Students Are Always Half Right In Pittsburgh 881
Pittsburgh Public Schools officials have enacted a policy that sets 50 percent as the minimum score a student can receive for assignments, tests and other work. District spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said, the 50 percent minimum gives children a chance to catch up and a reason to keep trying. If a student gets a 20 percent in a class for the first marking period, he or she would need a 100 percent during the second marking period just to squeak through the semester. The district and teachers union issued a joint memo to ensure staff members' compliance with the policy, which was already on the books but enforced only at some schools. At this rate, it won't be long before schools institute double extra credit Mondays and Fridays to ensure students don't take three day weekends.
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm...er... (Score:4, Interesting)
Back when I was in grade school they didn't HAVE numerical points... everything was a letter grade so, yeah, you couldn't go lower than an F which is the equivalent here. Once I was in the upper schools, you STILL couldn't get lower than an F (59 in my school system) on the report card, no matter how low you were. I don't see why you need to "flatten" individual test grades, so long as the value to determine the grade is "reset" every grade period.
Or maybe now we could finally discuss my Spanish language class (In the US and taught by a native German who was visiting for a year?!?) who gave ONE quiz for one grading period comprising 4 questions (2 5 pointers and 2 45 pointers) and I had to explain to my parents why I was flunking Spanish because I missed 1 question for 45 points!
Also, if students make... oh say... 150 points on a test are they allowed to skip a later test or get A++++++ because they obviously have earned it? Or are they gated as well... what happens to THEIR self-esteem when this occurs?
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:5, Interesting)
I would argue that gym is different than academic courses, and therefore should be graded differently.
OK, I'll take the contrarian view... (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, I do assign a grade of zero to the students who simply don't bother to do the work. I would have issues with any school district that mandated that I give a grade no less than a 50, because that removes the option for me to assign a zero if I believe it's warranted. At any rate, we just need to scrap all this grading scale granularity and assign pass/fail grades: Either you have subject mastery, or you don't. No subject (not even math) is so objective as to ensure fairness for all students operating at the same level of content mastery.
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:5, Interesting)
And maybe you should get exactly that? Seriously? Why the hell do bright students have to waste their time sitting on their ass while morons take all the teacher's attention?
Starting from grade 8 or so, you should be able to challenge any course. If you know your stuff, then you know your stuff, and you could use your time to do something productive, like university prep, sports, or volunteering... Something that'd be much better for your life and career than wasting time with idiots.
Negative Infinity (Score:5, Interesting)
There is one course that I took that made us write down not only our answers in the test, but also our certainty for our answer. The scoring was a logarithmic scale such that if you say you are 100% sure of an answer but get it wrong, you get Negative Infinity for that question and you end up failing the class. Oddly enough, this course was in CMU at Pittsburgh.
This *sounds* like bullshit, but I'm not so sure (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're thinking about the way pilots are (or ought to be) evaluated, or you think grades are a good stick with which to beat kids, this probably sounds like utter crap. But if you're really concerned about how to motivate kids, the picture is much more complex.
If you've never read it Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has an interesting passage [talkingtree.com] related to this subject. (It's one of my favorite books--you really should just read it in its entirety.)
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:5, Interesting)
Given the fact that one makes a successful career in America by gaming the sociopolitical system at work, I see nothing wrong with teaching kids how to game the system. Successfully manipulating through your environment to your own advantage is one of the most important skills a kid can learn to do good in life.
Same in Dallas (Score:3, Interesting)
Dallas (Texas) Independent School District is doing the same thing.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/081508dnmetdisdgrades.48e6cc22.html [dallasnews.com]
DISD is exceedingly dysfunctional (can't manage a budget, kick-backs, and so on). So this idiocy is small potatoes compared the the problems of the district as a whole.
Re:There isn't a teacher alive (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I think this indicates a teacher problem more than a school policy problem.
If bad teachers are the problem, then good teachers are the solution, however, so many bungled ideas about how to attract quality professionals to education have made it impossible to attract quality applicants in many, many districts across the country (here in Indiana it's worse than the national trend)
If you want quality professional teachers who know when to "pull a kid aside" and give them some targeted help to pass a class, then you have TO PAY THEM.
Why would a quality teacher leave the serenity of the university town they lived in for school and go to some backwards dysfunctional derelict school district for half the pay as they could get at a functioning district?
The only solution is to have a national teacher's minimum wage, subsidized by the Fed. Gov't if necessary (some red states would rather pardon child murderers than raise teacher salaries).
Anyone who disagrees needs to think hard about what teachers are asked to do in today's america. They are expected to do so much but paid like unionized factory workers.
