I’ll assume you’re addressing me, because you are using my phrase.</p>
<p>Well, this is hilarious, because there is nowhere in this thread where I implied there is no value in being able to “regurgitate instructional material.” Or that testing was not a critical part of the learning process. If you’ll actually read my threads, I said I believed testing should composes 75-85 percent of the grade. I hardly think that’s dismissing the importance of testing. </p>
<p>I did imply, however, that much of test taking is regurgitating instructional material. That’s a fact, not a value judgement. I stated my opinion (as opposed to a bias) that there are other important tools for evaluaton. A bias (as I understand the term in common use) would be if I based my oipinion on an unrelated, subjective, personal or self-serving notion or concept rather than my own logical analysis of the situation.</p>
<p>Excuse me for expressing the truly novel opinion that part of intellectual maturity is being able to complete assignments and follow directions even when we may find some of them boring.</p>
<p>pmk: This change is supposed to help boys and minorities!! Statistically speaking, boys struggle with the details, while girls are much more compliant.</p>
<p>Here’s an example of how things might change: my son, who has Asperger’s, struggles with details like where to turn in homework assignments. One time, he had an end-of-week assignment due for his Honors Math class, even though he didn’t have class that day. (We have a rotating schedule.) But that day, the school was in complete chaos because they were closing early, a Nor’Easter was blasting through (dumped 24" of snow in no time). What was more confusing was that we were living in a hotel in another town this particular week because our floors were getting done. DS couldn’t take the bus to a locked-up home, but he couldn’t get a hold of us as all the phone lines were jammed.</p>
<p>He turned the assignment in on Monday morning before school began, but got zero credit. As a result, his grade dropped from an A to a B, and he was denied the opportunity to continue at the Honors level. But got a 780 in his Math SAT.</p>
<p>He also had an English teacher who played favorites. My son is not at all outgoing, but a terrific, insightful writer. Sadly, his grades didn’t reflect his skills.</p>
<p>Imagine how different his school experience would have been if he only had to be concerned about absorbing the materials, rather than playing to the teacher that hindered him instead.</p>
<p>^^^ Oh come on. The NorEaster is an extremely special case. I’m not talking about total inflexibility. My kid had a class where he refused to do any work. He turned in less than half his assignments, many of which were quite substantive and valuable supplements to his classroom material IMO. He has no diagnosed learning condition. He aced the standard exams, but got a B. If you wish your kid to get an A under those circumstances, that’s up to you. I don’t - I have a hard enough time battling his laziness and lackadaisical attitude.</p>
<p>I work in a middle school and we have these discussions quite frequently. The idea is to not base a grade on a standardized test but that the grade needs to reflect the level at which the student has mastered the material. Students can demonstrate that in many ways - homework, tests, projects, presentations, etc. If your kid comes home with a C in math, what does that tell you? Did they get the C because they didn’t hand in the homework and were a pain in the butt in class or is the C a reflection of the fact that they are struggling with essential concepts? There really isn’t any way of knowing without a direct discussion with the teacher.</p>
<p>And the idea that not having to deal with homework is easier for teachers is patently wrong. It is much easier for teachers to mark a zero in the grade book for a missing assignment than it is to keep working with kids to get the work in so the teacher can evaluate whether or not they are having difficulty with the work. The teachers I know find it much easier to give kids zeroes than to truly find ways to find out if they have mastered the material. </p>
<p>I also agree that students need to have executive function skills as well as academic skills. I think that evaluating these things seperately will provide parents and students with much more valuable information than our current system. </p>
<p>And lastly, some of this has been determined by the courts. There have been parents who have taken districts to court because grades were not reflective of what a student actually knew but based more on behavioral issues. The courts have consistently sided with the parents.</p>
<p>I would like to see schools lengthen the school day and eliminate homework entirely. There is no reason why “school” should completely take over the life of a teenager. Where is the time to create? To dream? To learn “non-school” stuff? To help cook dinner?</p>
