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Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

99 points by lxm 5y ago

DeathArrow 5y ago
A country develops its future by learning. Denying its future by degrading education is criminal. As with everything in life, there are people good at one thing and people who are not. Trying to level everything to the lowest level is idiotic. Sane countries do promote excellence while trying to help the rest stay at a decent level. A country needs both scientists and manual workers. I want both my doctor and the guy who repairs my car to do a good job.
- dorchadas 5y ago
  This isn't 'degrading education'. It's recognizing that education as we currently have it is biased towards those who have strong socioeconomic situations and stable backgrounds at home.
grammarnazzzi 5y ago
> Los Angeles and San Diego Unified — the state’s two largest school districts, with some 660,000 students combined — have recently directed teachers to base academic grades on whether students have learned what was expected of them during a course — and not penalize them for behavior, work habits and missed deadlines. That lesson is going to serve them well in the workplace. Teach students that they are entitled to bad behavior, bad work habits, and deadlines? Fuck deadlines The next generation is going to have a hard time competing in the global workplace against cultures that do enforce reasonable consequences for fucking up.
- skyde 5y ago
  you got to understand where this new guidelines are coming from. If a 5 years old student already can do algebra and calculus but his teacher give him 100 page of simple addition to do as homework and he decide to not do them… Should he fail the class ? I don’t think so, the class is already too easy for him! His grade should only be based on his score on exams! Why force student to waste hours at home doing busy work on something they already master? this sound like torture!
  - remarkEon 5y ago
    The same people who are arguing for "no homework" are also the ones arguing for "no tracking." So, in your hypothetical, this kid who can do algebra at age 5 would fail his math class but also not get placed in an advanced math track doing calculus at age 6 where he/she belongs. It's a lose-lose.
    - skyde 5y ago
      I never said there should be no tracking. I am just saying if you want to measure my kid skill do it during school hours instead of forcing him to do an enormous amount of useless work outside school hours
  - bodhiandpysics1 5y ago
    The problem is that exams are often an extremely poor assessment of actual student learning, since they're such an unnatural format (no checking of oneself, strong time limits, extremely "easy" problems that can be done in those time limits). The other problem is that the only way to actually learn something is often to practice it. Attaching grades to "homework" is a method of forcing students to actually do the practice. Otherwise, there has to be some other reward mechanism, because frankly, its very hard for children to have the self discipline to study on their own.
    - skyde 5y ago
      in this case maybe force the student to complete homework during school hours. instead of expecting kid to do it at home.
      - bodhiandpysics1 5y ago
        There are a finite number of school hours! Teachers have to be paid! That being said, America is extremely unusual in the small number of explicit classroom hours students have, and the large amount of homework students are expected to do.
- btheshoe 5y ago
  When I fucked up in middle/high school, it wasn't because I was lazy. It was because I had no idea how to deal with stress/anxiety/deadlines. I had teachers who luckily were empathetic and I grew up eventually. I was lucky - I have fantastic parents in a loving, stable marriage and my mental health on the whole was not extraordinarily bad. Many kids are not that lucky. In my experience, the kids (my peers) who were doing drastically badly weren't lazy. They had something else going on - a bad home life, or serious mental health issues.
  - gjs278 5y ago
    sounds like you were a bad student. none of those excuses will work at work.
  - lmm 5y ago
    Dealing with stress/anxiety/deadlines is a vital life skill. At some point people have to face failures and consequences (even if the failure was "not their fault"!) and learn to handle them; if they don't do it in school they'll be doing it for the first time in college, or in the workplace, or with governmental requirements.
    - lostdog 5y ago
      The point still stands. School doesn't teach you to handle stress and anxiety. It just creates some for you.
      - lmm 5y ago
        It's a relatively low-stakes environment (in the long term, even though it doesn't feel like it at the time) where you have to deal with it. That's valuable.
        lostdog 5y ago
        Unfortunately it only helps your anxiety if you KNOW that it's low stakes.
    - 5y ago
- bodhiandpysics1 5y ago
  School really doesn't mimic the workplace very well. For one thing, work doesn't usually give homework! (with some exceptions like the law). Docking students for bad behavior is problematic, because it requires the teacher to be extremely honest, to avoid unequal standards. Late penalties almost certainly impede learning since they cause the give up effect, where students give up on something they can't hope to finish, instead of actually trying. The issue ultimately is that if you want grades to be a measure of student performance, they should actually measure student performance, and not other aspects of what students do in a class.
  - anonfornoreason 5y ago
    Work does give you homework, it's just the self-selected kind. The people who excel and get ahead at work are the ones who recognize this and do the extra work. Whether that's educating themselves so they can make a career move, or taking on extra tasks (which often requires self-edification) to show they are worth promoting. I think what school fails to do is teach the difference between internal motivation and external motivation. Mandated homework is external motivation for those who don't get it, and for those who do the mandate isn't necessary.
  - grammarnazzzi 5y ago
    > School really doesn't mimic the workplace very well. That irrelevant. The point is that in any given relationship, expectations are established and how well an expectation is met greatly determines the outcome. If a student, employer, son, friend, mate agrees to completing a 1-hour task within a week and they fail to deliver, that's a problem. There are consequences. The gist of the article is that the student is really the victim and should be pandered to. That might work for a student or a someone's kid, but any other relationship is going to end badly. Friends, partners and employers get to choose their relationships. If you're irresponsible and disrespectful, they get to chose someone else. > Late penalties almost certainly impede learning since they cause the give up effect, You're confusing causation with correlation. Late penalties do not impede learning. Chosing not to learn by not doing the work impedes learning. If a student isn't mature enough to meet expectations, the underlying cause should be addressed: the student's imaturity, irresponsibiltiy, home environment, learning disablity, lesson plan, whatever... Removing consquenses for failing, making excuses, and giving the student a victim identity isn't doing the him/her any favors.
- zem 5y ago
  the point of school is to give you a basic educational foundation, not to prepare you for the workplace
  - bodhiandpysics1 5y ago
    I agree! Also "prepare for the workplace" is meaningless. There are many many different kinds of workplaces!
    - crehn 5y ago
      Regardless of the "workplace", I think what it really means is an aptitude to be productive despite ambiguity and less-than-ideal conditions. Those skills apply everywhere.
  - Burnafter186 5y ago
