Thursday, April 30, 2020

Grades

Grades are not a commodity to be hoarded, or candy to be tossed to children.  They should be an indicator of achievement towards some set of objective standards.  Of course, to some people that's racist or elitist or sexist or some other sort of -ist when it should be the most reasonable and obvious belief there is.

Seattle:
The board narrowed down several ideas, like marking credit or no credit, keeping the letter grade as of March 10 only with an option to improve, or letting schools and teachers decide what to do.

“After looking at several options, we determined the 'A or Incomplete' policy is the best option to make sure the extended school building closure doesn’t harm any of our students, particularly those furthest from educational justice,” said Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Denise Juneau.

San Francisco:
The San Francisco school board abandoned a plan to give students automatic A’s on their transcripts this semester, instead adopting a credit/no credit grading policy on Tuesday evening...

The policy aligns with grading policies recommended by state universities to address the sudden switch to distance learning following coronavirus school closures in mid-March...

School board members initially supported giving all students straight A’s two weeks ago, saying it was unfair to hold them responsible for the difficulties related the learning during the pandemic, with many students not having access to computers or online coursework.
When you outdo San Francisco in insanity, you might want to reconsider your actions.

5 comments:

Ellen K said...

Why should teachers even bother issuing assignments at that point? It seems like we're throwing free stuff at students, parents, teachers just to make them feel better. My grandson's lessons take him less than 3 hours to complete. He does them because his parents make him do them. Yet even if he does his work completely and well he will get the same grade as the kid who pays his sister to do his work. In a similar manner we're now paying Federal dollars above and beyond unemployment to the point that businesses who need employees can't find anyone willing to work for a wage that will allow the business to stay open. All of this based on "feelings" and "insured outcomes." Those two factors pretty much determine liberal dogma from trophies for all to climate change. The idea being that nobody should ever be sad, frustrated or angry or that everyone is magically entitled to a perfect life is at the core of liberalism. This policy on grades is just more of the same.

sphilben said...

"furthest from educational justice" Huh?

Pseudotsuga said...

Educational Justice-- yeah, right.
Come talk to me about "educational justice" when you can fix my "victimhood" about not being allowed to get (or pay for) a fancy Ivy League degree.
It's just not FAIR that I was unable to get a Rhodes Scholarship, either.
I want my justice!

bwhnter said...

My district is east of the Cascade Mountains in the fruit growing/wheat farming area of WA. I am fortunate enough to work with a great team and great principal and we made the adjustment to online quickly and as effective as could be. At first we were exasperated to the sacrificing of the education of 99% of the students because of "equity" towards the few with a 504 or an IEP even though we were able to make reasonable accommodations. But, a few 504 parents with OCR attorneys put the brakes on what we were trying to do. Now that Seattle Public Schools came out with their "everyone gets an A" policy pretty much all districts in the state adopted the same policy because of "equity" I teach WA State History which is a graduation credit. With this new direction I now have about 20% of my students doing work, or even logging in for that matter. The reason? ...everyone gets an "A" whether they do anything or not. I have a few students who have not turned in an assignment since January and now get the graduation credit they did not earn and get an A for the class. That is not equity in any way, shape or form.

On the plus side, I appreciate your blog and the articles and view points expressed here by you and many of your followers. It's hard to be a non-union member conservative in this business!

Anonymous said...

As your colleague said, "when everyone gets an A, no one gets an A"
https://phyzblog.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-grade-inflation-pandemic-of-2020_19.html?m=1"