$50,000 is a good starting figure. You could pay for it by ditching NCLB and all the wasteful bureaucracy that it created.
Fed, state, and local gov't wastes millions on ineffective programs that try to do systematically what a good teacher will do intuitively.
For the record, IANAT...I used to be until I realized I was carrying the burden of absent parents and ignorant policy makers.
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:4, Interesting)
100 questions T/F like "You can get pregnant your first time" vs all those slideshows of diseased genitalia...hmmm, tough choice. Yeah I studied real hard for that test. Not.
They closed the sex ed loophole after me.
The government, 10th grade english, and algebra were respectably representative though. Even had to write essays in advance and read some stuff for English.
Re:OK, I'll take the contrarian view... (Score:2, Interesting)
There is other ways to compensate for an extremely low grade on one test besides mandating a 50 percent floor on all assignments/tests. .125(35 + 15) + .25(95 + 80 + 85) = 71.25 %
Lets use an oversimplified example of 5 tests constituting 100 % of a students grade in the class.
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There are several methods that could take pressure off of just one bad test.
For example, you could make it so that only 4 out of the 5 tests count towards the 100 %.
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You take 5 tests, count the 4 highest so that the 0 % does not drag down the average.
If you want all of the tests to count, then you can weight the higher scores more than the lower ones.
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Lets say you have a student who scores 35//95//70//15//85
If you make the 2 lowest tests worth 12.5 % each and the three highest tests worth 25 % each then you can still get an accurate representation of the students performance while allowing the students best work to shine the brightest.
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The student has still passed while earning a 35 and 15 %.
This 50 % floor idea is absolute bullshit. Makes me remember how much of a colossal waste of my life high school was. Felt more like a prison to keep us off the streets during the day.
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But whatever, lets leave all of this "complicated" stuff to the experts who know exactly what they are doing...
Also whats up with the editor, wont let me put spaces in my comment >
Re:As a resident of a suburb of Pittsburgh... (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other side of the state, of course, you have the 4.5% (yes...4.5%) Philly wage tax. It's a wonderful and beautiful thing. All that money goes to...wait...where did that money go? I knew I put it around here somewhere. Dang it...
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:2, Interesting)
This also allows for students that perform within 'C' range to take half the year off.
From http://www.mikecoles.info/himself/content/let-them-fail [mikecoles.info]:
One point the article doesn't point out is that while their great idea to "keep the light in sight" also allows for students to blow off the last marking period. In the plan, no grade can be below 50%. For this example, let's assume a less than stellar student scores an average grade of 70% during the first two marking periods. To pass the class w/ a 'D', the sum of all the grades for all four quarters will need to be at least 240. After the first half of the year, our mediocre student has tallied 140 points. This leaves 100. Luckily for her, the mental midgets on the school board give her a minimum of 50 for any grade period
Good intention, bad implementation (Score:3, Interesting)
I can agree with their reason behind it, but not the execution. This is just like the "Everyone take off their shoes in case they're bombs" rule--it has a background, it has a "good" intent, but it's a horrible answer.
I know that many times in college, getting a very low grade early on struck a blow because I thought I might not be able to understand the rest of the material and pass. Even if everyone failed along with me, that wouldn't do much to perk me up. And often times the professor would state that there is a curve, but it's still a horrible one. A few times I just decided to withdraw rather than risk an F.
So I can get behind their idea that those who start failing early on will lose hope, and so need some sort of assurance to continue working. But auto-grading at 50% is a bad idea; how do you easily distinguish someone who tried but just doesn't get it and someone who didn't care and decided to just flake it? They both need help, but help of a different sort. This answer says "Well they should both just try harder".
Unfortunately, I don't know what a better solution might be. Many of my college classes had a policy for tests/quizzes where the lowest one would be dropped or the weights would change depending on how you did between them. Homework was graded normally. I think this works better-- they still get an accurate grade on assignments and so know what they have to work on, but it won't hurt them in the long run.
On another note, why the hell is this in Idle? Idle is for worthless shit and slashvertisements. This seems something better fit for Politics (maybe Science?). And what the hell is up with Idle's newline formatting?
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:5, Interesting)
A - 100% - 81%
B - 80% - 61%
C - 60% - 41%
D - 40% - 21%
F - 20% - 0%
At least then they will have coherency between letter grade and percentile of accomplishment. With their current distribution, they have no coherency because a student that performs 50% is equal to one that performs nothing.