<p>Let’s get away from the model where students were expected to work on the farm and get to the current reality, where Mom and Dad are in the office (or the store) 9 to 5–so why let the kids out at 3?</p>
<p>According to ACT, “only 24% of high school seniors know enough in…math, reading, science and English - to do college-level work”. </p>
<p>All the social skills in the world won’t help you if you can’t get through the material. And certainly the current system is broken. We need to experiment with a variety of solutions until we fix this, or we are sunk.</p>
<p>bovertine, I suppose what you’re saying is that you’re happy your son only got a B, because he put in NO effort, and deserves what he got. That B probably doesn’t faze him either. Sorry he doesn’t care.</p>
<p>That incident happened years ago, but it still irks me. We didn’t fight the grade back then; we knew this teacher was an inflexible jerk. And in our district, it’s very costly and uncertain if you’ll win any court battle.</p>
<p>I think that this is an interesting question, and I thank the OP for bringing it up. As is usual in education, policy is not being driven by good research. We really do not know what the effect of this policy change will be. I would urge the school district to set this up as a study to really learn from this. Too often, we go from fad to fad based on someone’s theory where no empirical evidence exists.</p>
<p>I suspect, though, that there are students who are externally motivated and whose behavior is modified by some system of reward, whatever that is. It does not have to be a grade. It could be a positive behavior incentive of some sort. But improving behavior among all of the students allows the students to learn without the distractions that can come about when hundreds of adolescents are together in a building. Behavior and learning go hand in hand.</p>
<p>In a middle school where I work once a week, the principal has created incentives each month, based on points earned for behavior. (Points can also be taken away.) Each month, the students who have earned enough points are rewarded with a special activity such as a dance, a trip to a roller skating rink, etc. The transformation in this school has been unbelievable. There are far fewer fights, the students are much more respectful, and they are also improving their test scores. Interestingly, the principal even gives a point for parents returning necessary school forms, and the rate of the forms coming back has skyrocketed. This is a school where 97% qualify for free or reduced lunch, and it has been a challenge to get even the basic level of parent participation as sending in forms or informing the school of a change in phone number, so I think that it is interesting that providing incentives for the kids gets the parents to also change behavior. </p>
<p>Of course, there are students whose parents have taught and modeled good behavior and these students do not really “need” the behavior incentives. These students, however, suffer when other students’ behavior is distracting and sabotages learning, so they benefit from the behavior incentives also.</p>
<p>Students in middle school are learning so much about how to navigate socially and how to organize. These skills are essential for future performance, so we need to figure out how to guide students through these tasks.</p>
Again, unbelievable. As I noted, your son’s issue was inexcusable but a unique situation.</p>
<p>I don’t care about the B one way or the other. I’m unhappy about how he performed (he’s doing better now) because no matter what he does in life he will need to learn the discipline to complete the things he is assigned - whether he feels they are pointless or not. </p>
<p>I would be equally irritated, no, far more irritated, to find out he was bullying someone or engaging in some destructive gossip about someone somebody. But I wouldn’t expect his grade to be based on this. But relevant homework assignments are different.</p>
<p>I read the student’s side of this website and most, almost all of the very high scorers also manage to pull straight As. I’m assuming not every one of them is attending a “test only” school. There are plenty of 2300+ SAT students who also somehow manage to do their homework.</p>
<p>
Completing a term paper or writing an assigned collection of poetry does not constitute “social skills”.</p>
<p>That ACT statistic proves something is not working. It certainly does not indicate what that “something” is. Of course, I’m assuming the folks at ACT believe their exam is the best way of determining who is capable of college level work. Surprise, surprise.</p>
<p>The ACT data needs to be put in some perspective. The 24% is the percentage of students who meet the college readiness benchmark in ALL 4 of the areas - reading, english, math and science. The thing is, the science benchmark is quite high - much higher than the other 3 areas. And the reality is, if you are not planning on a science related major, you will probably be fine if you meet the other benchmarks. I would be interested in seeing what percentage of students meet all the benchmarks except for science.</p>