    David Graeber in "Bullshit Jobs": "Once time was money, it became possible to speak of “spending time,” rather than just “passing” it—also of wasting time, killing time, saving time, losing time, racing against time, and so forth. Puritan, Methodist, and evangelical preachers soon began instructing their flocks about the “husbandry of time,” proposing that the careful budgeting of time was the essence of morality. Factories began employing time clocks; workers came to be expected to punch the clock upon entering and leaving; charity schools designed to teach the poor discipline and punctuality gave way to public school systems where students of all social classes were made to get up and march from room to room each hour at the sound of a bell, an arrangement self-consciously designed to train children for future lives of paid factory labor.25" "25.:Those who designed modern universal education systems were quite explicit about all this: Thompson himself cites a number of them. I remember reading that someone once surveyed American employers about what it was they actually expected when they specified in a job ad that a worker must have a high school degree: a certain level of literacy? Or numeracy? The vast majority said no, a high school education, they found, did not guarantee such things—they mainly expected the worker would be able to show up on time. Interestingly, the more advanced the level of education, however, the more autonomous the students and the more the old episodic pattern of work tends to reemerge." Of course it's not just getting up and shuffling from class to class, but also waking up regularly, meeting deadlines, managing time efficiently. All of these things combined with the "basic educational foundation" which is in fact largely preparatory for later education and workplace fundamentals does seem to point against your assertions. And, frankly I think it's all harmful. Edit: Should probably also indicate that socialization in a hierarchical setting with various modes of authority being assumed while also dealing with virtual strangers at all points in the day is also not unlike work.
- tayo42 5y ago
  I think one of my most important work lessons was deadlines are almost always not real.
  - b9a2cab5 5y ago
    But some level of work ethic is certainly important. You don't need to work 80 hour weeks but you need to actually get your work done within a ballpark of when you said you'd get it done.
  - zsmi 5y ago
    For many of us in manufacturing the deadlines are very real. I actually like them. I do my best work under deadline as it forces me to focus.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Without deadlines most people won't accomplish anything.
  - asdff 5y ago
    Tell that to the client
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
cududa 5y ago
Mod: editorialized title. It's subtle, but it drives narrative with "equity" being such a trigger for folks lately, and isn't what the actual article outlines
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Is it possible the headline was updated? The word “inequitable” appears in the article’s URL indicating that’s the original framing of the author.
- prostoalex 5y ago
  This was submitted via the bookmarklet, which I believe just copies the <title>
- dang 5y ago
  As prostoalex pointed out, it was the HTML doc title - which is a perfectly legitimate option. But I think the page title is a bit more neutral, so have changed it.
- throwaway2077 5y ago
  <title>As Ds and Fs soar, schools ditch inequitable grade systems - Los Angeles Times</title> and the article itself very much does outline it. I don't want to quote the exact parts where it does touch on it, because I'd end up copypasting a wall of text.
throwaway23451 5y ago
I’m sure every generation feels like the next is going to turn the world to hell… but what the hell? I find it absolutely bonkers that gifted classes, math, homework and objective performance assessments are suddenly under fire as instruments perpetuating inequality. Does our education system leave much to be desired? Absolutely! Let’s pay teachers more and improve access to quality education for all students, not cognitively handicap the next generation.
- tmp_anon_22 5y ago
  A decade ago my high school had two buckets: * students in mostly AP classes who were college bound * students in no AP classes who were mostly not college bound, or were at least limited to community colleges and state schools (Which are great choices! But often have lower success rates and career outcomes) For the AP students grades were a joke because all the teachers would happily give out extra credit to any student who wanted it, all in the name of college admissions. For everyone else grades were a joke because all the students cared about was passing, and teachers REALLY wanted students to graduate, and would give grade bumps to any student who needed it. I believe most schools suffer from this sort of grade inflation, to the point that grades are at best useful for loose categorization (i.e. A+ students, A-C students, F students) and thats it. It never was and never will be a true meritocracy at scale.
  - throw9000 5y ago
    I knew so many valedictorians that flunked out at the state school I went to (University of Missouri - Rolla). High school is a garbage indicator for how well you'll do in life or further education.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      I was the school valedictorian. I never tried. I thought my casual ways would work in college. They didn't. I came within a hair of flunking out, until I realized that I had to attend all the lectures, do all the homework on time, and make sure I understood front to back every homework problem. I can understand other valedictorians not doing well in college.
pmdulaney 5y ago
In Friends we laughed when Phoebe said, "I'd like to help you but I don't want to." Now kids say, "I'd like to do the work necessary to get good grades, but I don't want to."
- derekp7 5y ago
  It is more than that though. Let's take a kid who has a good feel for math, but make them do several pages of addition and subtraction problems every night for homework instead of teaching them that there is such a thing as "math" and what they are doing is simply "arithmetic". Run this into the ground until they get sick of the subject. Now finally introduce some math formulas, but don't tell them what they are learning -- instead they just have to memorize these expressions without purpose. And since this kid isn't really good at anything artistic (can't even begin to draw anything recognizable because they haven't ever been taught some basic techniques), how about we have them combine the math with an art project "to make it more fun", then fail them in math because their art is sub-par, and the results makes it "obvious that they didn't even try" (not that they don't know how to do art). Is it really hard to take a simple to understand concept such as the area of a rectangle (that the kid already understands) -- then instead of telling them that the area of a triangle is "base times height divided by two", how about drawing a box on the board, and drawing a line from corner to corner making two triangles. Now it is obvious why you take the formula for a rectangle and then divide it by two to get the area of a triangle. Ok, lets take this one step further -- you need to figure out how many feet of siding strips are needed to fill in the peak of where a wall joins a roof. "Hey I know this, it is base times height divided by two". But then you order the materials, and you come up short, because you have waste at the ends due to overhang (so you really need to draw out your triangle with the base several inches wider [add 2x the height of your siding strips to the base]). That is where the simple schooling didn't translate to the real world simply because the kids are taught to memorize answers for a test.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  Do they?
  - pmdulaney 5y ago
mynameishere 5y ago
In the past, when people conquered another country they would do something bold and strident to celebrate their victory. Not, you know, add more days to turn in homework.
silexia 5y ago
Translation of the article from ivory tower speak to English: "We don't care about your children actually learning anything, we only care about dancing to popular politics and getting our union raises."
- throw9000 5y ago
  Didn't have to wait long for union bashing to come around.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    In an article about global warming, coal bashing is going to come around pretty quickly. Because it is the source of the problem.
    - renewiltord 5y ago
      And yet time and again we find that unions are the only large organizations fighting climate change.
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.md/kvdBx https://archive.md/kvdBx http://web.archive.org/web/20211111005414/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-08/as-ds-and-fs-soar-schools-ditch-inequitable-grade-systems http://web.archive.org/web/20211111005414/https://www.latime...
