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School District Drops 'D' Grades
Students in one New Jersey school district will no longer be able to squeak by in class after the Morris County School Board approved dropping the D grade. Beginning in the fall students who don't get a C or higher will get an F on their report card. "I'm tired of kids coming to school and not learning and getting credit for it," said Superintendent Larrie Reynolds in a Daily Record report.
How about just not giving credit for D's? Am I missing something here?
If done the way TFS says, it's a good thing.
The problem is that teachers don't want to fail students, so the D students will get Cs instead of Fs.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
A couple of substandard students with sue-happy parents will take care of that in a hurry.
With the crazy rash of pansying up our youth over the last few decades, I welcome a little ass-kicking.
They did this while I was in high school ten years ago.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
"We suck at educating our kids, so we'll just change the standards!"
Isn't that a bit like covering up a gaping chest wound with a shirt and pretending like nothing is wrong?
Living With a Nerd
Soon enough it is going to be Pass/Fail only.
Why bother with grades at all...either you suck, or you don't. THats at least what these educators seem to be getting to.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I always thought 'C' was supposed to represent an average grade. I think one of the biggest problems today is that everyone is expected to get a B or above, so teachers are more pressured to give B's or above. Now people are getting through class at a B average, when they haven't done anything above average at all.
Now, with this, it seems as if the D students will get bumped to C's, C's to B's, and B's to A (well, maybe not so drastic on the upper portion).
I never understood this, if a student is substandard then they are substandard. If this superintendent knew what the definition of average was he would realise that, by definition, some students HAVE to fall below a 'C' mark. Teaching everybody to a minimum standard is a very noble cause but it isn't possible for everyone you teach to live up to that standard; so instead we end up with these bitter drop-outs who are essentially labled as unemployable just because they can't tell you what the capital of Nebraska is.
...is to pay wages and pensions to those inside the system. Actual education is merely a side-effect.
What about just giving those who don't deserve passing an F, and using the scale of A-D for a more fine-grained scoring of those who deserve to pass?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
D will just hang out with his other, more cool friends, like E. They don't want to have anything to do with your silly 'grades' anyway.
I approve but there does need to be other ways to get people to study other than slapping an F-bomb on them.
iburnaga.blogspot.com
High school was terribly boring + authoritative, in my senior year, I think I squeaked out with a D average.
I never would have finished high school, to go on to be on the Dean's (89+ average) list throughout my bachelor's degree.
In the last days of this congressional session, our elected reps faced two urgent spending requests. One was for ongoing combat in Afghanistan. The other was to keep several thousand public school teachers from being laid off in the fall. One of those got funded.
But, sure, dick around with the grading scale and pretend it'll fix things.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40137.html
http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_D_teach28.44ac093.html
Do people not understand that a normal distribution would be a bell-curve? Some will get A's and some will get F's a few more will get B's and D's the majority will get C's. If you are shooting for everyone getting A's,B's,and C's you are possibly over-challenging those that would normally not achieve C+ and possibly causing them to fail instead. Plus, all of the A students are being even more underchallenged in an effort to put everyone on one side of the curve.
Why just make it Pass / Fail
Increasing the passing grade, if it has anything at all, will just artificially cause slackers to work a little harder to be able to scrape by again.
True, but by working harder they will (theoretically) be learning that much more.
Think of how easy it will be for the kids to learn the alphabet if it only had 25 letters instead of 26!
We did this ages and ages ago. I graduated high school in '94, and we didn't have D grades then, and they still don't have them now in any district I know of.
I mean, from what I understand, schools just plain do not hold anyone back because they fail...they just continue to promote them on to the next grade regardless of their level of learning the material.
Can't hurt Junior's self esteem you know...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'd say it's a step in the right direction to hold students more accountable, but it's a far cry from a full solution. The real solution, in my opinion, is to hold the *TEACHERS* accountable. They should use the yearly standardized testing (which needs some improvements of its own, and stop dumb-ing it down!) and throw out the teachers whose classes always have lower scores than expected. Of course, each student's previous year's scores need to be factored in so you don't screw over a good teacher that got a bunch of dumb kids, but it's a start. There's more thought that needs to go into it, but basically what I'm trying to say is that accountability needs to be present in all places, not just students. Now if only there was a way to hold parents accountable...
No, there is no "-1 I'LL NEVER ADMIT BEING WRONG!!!" mod.
and start accepting the fact that intelligence is not evenly distributed. Not in groups, not even in individuals. People of average or below average are never going to be engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc. They're not going to compete for jobs in high-paying, intelligence and education-heavy fields because you cannot educate a mind of low capacity.