As far as the admitting colleges go, they will quickly draft their own plans to adjust for the new grading policy, probably relying even more so on the SAT and other measures to determine their admittance criteria. As far as the school is concerned they just doubled the number of "A" students, even if it was only done by lowering the bar for an A.
If what they were suggesting was padding everyone's score by 50 percentage points, then it would be fair (if awkward). Instead what they are suggesting is padding the worst performer's score by 50 percentage points. In statistics, this would be called "cooking the books", and I'll bet they're cooking the books for more than just "a second chance, whenever the student tries to take it". I'll bet that the new point system is presented to performance boards as equal to those school systems that let a student hit dead bottom zero.
If you want to provide a "second chance" to achieve, do what other institutions have done. Let the student take the course again, with the new grade replacing the old grade. It costs the student an elective and another four months of their life; that makes sure it won't be abused by the student body: time is precious. It maintains the current standard of the school because the course will likely be taught the same way.
What they are doing is unconscionable from a statistics point of view; basically they are taking the numbers they don't like and changing them to 50. The "average" will likewise jump (even thought no corresponding jump in work will be performed). Kudos for them on learning how to lie with statistics. Shame on them for doing it by substituting undesirable values with those more palatable.
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:4, Interesting)
Because you value your time more? My experience (as a teacher) is that effort doubles between grades. So a D is twice as much effort to get as an F and a C is four times as much effort. I don't have a problem with some students recognizing that they don't want to spend lots of time on everything and making some cost/benefit decisions.
-Grey [silverclipboard.com]
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:4, Interesting)
My sister used to teach at a well known private school in Melbourne (Australia). Her first semester there she had a number of the reports she wrote returned for rewriting. One in particular was bounced twice with the comment that you can't call a student's performance on a test as "disastrous". Her response was "What would you call 3%?"
Re:OK, I'll take the contrarian view... (Score:4, Interesting)
So I went to the store a couple days ago, and offered the (four!) sales people the following deal: I'll buy the cell phone at the normal price, one bluetooth headset at full price, if you'll give me three of the accessories at half price. I'll buy the expensive bluetooth headset at 100% of it's retail price, if you will sell me the cheap bluetooth + rubber skin + leather case at 50% off.
The one salesman jumped at the chance to make the sale. One guy (the manager) backed off, but the two of other three thought it was a good idea. They processed my order. It was late, my wife and I were hungry - we went home. Looking at the order, they shafted us $36 on the 50% off.
Called them up and told them there was a problem. Went in the next day to sort it all out.
Not one, but two of these twenty-somethings insisted that "50% off" works, when you take 10% off the expensive item, and 20% off the two inexpensive items. 10 + 20 + 20 = 50, y'know?
o_O
I had to insult their intelligence and ask if 50% off a car can be computed by taking 49% off the cost of the radio, and 1% off the cost of the engine.
Eventually, they did make it right (mostly) but it reminded me again of just how stupid youngsters can be getting out of high school.
If a kid tries hard and cannot get four questions right on a twenty question test, maybe he needs to stay back a year. Wouldn't that be more kind than fooling the child into thinking he's got a shot? Let him/her be the big fish in next year's pond, instead of a struggling minnow in this year's pond.
old lie (Score:2, Interesting)
Ah, the old can't fire bad teachers argument...it's still a red herring...bad teachers get fired all the time
Bad teachers can be fired for poor performance or with no cause. It's not like the tenure system in colleges that affords liberal amounts of 'Academic freedom'...some school districts have something akin to 'seniority' for long-serving teachers, but even then those teachers can be fired for no cause or for poor performance.
You parrot a common misconception perpetuated by anti-union people for decades.
If you continue the grand parent's analogy, if a teacher is unfairly failing kids left and right with no regard for his/her duty to adapt to particular situations (aka, they patently refuse to "take the student aside" and work out a plan), that teacher could be fired for bad performance after basic guidelines for notification and probationary periods have elapsed.
When bad teachers keep their jobs, it's almost always b/c of an overly politicized school board or an incompetent administrator unwilling to show leadership.
I'm not calling for teachers to get fired arbitrarily, not at all...poor teacher performance is usually easy to spot. Admin's and school boards need to show leadership when it happens.
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:2, Interesting)
The place I worked for in Boston leased a bit of warehouse space at the company that packs a lot of Gilette's products. The majority of the people that did the packing were mentally handicapped, a small number were physically handicapped. Some of them had their little quirks, but a harder, more dedicated bunch of workers you couldn't find anywhere.