eric4smith 5y ago
Because of all this I’m super tough on young people that come to work with me. The first thing I tell them is that this is not school anymore. The second thing I tell them is that what they learned in college does not apply here, so forget everything that happened there. Thirdly, I push them super hard. Fourthly, I fire people quickly. Finally, because of this, I go through a good number of people, but the best ones rise to the top and do very well. This phenomenon is occurring in almost all countries at this time. And the only way to combat it is to push back against it —- hard.
- xcambar 5y ago
  I wish you were sarcastic. You're basically ruining people instead of helping them grow. But you probably think "it's not my job" anyway.
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    Did you actually believe that post was true?
    - xcambar 5y ago
      I'd rather ask.
  - eric4smith 5y ago
    You would last 3 hours in my shop :-)
    - xcambar 5y ago
      I wish I could try.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SavantIdiot 5y ago
Glad to see school systems addressing the systemic inequities that have become visible due to the pandemic. There are other ways to grade. The point system has always been lazy, about as effective at predicting competence and success as standardized testing. What really predicts success is how rich your parents are. Sure there are rich fuckups, but not having to take care of parents or younger siblings while living on the poverty line sure helps. It's not an easy problem to solve, and this idea of "tough love, kick them in the ass" is basically perpetuating the idea of working yourself to death and hating yourself because that's what the smartest guy on hacker news says should happen. Hell 80% of the graduates are gonna be burger flippers, Walmart greeters, street cleaners, and all the jobs that aren't elite hacker positions. *It's not like a straight A student is going to stop getting straight A's because we didn't punish the poor kids and underachievers hard enough.* The hate directed at this article is endemic of fear. Absolute fear that someone will get more than you. Something they don't deserve, so punish them hard and punish them early. Which is disgusting, and is the narrative the far right has been pushing for the past four decades. From welfare queens to demonizing SNAP. It's all the same cycle of hate.
- DeathArrow 5y ago
  I'm not from US. I'm not from a wealthy family. I even wasn't amongst the top students in University or high school. And yet I've learned enough to be good at programming/CS, I have a decent job and I can take a break to watch you embarass yourself on HN.
- gjs278 5y ago
  username is all I needed to read
- pcmoney 5y ago
  No it is fear I’ll be on the operating table with a surgeon who has been trained to think that if he botches something there is a do over.
  - thioordc 5y ago
    Can you tell me the difference between a 4.0 and a 3.9? Usually I find it to be a ~1-2%! That 1% difference is just one sign error, rounding mistake or miss read question on a midterm! However that difference between how that looks on your transcript is extremely substantial. I feel like 1% is just waaay to “accurate” for teachers to handle! Finding a good teacher is much more important than working hard or understanding the material. I think it should just be pass or fail
laserbeam 5y ago
I was really hoping this is a decent article about what some teacher or school did about the problem. It starts like that but then it goes kablookie... So, a certain Joshua Moreno is fed up with the system and did something about that, 2 paragraphs. GREAT. Then the rest of the entire article is about institutionalized racism and how the current system fails us. At no point do we get a good example about what mr Moreno did, only what he moved away from. This is horrible confusing writing. I'm sorry but this is absolute click bait garbage. I AGREE with the fact that there is institutionalized racism and I aplaud work to reduce that. But this article is misleading, and confusing, and poorly written. There's no concrete idea in it that we could debate here on HN. If there is, someone would have to rewrite and state it clearly.
- jhoechtl 5y ago
  Isn't the general intelligence level going down since like 20 years or so? I admit I have no factual proof nor a link to study, I only read and hear that from time to time so this might be an urban legend. But if so, we face a large-scale societal problem we might not even be able to tackle, like leaded gas was likely a major contributor to soaring violence in the 60ies to 80ies.
  - sien 5y ago
    Nope. It's going up : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect Mind you, perhaps American High Schools are poised to stop this....
    - gs17 5y ago
      You should look a few sections down in that article. There is evidence that it slowed down and possibly even reversed in recent decades.
    - tomp 5y ago
      You should read your sources before posting them. > Some research suggests that there may be an ongoing reversed Flynn effect, i.e. a decline in IQ scores, in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, and German-speaking countries,[4] a development which appears to have started in the 1990s.
WalterBright 5y ago
> give students a five-day grace period to turn in work I don't see how that changes anything. It just means the homework deadline is 5 days later. > eliminate zeroes in grade books Meaning if one does well on the first assignment, the rest of the semester can be ignored. A savvy student, once they achieved an A, will be motivated to not turn in any more assignments or tests. > and re-do tests Once you know what is on the test, it isn't really a test anymore.
- ycombinete 5y ago
  all extensions/grace periods ever gave me when I was at university was worse time crises later on when I procrastinated a second time.
- ahevia 5y ago
  I mean allowing multiple redos for tests doesn’t seem awful. Especially if the test questions can be mixed up. My physics and calculus classes did this with online software & I mastered those subjects pretty heavily towards the end. I understand this can’t be repeated for all subjects but the general idea doesn’t seem like the worse
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    It's a lot of work to prepare a good physics exam, partly because you don't want to pose questions that the students are already familiar with.
    - mlyle 5y ago
      At what level? Undergraduate physics / secondary honors track, sure. But in MS physical science and the intro physics HS class I'm familiar with-- doing simple, well-understood kinematics problems is where a whole lot of test effort is spent (while trying to build intuition and process that the best students will be able to use for harder problems). I mean, it's fun to ask "trick" questions, like what happens to a helium balloon in a turning car, etc, but I wouldn't assess based on them. If students are going to be engineers or heavily use physics, they can go to AP physics and college physics classes and draw complicated free body diagrams and set up big equations.
WalterBright 5y ago
> That makes each mark more meaningful than a grade that is a hodgepodge of factors that can vary from teacher to teacher. Grades are always going to be a varying hodgepodge of factors. That's why there are standardized tests, but those are being dumped, too.
baron816 5y ago
Would it be that complicated to just skip grades and only advanced students once they’ve mastered a subject? Why do we say “60% correct? That’s good enough you can start learning more complicated stuff”? Let’s just allow students to keep working on something until they’ve demonstrated mastery, and allow them to move at their own pace.
- DeathArrow 5y ago
  >Let’s just allow students to keep working on something until they’ve demonstrated mastery, and allow them to move at their own pace. By doing that, some will do 4 years in 2 and others will do 4 years in 10 or never.
imwillofficial 5y ago
Let’s ditch the old way of grading, but keep the old way of teaching
wwilim 5y ago