The fact is that our policies are being set by a bunch of arrogant elitists who think that if they cram down enough education, they can make a clean, office-dwelling, never-get-your-hands-dirty, middle class hipster society and outsource all of the menial labor, manufacturing and other jobs that people of average and below average intelligence used to do. Well, you can't because most people aren't cut out for that work, and our society cannot continue to maintain the facade of so many people who would have been working in the fields, working in factories, etc. being middle and upper-middle class professionals.
Part of the reason we are so close to national bankruptcy is that we don't respect hard-working blue collar workers. Whether they are digging ditches or doing intricate plumbing work, their work is as necessary as 95% of the white collar labor force. How about instead of cramming down unnecessary education, people start actually respecting each other for what they do with their lives rather than a bunch of pieces of paper for diploma mills like the average high school or college.
Grading is an abstract, relative scale. Removing the 'D' range merely extends the 'C' range.
Stating that all students are 'average', 'above average', or 'failing' doesn't seem entirely right.
It is possible to be sub-standard without being a failure.
I think part of the problem is that it is no longer OK to have a standard bell curve for student achievement. Why couldn't A's strictly be meant for the students that truly excel? Instead we are left A/B students that can get by with just doing their homework and studying for ~30mins a day.
It is entirely possible and fair for a class to get all A's if they all meet the criterion (>90% on exams and so on). Yes, you might then argue that the tests were too easy, but if the tests covered the material you want the students to learn, what's the problem? Maybe the students were all very smart. Maybe the teacher is excellent.
I grew up in a NJ district that didn't have a 'D' grade. This isn't all that revolutionary or unique. It doesn't matter in the end because report cards from Middle School and beyond looked at GPA and displayed numeric grades (i.e. 88, 95, 55 [Spanish.. yuck]) which then were translated into a 4.0 grade point scale. This is what colleges saw. If you were in the 'D' range, it didn't matter, you certainly weren't going to Harvard.
So, just to be clear, there's no bell curve, right? Grade inflation made this an inevitable outcome.
We should really stop pretending that grades are a measure of anything important. Just recognize that school is a waste of time suffered through just to get the diploma so some employer can check a box on his form. Give everyone a certificate of attendance and be done with it, ending the ridiculous notion that completing a school makes anybody smarter or more educated. If you want to measure skill levels in a standard way, make a standardized test, and quit wasting everyone's time on years and years of boredom in schools.
You have spoken much truth young padowan!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Rest assured, their "AP" (read: affluent pricks) students will still get a 6.7 GPA.
That is an interesting opinion, however you are failing to take into account that there are students there who aren't slacking, but who are not capable of doing the work. The IQ scale doesn't only extend above 100. You will on occasion get a student who can go through the motions, but cannot understand why they are doing it or what the purpose is. These students will not be able to remember the steps all of the time, and they will not (or probably more realistically, should not) pass the course.
However, these same students will have an aptitude somewhere else. For example, I once worked with a student who could not figure out the gas laws to save his life. It would not click. He failed that unit in a bad way. However, you give that guy anything related to a car and he can work miracles with it. These kinds of students need the D's so they can get through high school and into the trade of their choice. Just because you can't do math, science, or english well, doesn't necessarily mean you will not survive in the world.
Obviously there are some basic skills you need, but being able to fix a car will make you decent coin in today's world and you don't necessarily need to know gas laws.
That being said, I think the premise behind this is a good one, however it needs to be backed with a huge support program to enable those students who don't get it to still pass highschool. Good luck doing anything without that diploma these days.
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
With the emphasis on standards-based education, the grade system is antiquated. Either a student meets a standard or they don't. It's that simple. If you are like me, and don't like that black/white simplicity, then get rid of the standards-based system of "you must be able to do X". If you can do X, then you pass...why assign a grade?
I'd still be taking Diff Eq. D=DONE
I grew up in Morris County, and am a bit bewildered by this article, given that there's no Morris County school board. This particular issue pertains to Mount Olive -- a town of 26,000 people with a 5000-student school district, not the entire county.
Not sure how they butchered these details from the source article.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Why cant they use numbers for the grade. In NY they use the numbers 1-4. 1=Fail 0-65 2=Approaching Standards 65-75 3=Meeting Standards 75-85 4=Exceeding Standards 85-100 or they can use the numbers 0-100
They wouldn't be pissing our money (chinese bankers money) away either way?
We need the consumers of education to have some sway in the outcomes beyond moving to a locality that provides a better system.
As long as consumers have zero say, domestic nation building will fail as surely as nation building in the graveyard of empires.
