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

[best-ken-ever.livejournal.com]

My dad teaches biology at a high school in central NJ and the school has had a similar policy in effect for at least the last eight years. The idea is, students can't get less than a 50% unless there is some evidence of cheating or plagiarizing.

I've always thought it a dumb system, but I am surprised every year by students who continually fail (sometimes more than one year in a row!), despite all of the extra chances they're given by this grading system. From poring over my dad's gradebooks, I don't really see it affecting the students that much. The ones who fail still fail, and the ones who actually try a little bit end up learning and doing, at minimum, a passable job.

[blahblahboy.livejournal.com]

What's the point for setting a base grade of 50? Why not just make everything out of 50 points then? IMHO pre-college material is the most important learning because it's the base foundation for everything after. Pre-college is basically mandatory for a reason. If the state produces stupid people the state has failed the children; they've let them into the real world with a certification of sorts when they might not yet be ready.

In contrast, college isn't mandatory. If you screw it up yourself and pass with all C's due to grade inflation, it's your own fault. You will live with the scar of ineptitude (or you might actually do quite well without knowing anything about advanced digital communications theory or something anyway). But yeah, you have no one to blame for missing your opportunity then but yourself.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Well, that depends on what you mean by "passable." They can pass their high school classes. They can even pass the Math MCAS (standardized math test that all students in my state must pass to graduate from high school). And yet 90% of the students who come to my college do NOT pass their math entrance exam and have to take at least one developmental (pre-college level) math class.

It's a puzzle to me what to do about this though.

[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.

[l0stmyrel1g10n.livejournal.com]

ooh boy. just what Pgh public schools need, an excuse for kids to not try as hard. i used to know a guy on the school board who would be reasonable, but he's on City Council now so he doesn't have as much influence.