A lot of the heated debate here is about racism. I'm not from the US, but in my experience people get terribly inequal opportunities in education even in environments where everyone has the same ethnic background. The most limiting factors as I see them are first and foremost a lack of love and care from one's parents, and second a wealth deficit. Many commenters are also furious about alleged "lowering the bar". Remember than once we take away certain factors from grading, if we do it right, new factors will take their place - it's not just going to be all participation prizes. The idea is that the bar will be higher, but it will be positioned in a place where all students have to jump the same height to clear it. The general idea is clear, but as for how that could be implemented, I don't know. I was hoping to find out in the article, but I was left terribly disappointed. The way it is written does make it sound like coaching baloney, which I think doesn't do the people trying to improve their education system any justice, it just makes it easy for them to be labeled social justice warriors.
- bambataa 5y ago
  > The most limiting factors as I see them are first and foremost a lack of love and care from one's parents, and second a wealth deficit. I have numerous friends who are teachers and they all consistently say that the biggest problem is poor parenting. Primarily disengaged parents or parents who don’t value education. Of course this is the elephant in the room because no politician is going to blame parents. It seems to me that all the chat up-thread about schooling vouchers and parental choice are entirely missing the point. The children of engaged parents will probably do ok anyway. It’s the bad parents that are the problem.
  - DeathArrow 5y ago
    >I have numerous friends who are teachers and they all consistently say that the biggest problem is poor parenting. Primarily disengaged parents or parents who don’t value education. But that should be the role of public schools. Teach children even if their parents don't care and don't challenge them to learn.
    - 5y ago
hintymad 5y ago
Some people seem not get it: dropping homework or objective assessment will not help under-privileged students but hurt them. Homework and object assessment are not used to oppress people (what kind of sick mind would think of that?). They are used to give students timely feedback on what they need to improve upon. Just reading books and listening to lectures will help students learn probably 20% or less, and it is homework or exercises in general that will take students to the next level. Remember the classic STEM textbooks? The authors will usually say that exercises are an important part of the book, and students should try to solve all of them? Let me guess, completing those exercises will be racist? And why do you left think that lowering standards will help poor students? You think the poor students will get better education without pushing themselves? You think less trained students will do better in their future job? You think they will magically master advanced concepts and skills? You think they will suddenly become better problem solvers? On the other hand, you think the families with means will not send their kids to Russian School of Mathematics, to Art of Problem Solving, and to teach some kids advanced STEM and reading and writing with other like-minded parents and private teachers? You think that those with means won't send their kids to private school if public schools go to hell? Do you left even know that those with means do not need to go to tutoring schools or private schools if public schools have some common sense? Do you left even know that the best K-12 schools in China are always, I mean always, public schools? Do you left even know that the best teachers in each Chinese city are always, always, public school teachers? Do you left even ask yourself why the majority of Chinese students graduated from public schools yet they are so good at STEM subjects (they may not have as many geniuses as in the western world, but I'm talking about ordinary students here)? Yeah, I'm sure labeling everything racism and everyone who disagree with you racist will magically improve K-12 education of the US. It's as if you left are trying to destroy the life of under-privileged by pretending to be righteous.
- alanfranz 5y ago
  I think that the point is not about lowering standards; it's about preventing unrelated variables to enter the equation. Examples: - A lot of redundant homework is assigned, quantity over quality. Some students with external duties (e.g. family, work) are just unable to deliver all the homework, and thus get lower grades, even though less homework would be enough to demonstrate ability in a topic; - Deadlines are set too close to an homework availability date, so students with external duties are sometimes unable to meet them; - Students in affluent families could be helped by third parties with their homework; it's hard to verify that; - Students that do a bad homework or fail an exam should be able to retake it, since it's easier to have a "bad day" if your family has issues. The point is measuring actual student ability, not busywork throughput or the willingness to meet arbitrary deadlines.
DeathArrow 5y ago
>These days, the Alhambra High School English teacher has done away with points entirely. He no longer gives students homework and gives them multiple opportunities to improve essays and classwork. The goal is to base grades on what students are learning, and remove behavior, deadlines and how much work they do from the equation. Thanks to people like him the education in US will fall even deeper.
DeathArrow 5y ago
What's next? Requiring the best runners in Olympics run slower so it we be more "equitable" for those that can't run?
kazinator 5y ago
> Others — often those who had to work or care for family members after school — would fail to turn in their homework and fall so far behind that they would just stop trying. Work or care for family members after school — why, that's a new problem nobody had 25, 50, 100, ... 150 years ago. Gotta change grading!
alanfranz 5y ago
The article is interesting, but I'm not certain what the schools are actually doing. The point is measuring actual student skill, not busywork throughput or the ability to meet arbitrary deadlines. That's fine, IMHO. But we still need an objective way to measure the skills - e.g. an exam, an in-class assignment or presentation, something like that. Students should be allowed to retake exams if they fail. But then, if students from affluent families do better (because they've got more time to study!), they should be given a better grade, otherwise things lose meaning. Maybe we could switch to performance-based learning, where students graduate later, but in the end they achieve a certain skill level. The improvement should come from changing poor students' environment - try giving them enough room to study and the right tools - not by dropping the grade system.
DeathArrow 5y ago
Public schools in US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM
karlkloss 5y ago
Why not just shoot the messenger instead?
cafard 5y ago
Long ago I helped coach some kids' baseball teams. There I got a notion why 60% is or was the minimum passing grade in schools: if you give a kid a task he can perform about 2/3 of the time, it may engage him and he may get better at it. If you give a kid he can perform half or less of the time, you will get a frustrated, then bored and put-upon kid. Moving a kid who has not mastered basic material into a class that aims to build on it? That seems to me a formula for frustration.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tomohawk 5y ago
The solution is obvious. Don't allow the same organization that is providing education to assess grades. Without independent audit of results, what do you expect?
RickJWagner 5y ago
This is what's known as the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations. Thomas Sowell (and many others) have offered some fascinating insights into why it is counterproductive.
civilized 5y ago
Another perspective on what exactly "giving multiple opportunities to improve essays and classwork" means in practice: https://quillette.com/2021/11/03/the-demoralization-of-the-american-teacher/ https://quillette.com/2021/11/03/the-demoralization-of-the-a... When educators and administrators try to saint themselves for pushing pass rates to 100% at all costs, parents should be skeptical and look at the outcomes: kids who graduate high school and don't know how to read or do basic math, etc. Of course we need to do something for children whose home life is not conducive to learning, but more detail is needed before we can deem any particular approach praiseworthy. Some schools would like nothing more than to pass children through without being responsible for any learning occurring.