My high school in south georgia did this over twenty years ago, before kids could do entire reports based on wikipedia. So nah!
Classes need to be shortened into modules, so kids don't have to retake a whole year if they fail. They just restart the module. It makes it easier for them to manage their time investment if they see the fruition of their labor as a shorter term objective.
Also, kids should have the opportunity to learn practical skills early in public school. They should be able to learn how to fix cars, make food, or do basic IT if they choose to focus in that direction. That way they can go out and get a job that will feed them if they need to become independent. All this notion of having to go to college is stupid, because the people who don't want to go to college aren't going to make good use out of their degree anyway.
Although this is only ok, if the class of all A students is balanced by classes of other years. Else, the grading system consists of arbitrary standards that are only relevant to that specific course, at that specific school. In a truly perfectly designed test, the average would actually be a 50%. This would allow for the greatest resolution of the classes abilities. A grade of a "C" would correlate to 50%, and the test would be normed over districts/class years. If the students are smart, they should get better grades, although a grade of B generally represents "above average". By changing the scale, a grade of "B" will be redefined as average, and remove all comparability that the grade is intended to represent. It does not, actually make the school better.
Superintendent Larrie Reynolds sounds like a "D" bag.
For starters, only a D-bag would spell LARRY that way!
I think they should use the D and E grades...skipping letters seems silly to me. D's, E's, and F's shouldn't recieve credit...but at least you know where you stand. I really think it is important to let kids know where they stand on the 'loser' scale.
I find this to be a very good move - assuming A,B,C still represents the same grading scale. You either take school seriously, or don't bother. *Anyone*, regardless of intelligence, who puts in an honest effort will be able to get a C in any class. This is already how it's done in college engineering degrees. Anything below a C (and sometimes a B-) is considered failing.
Is this really national news? I went all the way from Grade K through 12 with a D grade non-existent. I didn't even know there was such a thing until I made it to college. I would have found it shocking that K-12 HAD D grades rather than dropping them.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I went to a college prep high school and we had no "D"s. A (92-100%), B (84-91%), C (75-83%), F (0-74%). The logic behind our school's system was that since we were a school for gifted kids, if you weren't at least average, you failed.
High schools is not a trade school. There are other countries were children go to highschool or to a trade school. When they graduate from the trade school, they get a diploma and are qualified in that trade.
Graduating the highschool is not a requirement for those who want to work the land, be janitors etc. Also, failing will teach them that you get things in life not just because other get it, too, but because you work for it. And life is not fair and not all the people cand do/learn/achieve the same things at the same level. Some kids just cannot learn enough for passing. Afterall, why would I strive to learn a lot be first in school, when - years after graduation - all others will see is a highschool diploma, just like the village idiot has?
Laudele lor desigur m-ar mahni peste masura.
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
"I'm tired of kids coming to school and not learning and getting credit for it," said Superintendent Larrie Reynolds in a Daily Record report.
If the student didn't learn anything does that not mean they failed and should get a failing grade? "C" is Average and "D" is below average but still passing. I fail to see the problem with that. "F" means you failed to learn the course material well enough to pass and do not get credit.
But then, I'm not a power hungry, attention seeking, small penis administrator that needs to "shake up the box" for no other reason then to get noticed.
-[d]-
Residents of Phoenix Arizona, weary of mid-summer highs in excess of 120 degrees Fahrenheit, will be adopting a 0 - 100 scale. Experts agree people will feel better about dropping dead from heat prostration.
I grew up in Quebec, Canada where it was (and probably still is) required to get 60% in order to pass. So an A was a grade of 90-100%, B = 80-89%, C = 70-79% and D is 60-69%. Anything below is Fail.
It shocked me when I learned that in Ontario (for you Americans, Ontario and Quebec are like two different "states") the passing grade was still 50%. I much prefer the idea that students need to learn MORE than half the material.
When I was in high school this was the premise of "outcome based education" that that many of our teachers were changing over to. The calculus/algebra teacher was particularly fond of the concept. You could, on your own time after school, re-test and get your grade changed to a passing grade (C, you could not re-test to earn a B or A).
Wernstrom announces that the invention deserves "the worst grade imaginable: an A-minus-minus."
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"I think letter grades should be done away with entirely, and a numeric scale used instead, normalized to the maximum credit possible. A letter grade ends up being too subjective and thus prone to manipulation, inflation, or ambiguity in interpretation."
I don't think that would change much. After all, letter grades are usually assigned according to a numeric value. You get an A for a 90-100 score, B for 80-89, C for 70-79, etc. There's a little variation here and there... some schools make their A's from 92 to 100 or 94 to 100, but you get the point.