For a student who gets the minimum of 50 during the first quarter to pass, s/he has to get a 70 the second quarter. To get to a 70 average, (obviously a grade that the school district up there thinks is GOOD, sorry even in backassward Texas you have to get a 70 just to pass), the student would need a 90 average. There is no incentive for those students to do more than piss-poor mediocre when they know their grade won't be greatly affected. You give the kids a chance, and some incentive to fix-up their fuck-ups, and they just might do it, they could get in the low to mid 70's by end of semester, even if they do just turn out to be a mid 80's type of student. If they still fail they still fail, that's the life everyone else grew up with. This minimum 50% is doing nothing more than turning the high schools into paper-mills that send the kids out into the real world to fail.
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh god memories.
My school had a class in the computer room... not sure I'd call it IT.
Covered basic word and excel. The teacher was a nice guy but only one lesson ahead of the students. I remember explaining things like DNS and https to him.
Teachers Unions can go to Hell (Score:1, Interesting)
This is all an attempt by the teacher's unions to cover up the fact that a good portion of their members are less intelligent than the children they are entrusted to teach. Many Federal assistance programs to the schools are tied to performance, so the better the kids do the more money they get. Yes, we need to pay them more to attract better candidates, but we also need to be able to fire bad teachers and properly discipline bad kids (and yes, there is such a thing as bad kids...usually with bad parents). Bring back reform and technical schools and stop letting the smart kids be dragged down just because some brat's self esteem gets dinged.
Re:Or more reasonable policies (Score:3, Interesting)
Some teachers drop the lowest grade; I don't know if that's a great approach (depends on how many tests, I suppose), but perhaps you can retake the test with your lowest grade if you show improvement.
Re:Good Preparation (Score:3, Interesting)
I had a physics course like that in college. 25% was a C. Then the prof could be pretty aggressive about marking points off for things.
I can't imagine how much time it must have taken to grade those tests. Most problems were 12-15 steps. Entire tests were a single question (I remember one was only like 3 lines long, came with 3 additional sheets of blank paper, and we took it during a period normally reserved for lab work since he wanted us to have 2 hours to work it out). If you screwed up step 1, he worked through with your screwed up answer so you didn't lose points on the next steps.
I loved that guy's philosophy toward class. He didn't care if you came to class, he didn't care if you wanted to show your work. If you didn't come to class though, you couldn't ask any questions from material he covered in the class you missed (unless you spoke to him about some extenuating circumstances, in which case he was always happy to spend time with you one-on-one, even outside of office hours). He never formally took attendance, but he always knew who had missed what lecture even weeks later, and was very aggressive about not answering a question he felt you should know the answer to if you had not been absent.
You didn't have to show your work, but if you didn't and got something wrong, he couldn't give partial credit (eg, if you only put "42.1" as the answer, but the real answer was 42.0, you got no credit, though if you showed your work and he saw it was just a rounding or significant figures error, he might only take a single point off).
On tests, each student got the same question, but each had different core values, so if you were going to cheat, the best you could do is snag a formula off another student - except he actually passed out a sheet of formulas with the test, so that was silly anyway.
Simultaneously one of the hardest classes I had in college, and one of the best college experiences.
Missing the point... (Score:1, Interesting)
A lot of posts here are approaching this from the view that the 50% floor is a 'reward' or giveaway of credit to slackers. That's not really the point, or the real world effect, of this type of policy.
What happens in percentage based grade scales is that the typical range of student performance usually falls in the upper half of percentage points, and school systems (somewhat arbitrarily) set grade marks across that typical range.
In other scales (think straight A,B,C,D,F letter grades, or a 4 point grade point scale, or AP/IB ratings from 1-5 or 1-7) the range of student performance more exactly matches the range of marks, and is directly evaluated according to those levels of performance. Most performance or writing rubrics, for example, work that way.
Usually, the lowest performance results are not 5 times at bad as the next highest level. The student who submits nothing generally is not 5 times dumber than the student who submitted something and got the lowest grade. In most grade scales, this is reflected in the range of marks available, but not in the percentage scale in which there are 60+ variations of failing grade that will equate to an F.
Not only does this make it harder for higher grades to have a balancing effect and help the student pass, it means that the overall grade AS AN INDICATION OF STUDENT MASTERY will over-weight the poorest performances and dilute the results of any improved or proficient understanding. It also opens the way for arbitrary teacher behavior regarding how Fs are assigned, and tends to over-value following school procedure over real learning in grade outcomes.
The 50% 'floor' is an effort to bring some sanity and consistency out of this situation, especially since, in most cases, the percentage scale is so entrenched that it is the default in most software applications and teacher have to use it in some manner due to district reporting requirements.