Okay, now I think I understand Sal Corda. If there’s a way to accept a low standard of performance, he’s for it. Take his recent op-ed letter in The Hour. He very carefully explains, well, not carefully, he mashes together words in a bureaucratic dialect that anthropologists will one day credit as the tipping point to the decline of western civilization. He says:
Suppose John Doe fails the first quarter with a 20 but then recovers, earning grades of 70 for each of the next three quarters. The letter grades that appear on the report card are F, C-, C-, and C-. If John Doe’s teacher uses the grade weights that are used to determine honors and class rank (which range from 0 points for an F to 4 points for an A), to calculate the final grade, John Doe would have a 1.275 average, which equates to a D+. John passes the course.
However, it is also possible under the system that is used by many teacher that John Doe could fail for the year. If John Doe’s teacher uses numerical averages in determining the final grade, he still has the quarter grades of F, C-, C-, and C appearing on his report card, but his numerical average for the year is 57.5 [(20 + 70 + 70 +70) divided by 4] which is below the 60 required for passing. John Doe’s final grade in this example is F. He fails the course.
In effect, one poor quarter has negated the effect of three
stronger quarters. In contrast, if a 50, instead of a 20 was used in the calculations, John Doe would have an average of 65, which would earn him a grade of D, less than the D+ which one could argue ought to be the grade, but certainly more defensible than the grade of F calculated by using straight numerical grades.
What he’s really saying here, once we get past the blah, blah, blahs, is that I don’t want teachers failing kids because I want to keep them moving through so I can keep my graduation rates.Â
Have you any doubts about his intent here? What is the lesson learned by the student under his stroke of a pen math adjustment? Maybe its you too could be a superintendent of schools because gaming the system is an important lesson.
Some teachers use the first example in calculating the grade; others use a numerical average. Without requiring that all teachers use one system or the other, we are trying to create a consistency in determining grades that gives all students pretty much the same outcome, irrespective of the method.
Yes, Corda, its called teacher discretion. And teachers generally outline what they will grade on. And value it has in your performance and for decades that’s worked just fine. Einstein did rather poorly in school and seems to have done all right long afterwards.
And then he goes on to explain the testing provision. The one where the language put forth can be wildly interpreted instead of what he claims is the intent. Oh, but the intent under his characterization is worse (emphasis mine).
Why do this? What if, despite his or her concerted efforts, the student has still not sufficiently understood the material to
demonstrate competency, i.e., a grade of C? Should the student
be punished because he or she did not learn the material we say
is important in the prescribed amount of time? What if the
teacher did not teach the material well and the majority of the
students did not understand it? Should the students be punished because a teacher might not have found, on the first try, the way to create understanding of the material by students?Â
I’ll answer it succinctly. Yes, the student should be held responsible for the course material even if they have the crappiest teacher in the world. Since when has the responsibility of learning shifted to the teacher? That responsibility should only be with the student and by proxy the parents. It’s not punishment to the student, it is the students job. They are there to learn, either within the system or despite it.
At the middle school level, children would be given a single
opportunity to retake a test provided they “take advantage of
all extra support available at school and at home before retaking
a testâ€.
Let me state clearly that this is NOT a lowering of standards — the student is held to the same standards for meeting the
objectives of a particular unit. We would be lowering the standards if we required the retest to be easier than the original
test, but in fact we expect the retest to demand the same level
of achievement as the original.
Right. The Quarterback throws downfield and misses the wide-open wide receiver. “But coach,” he says, “you didn’t create an understanding of the defense for me, so I need to redo that down.” Even American Idol does not follow this idiocy. They sing, they get voted on, end of story. No redos.
But Corda wants us to believe that its like taking a Drivers test. He wants us to believe that testing shouldn’t be so rigid, to have a finite deadline is not taking into consideration the learning pace of individuals. Nowhere in his grandiose rebuttal to the Hours editorial does he stop and mention the educational benefit to the student. There is none of course. Testing is just a yard stick that measures mastery of the material at a point in time. The BOE policy is just an excuse to make it easier to get students through courses and classes all in the name of the meeting performance goals for the school district. If you fail your drivers test, yes, you do get to retake it. But you don’t get your license in the interim. That’s the part Corda conveniently left out, because he wants the license to pass students through who would otherwise be failing. Gotta meet those quotas.
Imagine if we had a superintendent that said, I’m recommending that all grade levels be required to double the amount of books they read during the school year. Or double the amount of writing. That would be remarkable superintendent. Instead we get the math challenged bureaucrat who wants to lower all grading standards because he cares not a whit about actual teaching or teachers. Will the BOE roll over and play dead on this? Tomorrow at 6PM, Third Floor City Hall. Bring pitchforks.
source: The Hour, Proposed grading policy doesn’t lower standards, by Sal Corda, June 11, 2007