Further, who says a purely numeric grade would be immune to grade inflation? If a teacher is just bumping a kid from an F to a D to pass him, what's to stop them from simply bumping him from a 50 to a 60? Or in the case of this school district, a 70?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
In my short time as a high school physics / math teacher, I've come to realize a few things about the education system in the US - it's doomed to fail *eventually*. For one, in my state schools are funded on a 30:1 student-to-teacher ratio. I'm sure all of you have been in an overcrowded class room; it's not the most effective method for educating young adults! It's possible, but it sure makes the job twice as hard as having about 22 students per class. Another observation I've made, is that each student is more or less a reflection of their parents. A snobby student will have an even snobbier parent, and hard working students have hard working parents. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule.
As for the grading scale, there is no such thing as a C student. While 75% may be the average grade, I have very few students who actually earn a 70-79% in most of my classes. I have students who are capable of achieving A's and B's because they either work hard, or are naturally intelligent. On the other hand I have many students who earn a D or F by doing absolutely nothing to push themselves to learn, or are naturally incapable of technical problem solving.
The largest obstacle to education in my opinion is technology. It's a double edged sword, but one side is sharper. Students have become 1) too dependent on technology to solve problems for them, and 2) are too distracted by cell phones, the interweb, ect... But, the largest problem is the parents. If parents would only be involved, slightly, this nation could return to where it was 40 years ago. Look at the population, I can consistently rely on a person 45-60 years of age to be able to solve basic problems that some of my seniors could not solve without help.
The budget crisis does not help either. I haven't had the funds to buy lab equipment, demo's, or anything that would spark interest enough to make kids want to be scientists, engineers, computer scientists, or mathematicians. I buy enough cheap hardware with my own money (written off taxes of course) to perform the basic measurement labs. But, it takes money to do even basic science.
When I used to be involved in a lot of hiring I would routinely see hotshots hired who had no communication skills or self understanding. Then watch the resulting mess as these hires would refuse to cooperate and make enemies of co-workers and customers, and not know how to manage their stress. Check out the book "Emotional Intelligence". It turns out that SAT scores are not a reliable predictor of success. The cookie test (do I take one now, or wait a few minutes for two cookies) turns out to be a better predictor of success. The real crisis is that there is so little understanding of personal development, and people with the maturity of five year olds are routinely hired to be managers and leaders of companies. Ken Wilber has a lot of interesting things to say about this.
Not having attended high school or college since the '80s, and not having kids, I feel like I'm really out of touch with how schools operate today. Just how do schools grade?
When I was in school in the '80s, classes were graded strictly on the curve, using a simple percentage scale (such as 90-100% = A, 80-89% = B, 70-79% = C, 60-69% - D, below 69% is an F) or some hybrid of the two. As I recall, the percentage scale was the most typical used.
The first method grades the against each other, the second method grades against the test, and hybrid strikes a balance.
I remember a college professor who graded everything on a strict curve, so if the overall class performance showed that a test was "easy", the grading scale would be adjusted on that curve. I actually had a test where the distribution was such that an A grade was something like 98-100%, and a failing grade was under something like 85%.
How are classes graded today?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
A B C D F. So whatever did happen to E, then? Same thing?
Here's what this system looks like.
Imagine a bell curve. Imagine one standard deviation to the left and right.
I'm going to exaggerate that curve.
98% of the student population is "B", to the left and right of the mean.
1% is "troubled/near fail" and we call them "C" students.
1% is the honor roll, and we call them "A" students.
That's where they're going to end up. Pass/Fail, with a recommendation for extra help for the lower end, and pass with honors for the upper end.
In all likelihood, it will fall along statistical lines, which means "below average" students will have no way (down the curve) to tell that they are, in fact, now "in crisis" (no "D" warning) before they fall off and fail. The administration will respond by being even less likely to fail people (as even average students get caught off-guard), or instituting some kind of warning system, which will bring the "D" right back, under a different name.
The size of the groups will move more students into the "A" category, which will cheapen or obfuscate any distinctions of true excellence, and will either require the creation of an honor roll to emphasize truly talented students, or more likely, just have that fall even more into disuse as it lowers the self esteem of the huge "B" group and near-failing "C" group.
The Devil's in the details, but on its surface, that's an astoundingly bad idea.
--
Toro
You most certainly need a HS diploma for almost every job in today's market, except manual and menial labor.
You certainly need it if you plan on working on cars for a living and/or if you plan on going to some kind of technical institute afterward to pick up more skills.
A lot of HS is a bogus waste of time. If we're going to tell kids they have to make it through HS if they plan on not being in poverty, then give them some options and let them find a focus for themselves rather than loading them down with useless coursework that would only interest a college-track student.
