Having started school in mid-August, we've already completed over 30 days, over a third, of the first semester.
Today I received an email from a student asking me to allow the student to drop my class with no penalty. I declined.
We allow students to change/drop classes within the first 20 days of the semester. After those first 20 days, students must stay in a class for the rest of the semester or else a "drop F" will show on their transcript. The need for such a policy is simple and clear--if we let students drop classes after the first 20 days of a semester, students will drop classes like flies if their grades drop rather than putting in the effort they need to in order to pass. We consider those first 20 days time enough for students and teachers to determine if students are in the correct course and to make necessary adjustments. Yes, 20 days is an arbitrary deadline, but it's a published deadline that's known in advance. As I suggested in this post, you play the game by the rules of the game as written before the start of the game.
Yes, I know that going to school on a computer is difficult. Yes, I know that some people experience more stress than others in this teaching and learning environment. Yes, I know our rules aren't written in stone. Still, in today's case the reason boils down to "I'm not getting a good grade in class and it's stressing me out". To me, that's not a sufficient reason to grant an exception to our school policy. Low grades stress most students out!
There's no personal animus here, only consistency. You might counter that "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds", but I'd reply by noting that the actual quote is that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". Now any debate shifts to whether my reasoning above is foolish or not.
You can probably guess my opinion on that topic :-)
20 days seems fine to me. That is 4 weeks of school or 1 month if you include things like Labor Day. If one says 30 days is okay, why not 40 days? Then 50 days?
ReplyDeleteI do have to wonder how students fail a class besides sheer laziness. Yeah sometimes the work is too hard because they are in Calculus or an Honors class and that is known in the first 20 days so they should be able to drop it. However, my work is not that difficult and kids still fail my class. I had 8 students fail my class in the fall of last year; every single one failed at least 1 more class.
My 17yo just changed her two AP classes to regular old CP, so I guess you could say she dropped? I'm grateful that they let her do it. She is struggling to stay afloat in some pretty difficult circumstances, and the APs were killing her. She's still working hard. If school was in session, she could probably handle it.
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