Failing grades

[asterroc]

In case you haven't heard,

Pittsburgh Public Schools officials say they want to give struggling children a chance, but the district is raising eyebrows with a policy that sets 50 percent as the minimum score a student can receive for assignments, tests and other work.
...
"The 'E' [failing grade] is to be recorded no lower than a 50 percent, regardless of the actual percent earned. For example, if the student earns a 20 percent on a class assignment, the grade is recorded as a 50 percent," said the memo from Jerri Lippert, the district's executive director of curriculum, instruction and professional development, and Mary VanHorn, a PFT vice president.

--Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It is my understanding from this, that they should not be recording percentages at all, and instead should be transitioning entirely to letter grades or a GPA system. The two systems are not really compatible (despite what all US colleges and universities try to convince us) since they use different scales and ways of averaging.

So in the end I do not see this change as administrators requiring grade inflation. I see it as administrators who do not understanding math/statistics trying (and failing) to come up with a grading system that allows for student improvement.

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

My point is that the school shouldn't be using a percent or point system, but instead a letter grade system where we set A=Excellent, B=Good, C=Adequate, D=Poor, F=Unacceptable.

But yes, I agree that the fundamentals are crucial.

I'm curious what you think of states/districts that remove evolution from their K-12 science standards.

[blahblahboy.livejournal.com]

Okay, I just skimmed the article you quoted. I might agree that if you're failing, you just get an F, but if you get 65 or higher, you see that number. There's a certain psychology of trying to claw back from a 0, as opposed to an F. I could live with something like this: if you do well enough on the final, but flunk everything else, the teacher can use their discretion to pass you (barely).

I'm not in favor of letter grades in general because it doesn't make me feel like there's anything to strive for past an A. For example, our mutual junior high school had letter grades. I didn't ever feel like I needed to strive to do better than an A (or even a B or a C!), but when I started getting numerical grades I always felt the need to improve. 99 is so much more satisfying than an "A"! Similarly, in college, if I was doomed to a B, (modifiers didn't count), [more?]laziness suddenly kicked in, and I'd just do "enough" to keep the B.

I think schools that don't teach evolution are a great example of evolution. Their kids will leave the town and never come back. Within a few generations all these towns will be dead. If you're going to teach religions of the world in social studies, you should at least teach evolution. The school should be providing me a basic foundation to understand all that's out there. They should not be influenced by what they think is "right" and "wrong". Besides, I'm sure some Christian out there can smush the elements of evolution into the confines of the Bible. It doesn't seem like that difficult a task.

Not to mention if genetics are taught, then the natural progression from genetics is natural selection, and then, evolution. But I agree, some people find it difficult to visualize long term effects of anything.