There are millions of "average drivers" on the roads.
Women certainly do mate with the mediocre plain guy...look at all the married mediocre plain guys.
You can certainly "just get buy" in life. You work a basic low-level job, rent a crappy apartment, don't go out much, etc.
When D's are outlawed, only outlaws will have D's!
I love this line from the article:
Apparently, anyone average or below fails in their schools. Kentucky - where all the 6th graders are above average.
or a fourth season episode of The Wire?
"I'm tired of kids coming to school and not learning and getting credit for it," said Superintendent Larrie Reynolds in a Daily Record report.
Since when do grades actually indicate whether someone is learning or not?
The only thing that grades measure is the ability of the student to do homework and take tests.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
I graduated from high school in 1996, and we didn't have D's in my school district, either.
It makes much more sense than there being a grade other than F for which no credit is given.
A 94-100
...Or for those over achievers, change the passing scale to steps of 5% from 80-100.
B 86-93
C 78-85
D 70-77
I don't see how this is going to change anything as far as teachers or students are concerned. A teacher is still going to have to grade on a curve, even if that curve only has four points instead of five. All it does is change the *perception* that the school is actually doing better than other schools ("see, more of our students get a C or better than any other school in the state!"), which means more money for the school. That's a pretty sick way to game the system by the administration.
I'm just curious, if the kid was a wiz at cars, couldn't you have related the gas laws to the engine? It would make sense that pV=nRT would have translated very nicely to the cycle of the pistons, and the I/O temperature of the air. When I was studying thermodynamics, I couldn't help but think about its relation to a combustion engine.
From TFA: "anything mark under a 70 will be a failing score" (sic).
D always started at 70 where I'm from...go figure. The local district here shows numerical grades on report cards and then lets you match them up to a letter grade if you care to.
"I'm tired of kids coming to school and not learning and getting credit for it," said Superintendent Larrie Reynolds in a Daily Record report.
Yeah, well, I'm tired of kids going to school and not learning.
I'm not about to eat Grade D beef. Nor do I (as a teacher) feel comfortable advancing students with D grades. It should not be acceptable to be barely passable in reading and basic math. Or history. Or biology. I don't care what your career goals are. The requirements are in place for a reason. If you don't learn the material, you didn't meet the requirements. Try doing 60% of your job some time. See how that goes over.
Texas has had this since 1984. What's the story here?
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
Duke Nukem Forever.. non-existant is not ok
Believe me I tried. He was one of those people who instinctively knew how it worked, but to put it into a formula it stopped making sense. To be honest, I didn't understand how he could grasp the concept but not the formula and its application. However, that is the job of a teacher, to try to inspire and reach students whether or not you understand their reasoning.
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Someone who got a 'D' in a class really didn't learn enough to have anything of value.
Adult education programs around the world only require 80 - 90 hours in a classroom to have average adult minds ready to pursue their education entirely on their own.
In 2 or 3 years of effort applied by an adult mind, that mind can be ready for college.
This was all in the pre-web world.
We have amazing educational resources on the web. TED's "Hole in the Wall" talk shows that kids will learn to use computers entirely on their own, and will learn a foreign language to do so.
Why do we need public schools that turn out illiterates after 12 years of expensive effort?
Excuse me, but I don't pay taxes so some lazy teacher can just ignore students with learning or behavioral difficulties.
It's their *JOB* to motivates students to learn. If a teacher, who has the attention of a child 6 hours a day can't teach a kid, do you really think the parents, who might get an hour or two after school with him, will do any better?
Most of the time the kids who have problems are those who have parents working two and three jobs just to make ends meet. If we took away the property taxes, parents could spend more time with their "problem child" kid and send him to a school where the teachers actually knew how to teach, instead of acting like professional babysitters six to eight hours a day.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
They will stretch a, b, c, and d scores to fit in the range of a, b, and c.
Thats what my dad told me I deserved. Ironic too, because then I started to sleep in class.
My high school had an ABCDE grading scale in which E was failure and the low D was a 70%, just like the low C in TFA. 69% and below was considered failure. This has been my personal standard ever since, even through college.
This should be the universal standard throughout the country, IMO.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
Fact: Schools must kowtow!
Fact: Most public is stupid or indifferent, until a problem.
Fact: High cost dictates results.
Fact: Districts will always serve different types.
Fact: Grades are arbitrary.
I just love it all SAT/ACT, 4.0 verses 8.0 scales, weighted classes, gentleman's D, curves, waivers, pass/fail credit, transfer credit, course alignment, standardized grading scales without standardized instruction and content, and special needs learning contracts.