99 points by lxm 5y ago

A country develops its future by learning. Denying its future by degrading education is criminal. As with everything in life, there are people good at one thing and people who are not. Trying to level everything to the lowest level is idiotic. Sane countries do promote excellence while trying to help the rest stay at a decent level. A country needs both scientists and manual workers. I want both my doctor and the guy who repairs my car to do a good job.

dorchadas 5y ago
This isn't 'degrading education'. It's recognizing that education as we currently have it is biased towards those who have strong socioeconomic situations and stable backgrounds at home.

grammarnazzzi 5y ago

> Los Angeles and San Diego Unified — the state’s two largest school districts, with some 660,000 students combined — have recently directed teachers to base academic grades on whether students have learned what was expected of them during a course — and not penalize them for behavior, work habits and missed deadlines. That lesson is going to serve them well in the workplace. Teach students that they are entitled to bad behavior, bad work habits, and deadlines? Fuck deadlines The next generation is going to have a hard time competing in the global workplace against cultures that do enforce reasonable consequences for fucking up.

skyde 5y ago
you got to understand where this new guidelines are coming from. If a 5 years old student already can do algebra and calculus but his teacher give him 100 page of simple addition to do as homework and he decide to not do them… Should he fail the class ? I don’t think so, the class is already too easy for him! His grade should only be based on his score on exams! Why force student to waste hours at home doing busy work on something they already master? this sound like torture!
- remarkEon 5y ago
  The same people who are arguing for "no homework" are also the ones arguing for "no tracking." So, in your hypothetical, this kid who can do algebra at age 5 would fail his math class but also not get placed in an advanced math track doing calculus at age 6 where he/she belongs. It's a lose-lose.
  - skyde 5y ago
    I never said there should be no tracking. I am just saying if you want to measure my kid skill do it during school hours instead of forcing him to do an enormous amount of useless work outside school hours
- bodhiandpysics1 5y ago
  The problem is that exams are often an extremely poor assessment of actual student learning, since they're such an unnatural format (no checking of oneself, strong time limits, extremely "easy" problems that can be done in those time limits). The other problem is that the only way to actually learn something is often to practice it. Attaching grades to "homework" is a method of forcing students to actually do the practice. Otherwise, there has to be some other reward mechanism, because frankly, its very hard for children to have the self discipline to study on their own.
  - skyde 5y ago
    in this case maybe force the student to complete homework during school hours. instead of expecting kid to do it at home.
    - bodhiandpysics1 5y ago
      There are a finite number of school hours! Teachers have to be paid! That being said, America is extremely unusual in the small number of explicit classroom hours students have, and the large amount of homework students are expected to do.
btheshoe 5y ago
When I fucked up in middle/high school, it wasn't because I was lazy. It was because I had no idea how to deal with stress/anxiety/deadlines. I had teachers who luckily were empathetic and I grew up eventually. I was lucky - I have fantastic parents in a loving, stable marriage and my mental health on the whole was not extraordinarily bad. Many kids are not that lucky. In my experience, the kids (my peers) who were doing drastically badly weren't lazy. They had something else going on - a bad home life, or serious mental health issues.
- gjs278 5y ago
  sounds like you were a bad student. none of those excuses will work at work.
- lmm 5y ago
  Dealing with stress/anxiety/deadlines is a vital life skill. At some point people have to face failures and consequences (even if the failure was "not their fault"!) and learn to handle them; if they don't do it in school they'll be doing it for the first time in college, or in the workplace, or with governmental requirements.
  - lostdog 5y ago
    The point still stands. School doesn't teach you to handle stress and anxiety. It just creates some for you.
    - lmm 5y ago
      It's a relatively low-stakes environment (in the long term, even though it doesn't feel like it at the time) where you have to deal with it. That's valuable.
      - lostdog 5y ago
        Unfortunately it only helps your anxiety if you KNOW that it's low stakes.
  - 5y ago
bodhiandpysics1 5y ago
School really doesn't mimic the workplace very well. For one thing, work doesn't usually give homework! (with some exceptions like the law). Docking students for bad behavior is problematic, because it requires the teacher to be extremely honest, to avoid unequal standards. Late penalties almost certainly impede learning since they cause the give up effect, where students give up on something they can't hope to finish, instead of actually trying. The issue ultimately is that if you want grades to be a measure of student performance, they should actually measure student performance, and not other aspects of what students do in a class.
- anonfornoreason 5y ago
  Work does give you homework, it's just the self-selected kind. The people who excel and get ahead at work are the ones who recognize this and do the extra work. Whether that's educating themselves so they can make a career move, or taking on extra tasks (which often requires self-edification) to show they are worth promoting. I think what school fails to do is teach the difference between internal motivation and external motivation. Mandated homework is external motivation for those who don't get it, and for those who do the mandate isn't necessary.
- grammarnazzzi 5y ago
  > School really doesn't mimic the workplace very well. That irrelevant. The point is that in any given relationship, expectations are established and how well an expectation is met greatly determines the outcome. If a student, employer, son, friend, mate agrees to completing a 1-hour task within a week and they fail to deliver, that's a problem. There are consequences. The gist of the article is that the student is really the victim and should be pandered to. That might work for a student or a someone's kid, but any other relationship is going to end badly. Friends, partners and employers get to choose their relationships. If you're irresponsible and disrespectful, they get to chose someone else. > Late penalties almost certainly impede learning since they cause the give up effect, You're confusing causation with correlation. Late penalties do not impede learning. Chosing not to learn by not doing the work impedes learning. If a student isn't mature enough to meet expectations, the underlying cause should be addressed: the student's imaturity, irresponsibiltiy, home environment, learning disablity, lesson plan, whatever... Removing consquenses for failing, making excuses, and giving the student a victim identity isn't doing the him/her any favors.
zem 5y ago
the point of school is to give you a basic educational foundation, not to prepare you for the workplace
- bodhiandpysics1 5y ago
  I agree! Also "prepare for the workplace" is meaningless. There are many many different kinds of workplaces!
  - crehn 5y ago
    Regardless of the "workplace", I think what it really means is an aptitude to be productive despite ambiguity and less-than-ideal conditions. Those skills apply everywhere.
- Burnafter186 5y ago
  David Graeber in "Bullshit Jobs": "Once time was money, it became possible to speak of “spending time,” rather than just “passing” it—also of wasting time, killing time, saving time, losing time, racing against time, and so forth. Puritan, Methodist, and evangelical preachers soon began instructing their flocks about the “husbandry of time,” proposing that the careful budgeting of time was the essence of morality. Factories began employing time clocks; workers came to be expected to punch the clock upon entering and leaving; charity schools designed to teach the poor discipline and punctuality gave way to public school systems where students of all social classes were made to get up and march from room to room each hour at the sound of a bell, an arrangement self-consciously designed to train children for future lives of paid factory labor.25" "25.:Those who designed modern universal education systems were quite explicit about all this: Thompson himself cites a number of them. I remember reading that someone once surveyed American employers about what it was they actually expected when they specified in a job ad that a worker must have a high school degree: a certain level of literacy? Or numeracy? The vast majority said no, a high school education, they found, did not guarantee such things—they mainly expected the worker would be able to show up on time. Interestingly, the more advanced the level of education, however, the more autonomous the students and the more the old episodic pattern of work tends to reemerge." Of course it's not just getting up and shuffling from class to class, but also waking up regularly, meeting deadlines, managing time efficiently. All of these things combined with the "basic educational foundation" which is in fact largely preparatory for later education and workplace fundamentals does seem to point against your assertions. And, frankly I think it's all harmful. Edit: Should probably also indicate that socialization in a hierarchical setting with various modes of authority being assumed while also dealing with virtual strangers at all points in the day is also not unlike work.
tayo42 5y ago
I think one of my most important work lessons was deadlines are almost always not real.
- b9a2cab5 5y ago
  But some level of work ethic is certainly important. You don't need to work 80 hour weeks but you need to actually get your work done within a ballpark of when you said you'd get it done.
- zsmi 5y ago
  For many of us in manufacturing the deadlines are very real. I actually like them. I do my best work under deadline as it forces me to focus.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Without deadlines most people won't accomplish anything.
- asdff 5y ago
  Tell that to the client
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

