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How can you assess a student who doesn't participate in assessment? It's not a moral judgment of the kid, but an observation that he didn't do the work that was

How can you assess a student who doesn't participate in assessment? It's not a moral judgment of the kid, but an observation that he didn't do the work that was going to be graded. Or should the teacher award a subjective grade based on "well, this student's actually 'smarter', even though this other student worked a lot harder and completed the assigned work better"?

NoMoreNicksLeft 10y ago
You don't even ask the right questions. Tests, exams, and quizzes are assessments. Homework is, nominally, an attempt to coerce the student into enough practice that they succeed at the real assessment. Most practice will inevitably result in wrong answers and bad scores... if you could complete the practice perfectly you wouldn't need to practice or even take exams. If a student does poorly at homework and gets a 98 on an exam, only the exam should count towards a grade. Their poor scores on homework only indicate initial practice which served its purpose and allowed them to do better on their second (or third, or tenth) attempt which was the exam. However, less logical human instincts prevail. Teachers who see this improvement don't think "hey that practice paid off" despite that being the most likely explanation (and the only good faith explanation). So, they recursively turn homework into its own assessment. Surely if they cheated to get the 98% on the exam, then using their homework scores will expose the lie. More tests are added, more homework is added, all in the instinctive hope that they surely can't cheat all the time and the predicted inconsistency will prove a guilt that was only theorized due to unfounded suspicion and a moral need for the children to be too stupid to succeed. After all, if these children could do that well, why would they even need teachers at all? How many public school teachers did you have that demanded that you "show your work" and gave you bad grades for failure to do that? How does that even serve the purpose of assessment? They watched you do the math right there, at your desk. Were you pulling a calculator out of your rectum every time they turned their head, stuffing it back in before they spotted it? If the answers were right, if you did it there in their presence, then this didn't serve the purpose of assessment. But all this goes even deeper. They simply don't know what to assess. They're too incompetent, too unintellectual to be able to assess any student. They rely on these bad measurements to they can maintain the pretense of assessing a student's education. It's nothing of the sort. They make the poodles jump through hoops, because that's what the show is. > Or should the teacher award a subjective grade This particular phrase is so whacked-out, I don't even know where to begin. Are grades "awards"? If they are awards, what can they be awards for, other than behavior? You don't award someone a prize for having blue eyes, or any other quality of their being. Why would you award one for them being educated? Why would you give them a grade, some arbitrary number, a score? "Look, my education penis is bigger than yours!". How could it ever be anything other than subjective? When they do a double-blind medical study, they're not saying "this pill is 68% effective for Tim Johnson, but 92% effective for John Timson!". That's because the score just doesn't mean much other than in the aggregate. Tim's 68% doesn't mean it was ineffective for him. Too many confounding factors were possible. It doesn't mean that John did better... he might have been healthier at the start of the study. And if those aren't a measure of the pill, how can that individual number be measure of the patient? Could Tim's 68% have been higher if he had just followed the protocols more diligently? Wouldn't you find it absurd if someone suggested that? But with teachers and their grades, if the student gets an F it's a measure of the student's failure and not the teacher's. Teachers' unions fight tooth and nail to prevent that public perception from becoming the norm. Let's not even get into whether John's 92% pill effectiveness grade means he will live longer or be more healthy or any of the other desired effects of the medicine. Have you ever even thought about any of this? Or did you just keep your head down close to the desk as you slowly scribbled out answers you hoped the poodle master would like? Have you shrugged off every criticism like this your entire life?
- alexc05 10y ago
  I disagree - "does this kid work hard?" is actually a super valuable question to have answered. Remember all those startup articles that say "ideas are worthless" and "implementation is everything"? School is a lot like that, and it's a valid measure. It's the rest of us that have a "fundamental misattribution error" in thinking grades are a measure of intelligence.

NoMoreNicksLeft 10y ago

You don't even ask the right questions. Tests, exams, and quizzes are assessments. Homework is, nominally, an attempt to coerce the student into enough practice that they succeed at the real assessment. Most practice will inevitably result in wrong answers and bad scores... if you could complete the practice perfectly you wouldn't need to practice or even take exams. If a student does poorly at homework and gets a 98 on an exam, only the exam should count towards a grade. Their poor scores on homework only indicate initial practice which served its purpose and allowed them to do better on their second (or third, or tenth) attempt which was the exam. However, less logical human instincts prevail. Teachers who see this improvement don't think "hey that practice paid off" despite that being the most likely explanation (and the only good faith explanation). So, they recursively turn homework into its own assessment. Surely if they cheated to get the 98% on the exam, then using their homework scores will expose the lie. More tests are added, more homework is added, all in the instinctive hope that they surely can't cheat all the time and the predicted inconsistency will prove a guilt that was only theorized due to unfounded suspicion and a moral need for the children to be too stupid to succeed. After all, if these children could do that well, why would they even need teachers at all? How many public school teachers did you have that demanded that you "show your work" and gave you bad grades for failure to do that? How does that even serve the purpose of assessment? They watched you do the math right there, at your desk. Were you pulling a calculator out of your rectum every time they turned their head, stuffing it back in before they spotted it? If the answers were right, if you did it there in their presence, then this didn't serve the purpose of assessment. But all this goes even deeper. They simply don't know what to assess. They're too incompetent, too unintellectual to be able to assess any student. They rely on these bad measurements to they can maintain the pretense of assessing a student's education. It's nothing of the sort. They make the poodles jump through hoops, because that's what the show is. > Or should the teacher award a subjective grade This particular phrase is so whacked-out, I don't even know where to begin. Are grades "awards"? If they are awards, what can they be awards for, other than behavior? You don't award someone a prize for having blue eyes, or any other quality of their being. Why would you award one for them being educated? Why would you give them a grade, some arbitrary number, a score? "Look, my education penis is bigger than yours!". How could it ever be anything other than subjective? When they do a double-blind medical study, they're not saying "this pill is 68% effective for Tim Johnson, but 92% effective for John Timson!". That's because the score just doesn't mean much other than in the aggregate. Tim's 68% doesn't mean it was ineffective for him. Too many confounding factors were possible. It doesn't mean that John did better... he might have been healthier at the start of the study. And if those aren't a measure of the pill, how can that individual number be measure of the patient? Could Tim's 68% have been higher if he had just followed the protocols more diligently? Wouldn't you find it absurd if someone suggested that? But with teachers and their grades, if the student gets an F it's a measure of the student's failure and not the teacher's. Teachers' unions fight tooth and nail to prevent that public perception from becoming the norm. Let's not even get into whether John's 92% pill effectiveness grade means he will live longer or be more healthy or any of the other desired effects of the medicine. Have you ever even thought about any of this? Or did you just keep your head down close to the desk as you slowly scribbled out answers you hoped the poodle master would like? Have you shrugged off every criticism like this your entire life?

alexc05 10y ago
I disagree - "does this kid work hard?" is actually a super valuable question to have answered. Remember all those startup articles that say "ideas are worthless" and "implementation is everything"? School is a lot like that, and it's a valid measure. It's the rest of us that have a "fundamental misattribution error" in thinking grades are a measure of intelligence.