&
My dad just donated the new Media Mall. That solved it!
"Students in one New Jersey school district will no longer be able to squeak by in class" to......
Students in one New Jersey school district will now be streamlined into dropping out
What I'm having trouble wrapping my heads around is that there are schools that use fixed percentages as grade markers. That means if you make a test you need to precisely target the questions to achieve an 85% average. That probably means you need to make 50% of the questions so easy that nobody could get them wrong. It also means you can't make any significant fraction hard enough to test the knowledge of the people in the A range. Maybe teachers aren't allowed to make their own exams anymore?
It also means (and I've seen this and heard reports from friends) that these students will have no idea how to handle grades in college. When I teach I like to target exams at an average of 50 out of 100. College freshmen from these schools will panic when the get a 30% on an exam, even if that turns out to be an A. Then they call their parents and their parents call me explaining why Johnny really needs to get into med school. In my dreams, I explain to them why Johnny should drop the class if he can't understand that an A is a good score.
Hard exams are a good thing. They tell you how everyone in the class is doing, not just the below average people. I had a multiple-choice/multiple-answer exam when I was in college where the high was 9 out of 100. I got a -6 (which was an A). The average was -28. It was a damn hard exam, and it really tested our knowledge, but 15% of the class still got an A.
Support SETI@home
I say that we, to conform with our current society, redefine the grading-scale to contain : Epic Win, Win, Meh..., Fail and Epic Fail (with the possibility of redemption by merit of teacher-lulz).
...is one of those lazy, good-for-nothing teachers we were talking about that collect there 45k/year salary, work less than 9 months out of the year, and still fail to deliver a useful product. Why is that? What are YOU doing wrong? Perhaps all your bullshit "Teaching Methods" are for shit. Maybe, just maybe, you are completely full of shit. Maybe, just maybe, you are an ineffective twit. Perhaps if 80% of the teachers who obviously don't know the subject they are teaching beyond a rudimentary level, actually knew something, and could convey it to another human being with something resembling a compellling and interesting discussion, then there wouldn't be so many failing students? Hmmm, wonder what that would be like?
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
... making a new stereo with a volume control from 2 to 10.
Superintendent Larrie Reynolds is not smart enough to be involved with schools.
Instead of just making anything less than 'C' a failing grade, why don't we just completely redefine what the grades mean? For example:
* F - the student has failed to demonstrate that they have the minimum knowledge taught in the course
* C - the student has demonstrated that they have the minimum knowledge taught in the course
* B - the student has demonstrated either exemplary knowledge (eg. >95%) of the course or minimal knowledge and have applied that knowledge outside of class (eg. a non-class assigned project)
* A - the student has both demonstrated exemplary knowledge of the material covered in class and applied that knowledge outside of class
I'd be more impressed with grades if the above were used since I've run across more than a few people that got 'A's in college that were complete idiots when it came to doing real work.
In British Columbia, Canada, the school board did away with the D grade. Shortly thereafter, they formalized C- (C-minus) as an "official" grade. (The other pluses and minuses were not official). Effectively, they replaced D with C-. I've seen other schools which mandate that the lowest grade a student can earn in a quarter is 50%... that way, a student who doesn't answer a single test question or do any homework for a whole semester can still salvage his grade with new work in the third and fourth term, and pass. Alternately, once a senior has passes his first semester with a 75% or higher, gotten into his colleges of choice for the following year, there is no way he can fail the course for the year (75+75+50+50)/(4)=62.5, a passing grade.
First they drop E. Now they drop D. Next will be C and B. Soon enough every class is pass or fail...
Yea, never mind the fact that the kids aren't learning is because of teacher's and parents who aren't involved enough if this part of the equation. It's a reality that you have to start at home. Just flunking someone because you're "tired of these kids squeaking by" is just more proof that the wrong people are in charge.
Our grades go to 11.
I know there is a grading scale where the lowest grade is not F, but U, stand for unclassified, i.e. your performance are so beyond poor that is not even worth grading at all.
D is for DONE! Why can't the teachers realize this?