cududa 5y ago

Mod: editorialized title. It's subtle, but it drives narrative with "equity" being such a trigger for folks lately, and isn't what the actual article outlines

throwawaysea 5y ago
Is it possible the headline was updated? The word “inequitable” appears in the article’s URL indicating that’s the original framing of the author.
prostoalex 5y ago
This was submitted via the bookmarklet, which I believe just copies the <title>
dang 5y ago
As prostoalex pointed out, it was the HTML doc title - which is a perfectly legitimate option. But I think the page title is a bit more neutral, so have changed it.
throwaway2077 5y ago
<title>As Ds and Fs soar, schools ditch inequitable grade systems - Los Angeles Times</title> and the article itself very much does outline it. I don't want to quote the exact parts where it does touch on it, because I'd end up copypasting a wall of text.

throwaway23451 5y ago

I’m sure every generation feels like the next is going to turn the world to hell… but what the hell? I find it absolutely bonkers that gifted classes, math, homework and objective performance assessments are suddenly under fire as instruments perpetuating inequality. Does our education system leave much to be desired? Absolutely! Let’s pay teachers more and improve access to quality education for all students, not cognitively handicap the next generation.

tmp_anon_22 5y ago
A decade ago my high school had two buckets: * students in mostly AP classes who were college bound * students in no AP classes who were mostly not college bound, or were at least limited to community colleges and state schools (Which are great choices! But often have lower success rates and career outcomes) For the AP students grades were a joke because all the teachers would happily give out extra credit to any student who wanted it, all in the name of college admissions. For everyone else grades were a joke because all the students cared about was passing, and teachers REALLY wanted students to graduate, and would give grade bumps to any student who needed it. I believe most schools suffer from this sort of grade inflation, to the point that grades are at best useful for loose categorization (i.e. A+ students, A-C students, F students) and thats it. It never was and never will be a true meritocracy at scale.
- throw9000 5y ago
  I knew so many valedictorians that flunked out at the state school I went to (University of Missouri - Rolla). High school is a garbage indicator for how well you'll do in life or further education.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I was the school valedictorian. I never tried. I thought my casual ways would work in college. They didn't. I came within a hair of flunking out, until I realized that I had to attend all the lectures, do all the homework on time, and make sure I understood front to back every homework problem. I can understand other valedictorians not doing well in college.

pmdulaney 5y ago

In Friends we laughed when Phoebe said, "I'd like to help you but I don't want to." Now kids say, "I'd like to do the work necessary to get good grades, but I don't want to."

derekp7 5y ago
It is more than that though. Let's take a kid who has a good feel for math, but make them do several pages of addition and subtraction problems every night for homework instead of teaching them that there is such a thing as "math" and what they are doing is simply "arithmetic". Run this into the ground until they get sick of the subject. Now finally introduce some math formulas, but don't tell them what they are learning -- instead they just have to memorize these expressions without purpose. And since this kid isn't really good at anything artistic (can't even begin to draw anything recognizable because they haven't ever been taught some basic techniques), how about we have them combine the math with an art project "to make it more fun", then fail them in math because their art is sub-par, and the results makes it "obvious that they didn't even try" (not that they don't know how to do art). Is it really hard to take a simple to understand concept such as the area of a rectangle (that the kid already understands) -- then instead of telling them that the area of a triangle is "base times height divided by two", how about drawing a box on the board, and drawing a line from corner to corner making two triangles. Now it is obvious why you take the formula for a rectangle and then divide it by two to get the area of a triangle. Ok, lets take this one step further -- you need to figure out how many feet of siding strips are needed to fill in the peak of where a wall joins a roof. "Hey I know this, it is base times height divided by two". But then you order the materials, and you come up short, because you have waste at the ends due to overhang (so you really need to draw out your triangle with the base several inches wider [add 2x the height of your siding strips to the base]). That is where the simple schooling didn't translate to the real world simply because the kids are taught to memorize answers for a test.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
Do they?
- pmdulaney 5y ago

mynameishere 5y ago

In the past, when people conquered another country they would do something bold and strident to celebrate their victory. Not, you know, add more days to turn in homework.

silexia 5y ago

Translation of the article from ivory tower speak to English: "We don't care about your children actually learning anything, we only care about dancing to popular politics and getting our union raises."

throw9000 5y ago
Didn't have to wait long for union bashing to come around.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  In an article about global warming, coal bashing is going to come around pretty quickly. Because it is the source of the problem.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    And yet time and again we find that unions are the only large organizations fighting climate change.

