School District Drops 'D' Grades 617
Students in one New Jersey school district will no longer be able to squeak by in class after the Morris County School Board approved dropping the D grade. Beginning in the fall students who don't get a C or higher will get an F on their report card. "I'm tired of kids coming to school and not learning and getting credit for it," said Superintendent Larrie Reynolds in a Daily Record report.
Meanwhile... (Score:5, Informative)
In the last days of this congressional session, our elected reps faced two urgent spending requests. One was for ongoing combat in Afghanistan. The other was to keep several thousand public school teachers from being laid off in the fall. One of those got funded.
But, sure, dick around with the grading scale and pretend it'll fix things.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40137.html [politico.com]
http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_D_teach28.44ac093.html [pe.com]
Re:How about... (Score:5, Informative)
Now you are redefining everything, and making B's and A's much less valuable.
C was supposed to be the average grade.
D was acceptably below average.
F was unacceptably below average.
B was above average.
A was exceptionally above average.
Re:How about... (Score:3, Informative)
Many colleges don't give credit for some courses, especially courses in your major, if you get a D, but they still maintain the D grade.
There's also the fact that in a standard GPA calculation a D is worth 1 point and an F is worth 0. So, people who would have normally gotten a D in a class (hence a 1.00) will instead get an F (a 0.00), which will put more downward pressure on their GPA than they may deserve if they scored, say, a 68%.
MSNBC gets a D in journalism. (Score:5, Informative)
I grew up in Morris County, and am a bit bewildered by this article, given that there's no Morris County school board. This particular issue pertains to Mount Olive -- a town of 26,000 people with a 5000-student school district, not the entire county.
Not sure how they butchered these details from the source article [app.com].
Re:How about... (Score:5, Informative)
I taught some classes for the Computer Science department at a local university. Initially I was worried that it would be a difficult process to decide who passes and who fails at the lower end of the class. But as it turned out there was never any difficulty. Most students came to class, tried their best, and got A's, B's, and some that had difficulty with the subject got C's. The others rarely showed up, never handed in any projects, and basically signed their names on tests.
There weren't any in the middle.
Re:How about... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They still have A+ (Score:5, Informative)
Why the hate on the AP program? You dont have to be "affluent" to be in it, you just have to do well in school. The fees for the tests can be waived or reduced if your family is low income. Does your hate maybe stem from not liking the type of people that are in the program? That's understandable, some are pricks, I know b/c I was in many AP classes in HS. However, dont label everyone in the program as such, it makes you look like a douche. AP classes are a great way to get college credit before college, so don't knock the program itself.
Don't forget Garfield High School in Los Angeles and the amazing mathematics teacher Jaime Escalante who, through dint of sheer will and incredible teaching ability, demonstrated that students from East LA could do very, very well in calculus, many even passing the harder BC version of the AP test. These students were not affluent in the least, just inspired to excellence by an incredible individual.
sorry, blatently false (Score:3, Informative)
There are millions of "average drivers" on the roads.
Women certainly do mate with the mediocre plain guy...look at all the married mediocre plain guys.
You can certainly "just get buy" in life. You work a basic low-level job, rent a crappy apartment, don't go out much, etc.
Re:How about... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How about... (Score:5, Informative)
How about just not giving credit for D's?
Then next it will be C's. How about we just jump to the end and go pass/fail.
The problem isn't that students are getting D's. The problem is grade inflation where everyone needs to get an A or they're a loser, and school districts that can't bring themselves to actually fail a student so they give them a D and move the cattle along.
Once upon a time, C didn't mean mediocre, it meant average. A's and B's were for students that went above and beyond the school's expectations. A D was a signal that parents/teachers needed to invest some time helping that child master a given subject.
When I was in public school the district used the ESMIF grading scale.
E - excellent
S - superior
M - medium or average
I - inferior
F - failure
Now suppose that any place you performed below average you were considered a failure.
This is all sleight of hand to get the public to look at a new shiny thing while districts and communities continue to fail the next generation of children.
There is some hope though. Some school districts are experimenting with going with subject master rather than grade advancement. Here is what the Kansas City Mo school district is trying to turn around a dying educational program. [usatoday.com]
And here is a little more in-depth presentation. Mastery Learning [valdosta.edu]
I would take it one step further, I would say there is only 1 passing grade. You have either mastered the subject or you have not.
The approach is a simple concept. If a student quickly masters a subject they can take a test and move on. If they haven't, then the teacher provides more instruction and study material until the student masters the topic. It would lead to schools allocating resources more efficiently to students; more to those that need them and less to those that do not. While that might not seem fair to parents who have 'smart kids', you have to realize that your child is going to have subjects where they excel and subjects where they struggle.
And if you must have some my kid is smarter than yours measurement, it can be the time it takes to master all the required subjects or the number of additional subjects mastered before graduation.