It's been tried before - think back to the New Education Techniques (complete with "classrooms without walls" and "schools without grades") of the '70's and the ignorant little hellions it produced.
Grades (and standardized tests) benefit students and parents by providing a measuring to stick to chart progress with - and reasonably flexible (yes, it's ok to bounce an advanced kid ahead or hold a slower kid back) grade levels give the schools a chance at getting kids at more or less the same learning level to the same place at the same time in order to move them on to the next level of learning.
Plenty of parents homeschool without grades already. I'm not one of them. The public schools, interestingly, at the elementary level do NOT give out grades here either.
I do wonder how they would differentiate the "top" students to the competetive colleges under this plan, however.
It's been tried before - think back to the New Education Techniques (complete with "classrooms without walls" and "schools without grades") of the '70's and the ignorant little hellions it produced.
ReplyDeleteGrades (and standardized tests) benefit students and parents by providing a measuring to stick to chart progress with - and reasonably flexible (yes, it's ok to bounce an advanced kid ahead or hold a slower kid back) grade levels give the schools a chance at getting kids at more or less the same learning level to the same place at the same time in order to move them on to the next level of learning.
Har! And when did results suddenly assume enough importance to be a worthy of consideration?
ReplyDelete*shrug*
ReplyDeletePlenty of parents homeschool without grades already. I'm not one of them. The public schools, interestingly, at the elementary level do NOT give out grades here either.
I do wonder how they would differentiate the "top" students to the competetive colleges under this plan, however.