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.md/kvdBx https://archive.md/kvdBx http://web.archive.org/web/20211111005414/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-08/as-ds-and-fs-soar-schools-ditch-inequitable-grade-systems http://web.archive.org/web/20211111005414/https://www.latime...

eric4smith 5y ago

Because of all this I’m super tough on young people that come to work with me. The first thing I tell them is that this is not school anymore. The second thing I tell them is that what they learned in college does not apply here, so forget everything that happened there. Thirdly, I push them super hard. Fourthly, I fire people quickly. Finally, because of this, I go through a good number of people, but the best ones rise to the top and do very well. This phenomenon is occurring in almost all countries at this time. And the only way to combat it is to push back against it —- hard.

xcambar 5y ago
I wish you were sarcastic. You're basically ruining people instead of helping them grow. But you probably think "it's not my job" anyway.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Did you actually believe that post was true?
  - xcambar 5y ago
    I'd rather ask.
- eric4smith 5y ago
  You would last 3 hours in my shop :-)
  - xcambar 5y ago
    I wish I could try.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

SavantIdiot 5y ago

Glad to see school systems addressing the systemic inequities that have become visible due to the pandemic. There are other ways to grade. The point system has always been lazy, about as effective at predicting competence and success as standardized testing. What really predicts success is how rich your parents are. Sure there are rich fuckups, but not having to take care of parents or younger siblings while living on the poverty line sure helps. It's not an easy problem to solve, and this idea of "tough love, kick them in the ass" is basically perpetuating the idea of working yourself to death and hating yourself because that's what the smartest guy on hacker news says should happen. Hell 80% of the graduates are gonna be burger flippers, Walmart greeters, street cleaners, and all the jobs that aren't elite hacker positions. *It's not like a straight A student is going to stop getting straight A's because we didn't punish the poor kids and underachievers hard enough.* The hate directed at this article is endemic of fear. Absolute fear that someone will get more than you. Something they don't deserve, so punish them hard and punish them early. Which is disgusting, and is the narrative the far right has been pushing for the past four decades. From welfare queens to demonizing SNAP. It's all the same cycle of hate.

DeathArrow 5y ago
I'm not from US. I'm not from a wealthy family. I even wasn't amongst the top students in University or high school. And yet I've learned enough to be good at programming/CS, I have a decent job and I can take a break to watch you embarass yourself on HN.
gjs278 5y ago
username is all I needed to read
pcmoney 5y ago
No it is fear I’ll be on the operating table with a surgeon who has been trained to think that if he botches something there is a do over.
- thioordc 5y ago
  Can you tell me the difference between a 4.0 and a 3.9? Usually I find it to be a ~1-2%! That 1% difference is just one sign error, rounding mistake or miss read question on a midterm! However that difference between how that looks on your transcript is extremely substantial. I feel like 1% is just waaay to “accurate” for teachers to handle! Finding a good teacher is much more important than working hard or understanding the material. I think it should just be pass or fail

laserbeam 5y ago

I was really hoping this is a decent article about what some teacher or school did about the problem. It starts like that but then it goes kablookie... So, a certain Joshua Moreno is fed up with the system and did something about that, 2 paragraphs. GREAT. Then the rest of the entire article is about institutionalized racism and how the current system fails us. At no point do we get a good example about what mr Moreno did, only what he moved away from. This is horrible confusing writing. I'm sorry but this is absolute click bait garbage. I AGREE with the fact that there is institutionalized racism and I aplaud work to reduce that. But this article is misleading, and confusing, and poorly written. There's no concrete idea in it that we could debate here on HN. If there is, someone would have to rewrite and state it clearly.

jhoechtl 5y ago
Isn't the general intelligence level going down since like 20 years or so? I admit I have no factual proof nor a link to study, I only read and hear that from time to time so this might be an urban legend. But if so, we face a large-scale societal problem we might not even be able to tackle, like leaded gas was likely a major contributor to soaring violence in the 60ies to 80ies.
- sien 5y ago
  Nope. It's going up : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect Mind you, perhaps American High Schools are poised to stop this....
  - gs17 5y ago
    You should look a few sections down in that article. There is evidence that it slowed down and possibly even reversed in recent decades.
  - tomp 5y ago
    You should read your sources before posting them. > Some research suggests that there may be an ongoing reversed Flynn effect, i.e. a decline in IQ scores, in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, and German-speaking countries,[4] a development which appears to have started in the 1990s.

WalterBright 5y ago

> give students a five-day grace period to turn in work I don't see how that changes anything. It just means the homework deadline is 5 days later. > eliminate zeroes in grade books Meaning if one does well on the first assignment, the rest of the semester can be ignored. A savvy student, once they achieved an A, will be motivated to not turn in any more assignments or tests. > and re-do tests Once you know what is on the test, it isn't really a test anymore.

ycombinete 5y ago
all extensions/grace periods ever gave me when I was at university was worse time crises later on when I procrastinated a second time.
ahevia 5y ago
I mean allowing multiple redos for tests doesn’t seem awful. Especially if the test questions can be mixed up. My physics and calculus classes did this with online software & I mastered those subjects pretty heavily towards the end. I understand this can’t be repeated for all subjects but the general idea doesn’t seem like the worse
- WalterBright 5y ago
  It's a lot of work to prepare a good physics exam, partly because you don't want to pose questions that the students are already familiar with.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    At what level? Undergraduate physics / secondary honors track, sure. But in MS physical science and the intro physics HS class I'm familiar with-- doing simple, well-understood kinematics problems is where a whole lot of test effort is spent (while trying to build intuition and process that the best students will be able to use for harder problems). I mean, it's fun to ask "trick" questions, like what happens to a helium balloon in a turning car, etc, but I wouldn't assess based on them. If students are going to be engineers or heavily use physics, they can go to AP physics and college physics classes and draw complicated free body diagrams and set up big equations.

WalterBright 5y ago

> That makes each mark more meaningful than a grade that is a hodgepodge of factors that can vary from teacher to teacher. Grades are always going to be a varying hodgepodge of factors. That's why there are standardized tests, but those are being dumped, too.

baron816 5y ago

Would it be that complicated to just skip grades and only advanced students once they’ve mastered a subject? Why do we say “60% correct? That’s good enough you can start learning more complicated stuff”? Let’s just allow students to keep working on something until they’ve demonstrated mastery, and allow them to move at their own pace.