Ok, I can't say how this works in other countries since I'm from the US.(And I'll probably get marked as a troll by some stupid moderator. Oh well, the benefits of having Karma to burn.) That being said there's nothing "magical" about 70%. I mean I understand how you go to school for over 12 years and they always use 70% so you automatically assume that "Oh of course 70% is a C" and that no other number can be a C. The most obvious example of this not being true is the SAT. Average is 500 out of 800 which is 62.5%. What this means is that the person writing the test can make it harder or easier to get alot of points even if they are testing on the entire subject area. (And theoretically any question is "answerable.") They can move the average up or down as they see fit by including more or fewer tricky questions while still testing in the target field. The reason to do this is that if you have a bunch of grades all pinned up at 95%+ you basically can't tell which student is really better than another. You also can see what a student doesn't know. (I mean you could just make the test really easy and then everybody gets 100% ) Think of it this way. If I tell you it's 30 outside is it hot? What you should say to me is you can't tell since you don't have a scale to determine what that 30 actually means. If I asked is it hot when it's 30C you'd know yes it is and 30F is cold. Without some scale to tell you what a number means you can't tell. The same is true for percentages in education. Without a scale to help you interpret what 70% means you can't tell if that's a good or shitty score. (The professor could have made the test such that only a great student could get above 50%. Note, yes I've had courses like that. I had a physics course where the prof made it so hard 30% was passing which shows that yes a professor can put average anywhere he likes.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
My guess: kids that are going to fail anyway are the best candidates for dropping out. Dropouts are the easiest numbers to fudge allowing the schools to keep their federal handout.
*DrugCheese rants*
I've always wondered about the absence of E in the grading scale. It always felt awkward skipping from D to F. I guess now future students will have to wonder about the absence of both D and E.
I've always wondered what the point of D was, anyway. It seemed to mean you didn't fail, but you didn't pass, either. What is the effective difference between D and F?
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Reading the article, this seems to stem from the strange notion that, always and everywhere, >90 = A, >80 = B, >70 = C, etc. I've seen good teachers whose assignments come close to fitting that mold, but I've also seen good teachers where the A students get 70% of the test right. A good teacher doesn't go by raw numbers, because those numbers don't consistently correspond in precisely the same way to the amount of excellence displayed by a student. That would require some kind of absolute, perfect assignment and test-writing skills on the part of the teacher, so all tests and work are precisely calibrated to the same measurement scheme. I remember seeing teachers go to all kinds of trouble to try to make their grading fit into that arbitrary 90/80/70/60 scheme, adding points to everyone's test (which bumps everyone up equally but not proportionally-- it is a failed attempt at normalization), or striking certain questions, and so on. It always seemed a bit hocus-pocus to me as an "everything should be objective" high school student, until I realized in college that _all_ grading is ultimately subjective, which is why it is important to have good teachers who can wisely assess their students' performance, their own teaching, and their own measurements of the students' performance.
And let junior college sort them out.
Have gnu, will travel.
I agree with your enforced mediocrity. I assume part of this is no child left behind and other crap make the teachers teach to the test, and not actually educate. How kids graduate without knowing how to read, without ever being held back, is shocking.
I'm still amazed at the new GPA systems some schools use. If it's a 'hard class' it may go above a 4.0 for an A. The local school had kids graduating with 4.2 and above grades. Of course knowing the local school district they probably just bump everyone up +1.0 simply to get kids graduating.
You CAN'T see what a student doesn't know.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/cameron_herold_let_s_raise_kids_to_be_entrepreneurs.html
Pretty interesting Ted Talk.
Summary from the web page:
"Bored in school, failing classes, at odds with peers: This child might be an entrepreneur, says Cameron Herold. At TEDxEdmonton, he makes the case for parenting and education that helps would-be entrepreneurs flourish -- as kids and as adults."
With the seemingly constant struggle that schools have with funding, more and more specialized programs, electives, and other ways of educating are being removed. Rather than "cracking down" on kids getting D's, schools should be looking for innovative ways to discover what that kid is actually good at.
I did fairly well in school, but I knew many kids that struggled with math, but who later turned out to be very successful musicians, artists, comedians, 1 that got in very early in yahoo's start, etc.. With how fast technology moves, it seems less and less important to be teaching minute details to the percent of kids that just aren't interested. Instead, some of those kids may be big picture thinkers, and more likely to employ a bunch of mathematicians than to do the math themselves.
I must say I've never understood why USans rate schoolwork with letters. How do you compute yearly averages ? Where I'm from we rate 0 to 20, failing below 10. Where my wife's from it's 0 to 30, failing below 18. I was astounded when I met my pen-pal to learn that he'd only ever got As, like several of his friends. I thought I'd met Einstein until I got to know him better. Here you'd be pretty good around 12~14 and nobody EVER would only get grades above 16 (the equivalent of A). It made me wonder if US teachers only gave good grades for the touchy goody feeling.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
According to the article below 70 and below is failing, I assume that means when they had the 'D' grade you could get a 60 and still pass? That's strange because I was in school (graduated 2000) below 70 was considered failing too but we still had A,B,C,D,F. 92-100 = A, 84-91 = B, 77 - 83 = C, 70 - 76 = D. 69 and below F. My school district was also in New Jersey.
