"Too Dumb To Fail": Schools Are Ditching Homework & Deadlines in Favor of Equitable Grading (controversial, solutions)
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Well there's a lot of "chiefs" in schools now that weren't there before.
At one school I reported to the Math Curriculum Coach who reported to the Math Dept head who reported to the school Curriculum Administrator who reported to the Principal. This was middle school.
I was working from a grant for the school for 1 year for math remediation. There was no academic interaction with them; it was all strictly about the paperwork required for the grant money.
Another school I worked at had Curriculum Coaches at each school and then one at the District level when all the while the curriculum was posted on the state website and that's what we had to use.
There are now layers of people between the teacher and the principal.
Imagine what teachers could make in salary if you got rid of them all ? Because they didn't always be there.
Boy did you hit the nail on the head. In the school my son teaches, which is fairly large, they didn't have a curriculum director 6 or 7 years ago. NOW, they have a curriculum director and several assistant curriculum directors. One of them was a horrible Math teacher, so they found a different job for him. In many cases, like in my son's case, they no little to nothing about particular subjects. Yet, they're dictating everything to the teachers.
Before this excess administration came in, the teachers themselves would work around the state requirements in arranging their classrooms. The system was NOT broken. Just more bureaocracy and a lot of wasted money being spent. This extra level of nearly useless people have also become a major reason that some teachers are leaving or have left to other school districts.
What job needs you to learn how to work 12+ hours a day on a consistent basis? I am aware of very few, namely some law jobs and medical residency. The latter is time limited.
Other jobs that would require a 12-hour day tend to do so only during certain times, such as when there is a big deadline coming up or something else was happening. For example, I remember when I worked for state government in a state that had a 2-month legislative session plus about 2-3 months prior to that of meetings, the legislative group would be working all the time those 4-5 months. For the other 7 months, they were basically sitting in their offices goofing around. That sort of schedule is far more indicative of the real world than asking CHILDREN to spend 12 hours a day on schoolwork, when there are other valuable activities they could be doing like being on a sports team, academic team, getting a part-time job, or even just enjoying kid activities. Why on earth would we ask kids, who are not mature yet, to do MORE work than adults?
I was using 6 hours as an example to make a point. There isn't just one "correct" number of homework hours that applies to every student. I depends on the student's goals, the difficulty of the classes they're taking and how quickly they learn the material.
High school is, of course, a competitive time for a lot of students. The stakes are high because colleges and universities use high school GPA for admissions. The student's SAT score will also reflect or be affected by the cumulative knowledge they acquire. They have to do whatever it takes to cross that finish line.
I was using 6 hours as an example to make a point. There isn't just one "correct" number of homework hours that applies to every student. I depends on the student's goals, the difficulty of the classes they're taking and how quickly they learn the material.
High school is, of course, a competitive time for a lot of students. The stakes are high because colleges and universities use high school GPA for admissions. The student's SAT score will also reflect or be affected by the cumulative knowledge they acquire. They have to do whatever it takes to cross that finish line.
6 hours per night in HS is way too much for any kid, IMO.
I asked my daughter about her study hours outside of class for HS compared to college.
She said 10 hours per week at the most in HS, 50-60 at Dartmouth. Pretty sure it was her high SAT that earned admission there more than anything else.
With grade inflation high GPA's aren't so impressive anymore, unless the kid is acing every AP class available.
Granted that it's becoming quite rare for kids to be held back in school due to poor performance, but "Too dumb to fail" isn't a fair description of "equitable grading".
6 hours per night in HS is way too much for any kid, IMO.
I asked my daughter about her study hours outside of class for HS compared to college.
She said 10 hours per week at the most in HS, 50-60 at Dartmouth. Pretty sure it was her high SAT that earned admission there more than anything else.
With grade inflation high GPA's aren't so impressive anymore, unless the kid is acing every AP class available.
Granted that it's becoming quite rare for kids to be held back in school due to poor performance, but "Too dumb to fail" isn't a fair description of "equitable grading".
