Some California Schools Ditching Grading System Because Students Are Failing
“part of a growing trend in which educators are moving away from traditional point-driven grading systems, aiming to close large academic gaps among racial, ethnic and economic groups”
In the old days, meaning about a decade ago, if lots of students were getting Ds and Fs instead of As and Bs, the school might examine the teacher or teachers of those students. The school might try to focus on a better way to teach the failing students.
Now they have discovered a much faster and easier method. Just drop the grading system altogether. Problem solved!
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading
A few years ago, high school teacher Joshua Moreno got fed up with his grading system, which had become a points game.
Some students accumulated so many points early on that by the end of the term they knew they didn’t need to do more work and could still get an A. Others — often those who had to work or care for family members after school — would fail to turn in their homework and fall so far behind that they would just stop trying.
“It was literally inequitable,” he said. “As a teacher you get frustrated because what you signed up for was for students to learn. And it just ended up being a conversation about points all the time.”
These days, the Alhambra High School English teacher has done away with points entirely. He no longer gives students homework and gives them multiple opportunities to improve essays and classwork. The goal is to base grades on what students are learning, and remove behavior, deadlines and how much work they do from the equation.
The changes Moreno embraced are part of a growing trend in which educators are moving away from traditional point-driven grading systems, aiming to close large academic gaps among racial, ethnic and economic groups. The trend was accelerated by the pandemic and school closures that caused troubling increases in Ds and Fs across the country and by calls to examine the role of institutionalized racism in schools in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.
Jazz Shaw of Hot Air asks the obvious questions:
Has the possibility occurred to this teacher that when successful kids “stop trying” a good teacher would find a way to motivate them to excel even further? Has he considered the possibility that the kids who are rapidly falling behind may have external factors that need to be addressed or they might need individual tutoring and find a way to make that happen? Grades have always existed for a reason. When you find students getting straight A grades, you know that they are on track. If they are getting worse grades it’s a sign that more work is required to bring them up to speed.
Also, if you note the last part of the excerpt from the LA Times, you may be surprised to learn that this supposedly has anything to do with George Floyd.
Ace of Spades notes that this is proof that CRT is embedded in education, no matter how much Democrats and their media allies insist that this isn’t being taught in schools:
CRT isn’t in the schools, everybody…
Equity is a CRT idea. It is the “E” in DEI, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Equity is not equality; equality is about giving everyone an equal chance, equity is about mandating equal outcomes, no matter what the actual performance level.
But CRT isn’t in the schools, everyone…
And by the way: How much you want to bet that “citizenship” grade includes “protesting”?
Now if any of you have taken from this that they’re teaching CRT in the schools: BZZZ, try again, racists. They’re not teaching CRT. They are simply using CRT theories to determine how students will be taught and what they will be taught.
And, and they’re also teaching CRT (“rooting out structural racism”).
But there is no CRT in the schools.
What these schools are doing is a disservice to students on two levels. They are failing the students by not educating them. They are also filling their heads with useless garbage that will not serve them later in life.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
The school system has needed an overhaul for decades. Maybe it will get one.
Don’t count on it, but I do think we need to go back to teaching the R’s and enforcing actual discipline in the classroom.
If the student hasn’t learned….the teacher hasn’t taught!
This is one of the more damaging statements about education because it completely removes any responsibility from the student.
That is simply not true, a teacher cannot overcome really poor genetics, and a really poor culture or home life. Think about Trayvon Martin, and the even more egregious case Michael Brown, There are very large numbers just like them
Not the fact kids are not being taught anything of use but the grading system. RIGHT
So all the dollars that have been spent since the ‘Great Society” have been squandered. No need to grade students, just pass them based on age. We now see the creation of functional illiterates.
This is a great idea… for teaching our children in a government school.
But apply it to testing submarine steel, and all hell breaks loose.
I’m not positive, but isn’t this an example of equity being violated?
There is equity in mediocrity until someone disagrees.
Teachers can’t make the grade, so change the system to make them look better. Don’t teach subjects, teach feelings.
I taught in inner city schools for 38 years. ALL students will perform UP TO or DOWN TO our expectations.