In Spain we basically have the good ol' 0 to 10 scale. It works, it's understandable and you can do everything with that system, since you can do everything in maths.
Promediums, handicaps, sum-ups, it all works.
Stupidly, when it comes at the end of the semester (or year), everything gets translated to "Insufficient, sufficient, good, notable, excellent, etc." but everyone knows that behind those names, the numbers rule. Everyone knows that it's not the same failing with a 1/10 or with a 4/10, or getting excellent with a 8.5/10 or a 10/10.
That's easy - he's good at qualitative analysis but not quantitative analysis. Numbers and by-rote facts mean nothing to him, but if he can see a pattern, it makes perfect sense. A formula is a by-rote fact into which you plug numbers...
--- The key to knowledge is not to rely on people to teach you it ---
I work as a nurse, and we use the 0-10 scale for pain. 0 is no pain, 10 is the worst, most horrible pain you've ever had. Most people claim 8 while on their cellphone, eating a sandwich, or laughing with friends. At least a few times a shift someone will say "14" or "20". This marks them as idiots.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
Teaching everyone that any kind of work that requires you to sweat is what 3rd-world people are supposed to be doing.
They all behave like those caste-system schools like over on India that teach America is for deskwork and Hawaaian shirts, not sweaty work that our grandparents did back on the farm or parents did back with those yucky Kitchen/Bathroom/Laundry appliance companies.
This might sound like a progressive attitude but it's actually a country-destroyer in only trying to accomodate a Service Economy. Such an ethic always leads to implosion and bankruptcy because nothing is manufactured but hot-air labor standards that are unsustainable but by typical Court-House physics Reality Distortion Fields that lawyers erect.
We are in the year 2010 and things don't just fix theirselves. Schools teach you the "Come'on you're going to miss the rocket-ship to Everyone-Is-Educated-And-Owes-Money planet" and we will maintain a database to not hire anyone that insulted the Education System because the new Nobility is the one that Earned it with money and achievement in memorization skills rather than useless workable knowledge.
I use a french paperless-toilette.
I use solar panels because I'm off the grid.
My clothes-washing and dishes-washing machines are propelled by a pneumatic system of pumps from pressure built-up by exercise equipment and outdoor Wind farming.
My food is hyroponically grown, while all I realy cook is home-raised chickens and Talapia in the Aqueduct system I've built.
I grow my own hemp and silkworms for military-grade and high social-grade clothing.
Stop living like Romans (2nd-world country). Live smarter, do everything yourself and make it not be so inefficient that it requires all this 3rd-world labor that your grandparents once did.
I'm from the Netherlands where the scale basically runs from 0 to 10 with 1 place behind the decimal. It means that if you get 75% of the test right, then you score a 7.5. The passing grade is set at a 6.0 average (ie. after all tests taken in the year, you need to have gotten at least 60% right).
When I lived in the US for 2 years, I always thought the whole grading system was a bit confusing, especially since the school I went to, teachers would have different definitions for ABCD and F.
That'll teach those stupid statistics to mess with school finances...
And if they adjust: Just drop C too. No, let's make a three-grade-system: "A", "!A" and "255" - let's see how their software likes that!
Exactly! So how do you teach him what essentially amounts to a by-rote fact (formula use and applications)? Oh well, I guess this is the eternal struggle of education.
I suppose what is more unfortunate is the fact that you must teach by-rote facts at all. I personally much prefer a hands on inquiry based science class, however the curriculum leaves little to no time for that kind of science.
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
a D is a failing grade. When I was in high school (at least in my house), a C was a failing grade as well. The only time I ever got a D was in Spanish class (and honestly that was because I just didn't care). Most of the kids that fail are either lazy or stupid, with a small percentage actually being learning disabled. Schools pass everyone nowadays unless they are held back for disciplinary reasons. They just stick them in the "Special room" for a couple hours a day and then hand them their diploma at the same time as everyone else. If you go to public school and don't have straight A's, you aren't trying hard enough.
Just throwing a relevant article recommendation, based on a book which is also a good read: Matthew Crawford's The Case for Working With Your Hands, based on the book Shop Class as Soulcraft. There is a puzzling bias against any blue-collar work in this country, regardless of how challenging or well-paying it may be. Ever look at the hourly rate your plumber charges? Or how much fun it might be to, say, work on cars or motorcycles for a living as compared to banging out TPS Reports?
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
The Australian education system would display the same amount of sense. The things that teachers are NOT allowed to tell parents here is insane.