DeathArrow 5y ago
>Let’s just allow students to keep working on something until they’ve demonstrated mastery, and allow them to move at their own pace. By doing that, some will do 4 years in 2 and others will do 4 years in 10 or never.

imwillofficial 5y ago

Let’s ditch the old way of grading, but keep the old way of teaching

wwilim 5y ago

A lot of the heated debate here is about racism. I'm not from the US, but in my experience people get terribly inequal opportunities in education even in environments where everyone has the same ethnic background. The most limiting factors as I see them are first and foremost a lack of love and care from one's parents, and second a wealth deficit. Many commenters are also furious about alleged "lowering the bar". Remember than once we take away certain factors from grading, if we do it right, new factors will take their place - it's not just going to be all participation prizes. The idea is that the bar will be higher, but it will be positioned in a place where all students have to jump the same height to clear it. The general idea is clear, but as for how that could be implemented, I don't know. I was hoping to find out in the article, but I was left terribly disappointed. The way it is written does make it sound like coaching baloney, which I think doesn't do the people trying to improve their education system any justice, it just makes it easy for them to be labeled social justice warriors.

bambataa 5y ago
> The most limiting factors as I see them are first and foremost a lack of love and care from one's parents, and second a wealth deficit. I have numerous friends who are teachers and they all consistently say that the biggest problem is poor parenting. Primarily disengaged parents or parents who don’t value education. Of course this is the elephant in the room because no politician is going to blame parents. It seems to me that all the chat up-thread about schooling vouchers and parental choice are entirely missing the point. The children of engaged parents will probably do ok anyway. It’s the bad parents that are the problem.
- DeathArrow 5y ago
  >I have numerous friends who are teachers and they all consistently say that the biggest problem is poor parenting. Primarily disengaged parents or parents who don’t value education. But that should be the role of public schools. Teach children even if their parents don't care and don't challenge them to learn.
  - 5y ago

hintymad 5y ago

Some people seem not get it: dropping homework or objective assessment will not help under-privileged students but hurt them. Homework and object assessment are not used to oppress people (what kind of sick mind would think of that?). They are used to give students timely feedback on what they need to improve upon. Just reading books and listening to lectures will help students learn probably 20% or less, and it is homework or exercises in general that will take students to the next level. Remember the classic STEM textbooks? The authors will usually say that exercises are an important part of the book, and students should try to solve all of them? Let me guess, completing those exercises will be racist? And why do you left think that lowering standards will help poor students? You think the poor students will get better education without pushing themselves? You think less trained students will do better in their future job? You think they will magically master advanced concepts and skills? You think they will suddenly become better problem solvers? On the other hand, you think the families with means will not send their kids to Russian School of Mathematics, to Art of Problem Solving, and to teach some kids advanced STEM and reading and writing with other like-minded parents and private teachers? You think that those with means won't send their kids to private school if public schools go to hell? Do you left even know that those with means do not need to go to tutoring schools or private schools if public schools have some common sense? Do you left even know that the best K-12 schools in China are always, I mean always, public schools? Do you left even know that the best teachers in each Chinese city are always, always, public school teachers? Do you left even ask yourself why the majority of Chinese students graduated from public schools yet they are so good at STEM subjects (they may not have as many geniuses as in the western world, but I'm talking about ordinary students here)? Yeah, I'm sure labeling everything racism and everyone who disagree with you racist will magically improve K-12 education of the US. It's as if you left are trying to destroy the life of under-privileged by pretending to be righteous.

alanfranz 5y ago
I think that the point is not about lowering standards; it's about preventing unrelated variables to enter the equation. Examples: - A lot of redundant homework is assigned, quantity over quality. Some students with external duties (e.g. family, work) are just unable to deliver all the homework, and thus get lower grades, even though less homework would be enough to demonstrate ability in a topic; - Deadlines are set too close to an homework availability date, so students with external duties are sometimes unable to meet them; - Students in affluent families could be helped by third parties with their homework; it's hard to verify that; - Students that do a bad homework or fail an exam should be able to retake it, since it's easier to have a "bad day" if your family has issues. The point is measuring actual student ability, not busywork throughput or the willingness to meet arbitrary deadlines.

DeathArrow 5y ago

>These days, the Alhambra High School English teacher has done away with points entirely. He no longer gives students homework and gives them multiple opportunities to improve essays and classwork. The goal is to base grades on what students are learning, and remove behavior, deadlines and how much work they do from the equation. Thanks to people like him the education in US will fall even deeper.

DeathArrow 5y ago

What's next? Requiring the best runners in Olympics run slower so it we be more "equitable" for those that can't run?

kazinator 5y ago

> Others — often those who had to work or care for family members after school — would fail to turn in their homework and fall so far behind that they would just stop trying. Work or care for family members after school — why, that's a new problem nobody had 25, 50, 100, ... 150 years ago. Gotta change grading!

alanfranz 5y ago

The article is interesting, but I'm not certain what the schools are actually doing. The point is measuring actual student skill, not busywork throughput or the ability to meet arbitrary deadlines. That's fine, IMHO. But we still need an objective way to measure the skills - e.g. an exam, an in-class assignment or presentation, something like that. Students should be allowed to retake exams if they fail. But then, if students from affluent families do better (because they've got more time to study!), they should be given a better grade, otherwise things lose meaning. Maybe we could switch to performance-based learning, where students graduate later, but in the end they achieve a certain skill level. The improvement should come from changing poor students' environment - try giving them enough room to study and the right tools - not by dropping the grade system.

DeathArrow 5y ago

Public schools in US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM

karlkloss 5y ago

Why not just shoot the messenger instead?

cafard 5y ago

Long ago I helped coach some kids' baseball teams. There I got a notion why 60% is or was the minimum passing grade in schools: if you give a kid a task he can perform about 2/3 of the time, it may engage him and he may get better at it. If you give a kid he can perform half or less of the time, you will get a frustrated, then bored and put-upon kid. Moving a kid who has not mastered basic material into a class that aims to build on it? That seems to me a formula for frustration.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tomohawk 5y ago

The solution is obvious. Don't allow the same organization that is providing education to assess grades. Without independent audit of results, what do you expect?

RickJWagner 5y ago

This is what's known as the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations. Thomas Sowell (and many others) have offered some fascinating insights into why it is counterproductive.

civilized 5y ago

Another perspective on what exactly "giving multiple opportunities to improve essays and classwork" means in practice: https://quillette.com/2021/11/03/the-demoralization-of-the-american-teacher/ https://quillette.com/2021/11/03/the-demoralization-of-the-a... When educators and administrators try to saint themselves for pushing pass rates to 100% at all costs, parents should be skeptical and look at the outcomes: kids who graduate high school and don't know how to read or do basic math, etc. Of course we need to do something for children whose home life is not conducive to learning, but more detail is needed before we can deem any particular approach praiseworthy. Some schools would like nothing more than to pass children through without being responsible for any learning occurring.