What the democrats do not want us to see is that the democrats are the “system” of “systemic racism”. Every institution that cheats minorities is run by democrats. The democrats WANT a permanent underclass trapped in ghettos run by democrats.
I have the same experience. Outside of a few students who will do great no matter what and a few kids who will fail no matter what, the vast majority do what is required of them if it is, in fact, required.
To clarify: my experience is was the same, but you have much longer experience tha me. I am on year 12 and got out of the inner city and into the redneck schools.
AKA the Modern Plantation. These leopards have not changed their spots from 160 years ago.
This PROVES that we need School Choice and Vouchers.
Watch “Waiting for Superman”
Amen. I don’t understand how anybody can honestly argue against it.
The students failing and the teachers failing are symptoms. It is the taxpayers who are failing as money forcibly taken from citizens continues to be poured into a dysfunctional and useless system if the purpose of that system is to educate students. Ignorance is free as we are born that way. Apparently, the purpose is indoctrination with the goal of producing happy ignorant slaves for the ruling class.
End government “education” and create a free market education system, such as a voucher system. To do that, we need non-career politicians. To do that, we need an honest voting system.
You’d think the non-protected classes of students would work impossibly hard to keep their earned grades because they know they are going to be largely ignored unless they really shine.
You’d think…but a bunch of them just stand around like a bunch of zombies and play down to their competition without recognizing that their competition gets a headstart.
“play down to their competition without recognizing that their competition gets a headstart”
They’ve been taught that not only is it righteous for their competition to get a head start, but it would be racist to do better than them despite the head start.
Most kids, like most people, do what they need to do to keep going. If very little is required, then very little will be done. Most kids will choose the route of least resistance.
This kind of deranged approach to education can have only one outcome. How long before planes full of passengers start falling out of the sky, bridges and buildings collapse, and patients expire due to shoddy medicines and medical treatments?
That’s why we need to bring in more people from India to do all of those things. Receiving an education in the slums of Calcutta is better than here.
Or we are subjected to out-of-control facepalms in Kenosha courtrooms?
That too!!
This is a logical progression of the Leftists idea that “it takes a village” to raise children. Can’t meet the standard? Lower the standard. Make everything fit the narrative. It’s easier to satisfy beggars, especially stupid ones.
As a former teacher (10+ years), I never got much support to give objective grades to students.. Every time a student got a low grade, the parents or the administration would bitch. There was no accountability, and so standards had to be watered down, and I was taught not to care and to make things easy so everyone is happy. I strongly suspect the teachers are bending over backwards to have students have good grades and make themselves look good. So bad grades only speak to the complete abdication by the kids, which speaks to the parents too. Without consequences, the spiral downward will continue.
I spent a few years at a school that was pretty far down that spiral. Totally demoralizing for me and, I am sure, anybody who wants to do a good job.
Why don’t we grade PARENTS as well as the kids ?
Parental involvement is a key factor in a student’s success.
Why should parents get involved? They aren’t even allowed to go to a school board meeing and speak up about anything.
They aren’t even allowed to look at the material being taught to their children.
Why not send California kids straight from kindergarten to UCLA and cut out the middleman saving taxpayers millions of dollars? When they graduate send them to work for the government.
Then for blue collar jobs that require hard work import illegals. And for white collar jobs that require more skill bring in people from India. Win win.
The State of Oregon has a “better” solution. Too many minorities were failing the reading, writing, and arithmetic exams required for high-school graduation. How do you solve this problem that shows the schools are failing the minority students?
Easy. You just stop giving the exams!! All better now, and the students who can’t read, write, or cipher all graduate, and everyone is happy.
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/08/gov-kate-brown-signed-a-law-to-allow-oregon-students-to-graduate-without-proving-they-can-write-or-do-math-she-doesnt-want-to-talk-about-it.html
OREGON SHOULD BE ASHAMED
This is child abuse. It dooms the student to a life of pain.
The way things are going I fear we are all doomed.
An equitable congruence and progress without accountability.
They’ll be dumb as a rock, but, based upon years if ingesting Self Esteem on Steroids, PROUD OF IT!
Good little pliable sheeple for their Wolf Overlords.
“As long as you pretend to teach us, we will pretend to learn…”
Long live the USSR, huh?