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School District Drops 'D' Grades

Posted by samzenpus on from the pass-fail-education dept.

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.

15 of 617 comments (clear)

  1. How about... by sorrowsjudge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about just not giving credit for D's? Am I missing something here?

    1. Re:How about... by Nadaka · · Score: 5, Informative

      Now you are redefining everything, and making B's and A's much less valuable.

      C was supposed to be the average grade.

      D was acceptably below average.

      F was unacceptably below average.

      B was above average.

      A was exceptionally above average.

    2. Re:How about... by sorrowsjudge · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I disagree that D is redundant. Letting little Johnny and his parents know that he needs to try a little harder to pass the class (receiving a D) is different enough than letting Johnny and his parents that he failed hard to warrant having the two separate failing grades.

    3. Re:How about... by jeffmeden · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But that would make too much sense!

      I hate it when people make scales to grade something on, and then never use the damn entirety of the scale. See also game sites that have a 1-10 rating for a game but never really use anything below 7.

      I like to think of the 1-6 on that scale as serving the same purpose as the seatbelt. Sure, almost every car trip has no use for the seatbelt, but you are most likely (and rightly so) using it anyway. Should you ever see a 6 or below, being able to comprehend how much it sucks *just might save your life*.

    4. Re:How about... by Luckyo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      From the original article:

      "In todays world, youve either got it, or you dont, Kentucky principal Steve Frommeyer said. Theres no opportunity to just be OK. "

      People with this line of thought who are teaching anything below university level (i.e. before children/teens have decided what they want to do with their lives) need to get fired yesterday, and be permanently banned from any teaching position. They destroy lives, literally, by forcing children to be "either great or dead".
      We no longer live in the caves, and most learning issues, especially at age that young are not "excel or die". People who disagree are in the wrong profession.

    5. Re:How about... by asliarun · · Score: 5, Funny

      I hate it when people make scales to grade something on, and then never use the damn entirety of the scale.

      That, good sir, is because this scale can only be played in dropped D.

    6. Re:How about... by hoggoth · · Score: 5, Informative

      I taught some classes for the Computer Science department at a local university. Initially I was worried that it would be a difficult process to decide who passes and who fails at the lower end of the class. But as it turned out there was never any difficulty. Most students came to class, tried their best, and got A's, B's, and some that had difficulty with the subject got C's. The others rarely showed up, never handed in any projects, and basically signed their names on tests.
      There weren't any in the middle.

      --
      - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
    7. Re:How about... by Ecuador · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or they could make it a bit harder to get a D... Simply you get a passing grade if you deserve to pass...

      Oblig:

      Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
      Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
      Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
      Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
      Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
      Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
      Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
      Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
      Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
      Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
      Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

      --
      Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    8. Re:How about... by nizo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or maybe they could assign letter grades, like A B C D and F.....

      --
      I Am My Own Worst Enemy
  2. Average by ComputerGeek01 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:feh. by DurendalMac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sometimes the best teacher in the world can't get a stubborn little jackass to learn anything. You want to point the finger? Point it at the parents who do nothing to help or encourage their kids and expect the schools to make up for the daily 4+ hours of TV and gaming that the kids get. Crappy schools need to get fixed, sure, but I'd say that crappy parents are a far bigger problem. They expect the schools to do everything so they don't have to lift a finger.

  4. Re:Average by Antisyzygy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wish they would implement more trade schools. It would be nice to move people that fail at academic pursuits into a high school designed to teach them a marketable trade like being a mechanic or car. Just because someone doesnt do well in math, science, english and/or social studies doesn't mean they don't have some other talent that would benefit society.

    --
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  5. Bell Curve by radicalpi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. We have to stop preaching equality by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. MSNBC gets a D in journalism. by moosesocks · · Score: 5, Informative

    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