The grade inflation has been an issue for a while. I finished HS almost 30 years ago, and even then the difference between being a good and a fantastic student was pretty intense. You could be a good student by spending like 5-10 hours a week on homework. The fantastic students were probably spending 3-4 hours a week, BUT they were also taking supplemental classes outside the normal curriculum- either by doing college level courses in summer, extra AP/dual enrollment courses as electives, or a combination of both. My best friend had an insanely high class rank despite having an objectively poor unweighted GPA senior year of like 2.5 because she was doing the college summer school + dual enrollment combo. By the time I was coaching SAT classes a decade later, apparently it had become even worse than that since the virtual school didn’t limit how many APs you could take.
I don’t think it objectively makes that much difference in the long run. The enrollment cliff is here as well, so it’s going to make even less of a difference in the years to come.
Granted that it's becoming quite rare for kids to be held back in school due to poor performance, but "Too dumb to fail" isn't a fair description of "equitable grading".
It is hard to tell what equitable grading is. It is a nebulous concept and hardly anybody is coming clear on what it means exactly.
From what I gather, it is an attempt by schools to make the subject matter of classes easy enough that a majority of students in those schools pass those classes.
It is hard to tell what equitable grading is. It is a nebulous concept and hardly anybody is coming clear on what it means exactly.
From what I gather, it is an attempt by schools to make the subject matter of classes easy enough that a majority of students in those schools pass those classes.
At least, that seems to be the goal.
It's subjective. No bar. Hence..."everyone is a winner".
And now colleges are dropping SAT scores (66% of them) so they are still "winners".
It is hard to tell what equitable grading is. It is a nebulous concept and hardly anybody is coming clear on what it means exactly.
From what I gather, it is an attempt by schools to make the subject matter of classes easy enough that a majority of students in those schools pass those classes.
At least, that seems to be the goal.
I'm not sure that's quite right, I think some administrators have used it as a Trojan horse to inflate grades, but if you read the text that this is all based on it's supposed to cause just as many grades to drop as it brings up.
As I posted uptrend that has been my experience with it in the time my school has adopted it.
I don't see a problem with the school system the way it is.
I mean, in the current day system, you could fail every class in high school, then 5-10 years later, go get your GED, go to JUCO, and then 4 year flagship and still be most things in this world.
You may not be able to go to Yale or Columbia. Pfft, who cares?
A few paths will be closed off, you probably can't be a NASA astronaut, but you could still be the vast majority of things, say ... a dentist. If you wanted to pick a secure path to making a lot of $, if that's what floats your boat.
The system has a lot of flexibility and provides room for missteps and exploration so long as you time it right.
Talk about things that were NEVER properly explained to me when I was younger.
In regards to the dropping of homework...I wonder if some of that has to do with class sizes.
Due to an asssinine voter amendment back when I was teaching, my class load went from about 130 one year to 240 the following year. There was no way I could grade 480 labs a week plus homework assignments.
6 hours per night in HS is way too much for any kid, IMO.
I asked my daughter about her study hours outside of class for HS compared to college.
She said 10 hours per week at the most in HS, 50-60 at Dartmouth. Pretty sure it was her high SAT that earned admission there more than anything else.
With grade inflation high GPA's aren't so impressive anymore, unless the kid is acing every AP class available.
Granted that it's becoming quite rare for kids to be held back in school due to poor performance, but "Too dumb to fail" isn't a fair description of "equitable grading".
Quote:
Originally Posted by history nerd
I'm not sure that's quite right, I think some administrators have used it as a Trojan horse to inflate grades, but if you read the text that this is all based on it's supposed to cause just as many grades to drop as it brings up.
As I posted uptrend that has been my experience with it in the time my school has adopted it.
How is it supposed to do that? Which grades are supposed to drop? Just the A students or across the board? Or is it really just a version of forced ranking which adds points for the bottom and takes points from the top to force everyone toward a C? That would sure make grading a lot easier of everyone just got a C the first day of class and didn't have to do anything the rest of the year.
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