I’m sorry. I’m old and a bit dimwitted, and old bad habits die hard. All I could write upside down on a calculator was . . . well never mind.
Ha! Yes, I used to be an expert calculator speller, so I know what you may have spelled. Speaking of user names, love yours.
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I can see how there was no stress, I’d like my children to do this senior year. On the plus side, if enough states implement this then everyone will be equally inadequately prepared for a college course, leveling the playing field. When they go low, we should too
Whether from the left like de Boer or the right like Charles Murray, I don’t buy the views of those who erroneously believe that a wide swath of people (coincidentally, mostly poor people and minorities) are genetically incapable of learning and therefore not worth teaching. Even setting aside how incredibly offensive this is, it is junk science.
You be you, though.
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What is telling you that? I know of a fairly large number of students with masters degress and PhDs who happened to get Cs in High school.
I am sorry, but you seem to be under the impression that how a kid behaves at 15 is an accurate predictor of who that person will be at 25, 25, or 30.
Most of the dish washers are people who could not afford to go to colleges, not people who dropped out of colleges because they could not keep up.
Since the reason that most of these students are doing badly is because of lack of income, does this mean that you believe that poor kids will be happier and more productive is they remain in abject poverty, working minimum wage jobs, not being able to afford a home, medical treatment, or often even food?
Kids who do not finish high school make barely more than the poverty level, and have unemployment that is 5X that of college graduates.
Is that the life that you believe they would find to be “more fulfilling”?
Are you claiming that poor people find living in poverty to be fulfilling?
Please clarify.
PS. I don’t know why this is posted as a reply to @RichInPitt. Likely I messed something up…
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Sorry, double post
Good way to chum the waters with Charles Murray, who delivers a very different causal thesis and a very, very different recommendation for policy proposals.
What is a wide swath? A percentage is helpful.
Actually psychometrics is the crown jewel of academic psychology and one of the few that can survive “the replication crisis.” It is not junk science and has incredible predictive value. as a lawyer, I can tell you it can even get you off death row.
What is offensive is demanding a student who will never learn Algebra II sit in a desk for eight hours a day fruitlessly. They’d be happier and more productive elsewhere. Saying someone isn’t made to go to school until age 18 is only offensive in the US, other Western countries are way more upfront about this.
Sorry, but the world isn’t “Freedom Writers” or “Goodwill Hunting” with hidden brilliance obscured by C’s and jobs society considers low in prestige. A C in high school isn’t a C anywhere. A C in Oakland public school is not a C at, say, Horace Mann in NYC. And I’m not too impressed by a masters or a PhD on its face. It’s just not mind blowing someone with a C in precalc winds up getting a PhD in comp lit.
How someone behaves at 15 is a very good predictor of whether they’ll be successful, a deadbeat, honest, dishonest, intelligent or not intelligent at 25, 35, 45 etc. If you have a better one that isn’t a synonym of “character” please let me know.
Your dishwasher comment is simply not true, if you worked or owned a restaurant in the last 15 years, it would be obvious.
Regarding doing poorly because of lack of parental income, what? SES (socioeconomic status, in academic parlance) is not a powerful explanatory mechanism for academic performance. Cognitive assessment correlates way stronger. Poor kids do spectacularly everyday if they are smart, rich kids fail exams routinely if they are dumb.
If you want to afford a home, medical care, and food them leave large cities. The white collar workers face all these issues minus food.
Your last few questions are salacious, accusatory, and rather sophomoric. To answer them briefly, the US has a ton of not very bright youth. It is incumbent policy wise to make economic opportunities that leverage their capacity for craftsmanship and mastery of physical skills. They won’t write poetry, won’t become attorneys, won’t understand half of what their doctor is saying to his nurse, and cannot process Algebra II or Spanish III. There is nothing wrong with them, they deserve a life of dignity which a society placing undue emphasis on cognitive skills and capacity denies them.
In theory this does not sound like a bad way to attempt to help some of the kids that struggle. One issue I see though is that many of us, especially kids, have a strong tendency to procrastinate and I can see this enabling some very bad behaviors…
Now if they would stop linking courses with age and let younger kids take more advanced courses if they can demonstrate mastery…In other words, if an elementary school kid demonstrate mastery of pre-calc, let them take Calc…
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Don’t hold your breath. Those who want more generous grading policies also want to do away with tracking, gifted programs, etc.
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(Sarcasm) there are no gifted kids. Everyone has the exact same potential and intelligence and therefore should be in the same classroom so they can all learn linear algebra!
I have heard of one variation on this practice which I think highly of. Students are allowed to re-test to demonstrate mastery, but the re-test only gets partial credit up to a set point ( maybe an 80? Don’t remember). That way students still have an incentive to do well the first time the test is given, and to meet that deadline, but can still work to learn the material if need be.
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Different policy proposals notwithstanding, they are two sides of the same coin. Both are non-scientists who distort and misrepresent science to argue that a large segment of society is too dumb to learn and that it is a waste of time and resources to even bother to try to teach them.
And your comments on psychometrics are entirely beside the point, because deBoer’s policy proposals are not supported by psychometrics. DeBoer is not a scientist at all and admits that his arguments are not scientific, but rather, by his own description, are “political and moral.” Of course this admission came after experts in the field had shredded is his overly simplistic notions on heritability and causation, and trashed his conclusions and policy suggestions.
For one example, you are parroting one of deBoer’s policy recommendations when you wrote:
What is the scientific support for the claim that “a lot of students’ lives would be more fulfilling and productive if they dropped out at 13?” I’m not asking for a political or moral argument, but rather a sound scientific argument backed up by data. So far as I can tell, this policy proposal is not based on science or psychometric studies, and actual studies suggest the opposite is true. This is just him riffing, based on nothing but his unsupported and overly simplistic belief that a lot of kids are incapable of learning.
Ask Murray and/or deBoer.
Move the conversation forward and cut out the snark.
Examples of sentences thant should not be used:
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You clearly don’t know/have…
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Let me explain it to you.
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Oh please explain it to me/enlighten us.
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Here is one example of teaching that will be (rightfully) challenged under this new policy: my son turned in test corrections by putting them in the blue homework submission folder in class. It turns out there is a red folder for test corrections so my son got zero points for this assignment. It clearly was not an academic reason behind why he was given a zero, however, there was no policy my son could use to challenge the grade. Under this new policy the teacher would be instructed to accept that assignment even though it wasn’t turned in the expected place.
Of course, some will argue that following directions is big part of learning. But i would say the grade for following directions should be placed outside of the grade for the academic subject.
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I’m going to bow out of the genetic determinism digression so hopefully we can get back to the topic of the thread.
In my opinion, that sort of thing is ridiculous, but then I once got a zero on an assignment because I wrote it in pen rather than pencil.
Providing a separate grade for mastery of the material vs. following instructions (or other related “lessons”) is an interesting idea.
@s318830, as you understand it, does the approach offer any guidance on how to approach the non-substantive skills (following instructions, getting work in on time, etc.)?
On the one hand, addressing these things would seem to bring back even as a separate grade might reintroduce the “subjectivity” that this approach seeks to avoid. On the other hand, “mastery” of these skills might aid in mastering the material.
The answer lies in the link below which all users acknowledged upon registering, which is also the reason I deleted your post.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/guidelines
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The students who procrastinate or don’t do the homework (if it’s not graded) usually discover after the first quiz or test that if they’d done the work earlier, they’d have done better. Retaking the quiz or test to get a better grade is more work than just doing it right the first time. They usually realize that and wind up doing the homework and work to get the better grades with fewer steps.
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