments worth 50%), here is how it looks:
Each test is worth 25% of the final grade.
Each Assignment is worth 10% of the final grade.

According to your example, let's follow these grades:
Assignment 1: 100%
Assignment 2: 100%
Test 1: 100%
We are now 1/2 way through. 45% of the final grade has been given out already, and you have scored all 45%.
Assignment 3: 0%
Assignment 4: 0%
Assignment 5: 0%
Here we are before the finals. 75% of the final grade has been given out, and have earned 45% still. Now, you said you still needed a 0% on a test, so here goes:
Test 2: 0%

Guess what your final score is? 45%.

Yeah, I'd say education reform is definitely needed in this country.

Great life lesson

[MasterC]

This teaches a great life lesson and ethic. Let's see how well it carries over into the working world!

Not leaving the struggling behind is noble and all, but when the rope pulling up the strugglers is tied around the neck of the non-strugglers the nobility ends and the entire system is degraded.

If you blow off a test you damn well deserve a zero. If you don't turn in homework then you damn well deserve a zero.

If you just. can't. get. chemistry then the teacher should be willing and have latitude to help you.

Why should someone who works their ass off for a 55% be completely marginalized by someone who skipped class to get 50%?

Government intervention in the housing market has royally screwed things up. School administration intervention into teaching will royally screw things up. In both cases we lose as a whole.

Re:As a resident of a suburb of Pittsburgh...

[moosesocks]

I get the impression that people every state make the same exact claim.

If there's one thing more corrupt than the federal government, it's the state governments. There's so little oversight, because so few people pay attention to them.

Bad idea

[Joe2003]

This reward system sends the wrong message to students in an already faltering education system and it will cause system dependence later in life. The effective message is students do not have to do anything to receive half the benefit they would have received had they performed their work to the best of their ability. There will also be unintended consequences to an automatic 50% grade: the lower tier students will have no incentive to work harder for a free handout (grade) and top tier students will be discouraged by a system that rewards apathy over achievement.

Isin't this kinda backwards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it make more sense to just drop the passing grade level down to a 15% or so?

Any one of those low numbers would do really, 10%, 25% 33%.

This would preserve some sort of balance, allow the kids to pass and not know anything, and still accurately reflect how they preformed.

Not that the original idea is a good one, it just seems to me that they are mucking up the wrong gear in the system.

A better solution

[Skapare]

A better solution that several teachers I've had have used is this. They simply discard the highest and lowest score.

There were variations on this. A couple teachers did it if it improved the grade. One of them repeated removing the highest and lowest test score if it further improved it. Another teacher had a bit of complex formula for deciding how much of the top and bottom to remove.

The basic idea was that it compensated for a bad day. One teacher removed only the lowest score and didn't remove any high scores. This involved cases where there were at least a few scores to work with. If they are talking about the scores on semester exams only, the sampling is poor.

I'd like to know why the HTML in my posts on IDLE don't work (it works in other Slashdot sections).

Don't worry about the 100% students

[Chuck Chunder]

but to guarantee 50% while other students are giving and earning 100% annoys me to no end

It's the students that are trying hard and only getting 60% that could be hurt by this.
A 'free' 50% means their is little reward for their hard work and little incentive to continue putting in.

I can certainly see that giving students an incentives not to give up is a good idea, but it's something that needs to be done carefully.

just plain stupid

[lophophore]

This sounds like the same kind of philosophy that said that "everyone should be able to go to college" and "everyone should be able to buy a big house."

Just plain stupid.

Life is hard, folks. A quality life is going to require a lot of hard work. If you cannot pass your classes in high school, there are still jobs to had, but don't expect that you deserve that 65" plasma TV and the S-class Mercedes.

Don't accept assignments that aren't passing

[againjj]

My father teaches (admittedly on the college level), and in a number of his classes, he refuses to accept homework that is non-passing. Thus, in this situation, you would not have to assign 50% to those homeworks, since they are not turned in yet. Or, say that a requirement for a grade above F is to turn in at least 60% of all homework.