<p>bovertine, I apologize for reading more into your comments than you implied, but when you use disparaging language like fill in bubbles on a multiple choice exam . . . regurgitating instructional material on exams, readers might get the impressions you have a low opinion of testing. When you state a fact with the phrase, regurgitating instructional material on exams instead of with something like, demonstrating content knowledge, for example, I just get a vibe that theres a value judgment. JMHO Again, my apologies.</p>
<p>I just saw that Ann Althouse blogged about this article, and she made a point about school vs. career.</p>
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<p>You could argue that some careers are about “handing in all the homework and pleasing the authority figure”. But this does make me consider one possible reason for why boys, who under perform relative to girls in school, still end up with more money and more leadership positions once they enter the job market.</p>
I think I’ve run the course on my opinion. I understand others differ and it’s not likely I’m going to change any minds.</p>
<p>As far as Ann Althouse. Googling her it turns out she is a law professor and a blogger. Well, considering a blogger as a type of journalist I will posit that very few professional journalists would get far by not meeting deadlines and producing product pleasing to their editors. At a more basic level, she certainly has to turn out a project pleasing to her ultimate authority figure - her readers. </p>
<p>I know few careers where one is not responsible for “turning in homework” and pleasing an authority figure, be it a boss, a client, or a customer. Next time my lawyer fails to prep for my case, I’ll just ask for their LSAT or Bar exam scores. I’m sure that’ll be pleasant to know as I’m paying off a frivolous lawsuit or worse yet sitting in prison.</p>
<p>I will just close my commentary by saying anybody who only wishes to be judged by exams should be very careful what major they pick and what school they attend. For my general ed requirements I certainly had to turn in my share of projects and papers. For my engineering degree I had labs, major group design projects, and endless hours wirting and debugging computer code out of the classroom Regardless of my score on exams, I still had to write programs that worked, and design relatively functional electronics. </p>
<p>For my business related masters, exams were even less important. A lot of case studies, group projects and oral presentation once again. I’m not sure it’s that way elsewhere, but I’ve heard even HBS places emphasis on case studies analyzed outside the classroom, and turned in on short deadline. At least that’s what I heard Meg Whitman say on CNBC. </p>
<p>For my first degree, in biophysics, maybe significantly less work outside of exams. I can’t remember. But I’m sure if I went on to higher level degrees I would have had to somehow put together a thesis or dissertation. I would sure have hated for that to be my very first experience with a project like that.</p>
<p>In my experience and in reading about the education establishment, I would say that the typical teacher/principal may not be representative of authority figures who prevail in the world outside schools. The latest thing I read conjectured that teachers, who typically score in the lower third in standardized tests and are attracted to a unionized profession that punishes mobility, might be very different from what an smart, aggressive individual might encounter as an authority figure in her adult working career. Maybe, maybe not.</p>
<p>And I dont mean to disparage individual teachers with this comment, because I have certainly encountered some who are outstanding in their profession.</p>
<p>Assigning some sort of grade for turning in academic assignments on time is far different from grading behavior in the sense of being a “good” little girl or boy in whatever way that is defined by each teacher. I have no objection to grading behavior linked to specific academic requirements like completing a project. That is not the same as docking a student’s class grade for things like throwing spitballs or talking back. In our experience, many teachers want to be loved and needed, so if your child is not the demonstrative “Oh Miss Martin, I just love the novel we’re reading in class!” type, their grades could suffer.</p>
<p>My son, despite having the highest GPA in his middle school classes (and those grades included turning in all his homework and projects), was passed over time and time again for the academic award. After he also won the school and local spelling bee, school geography bee, and an essay contest at the local elite university, and still didn’t win the academic award, he questioned his teachers as to the reaon. Did they not like him, and if not, why? Why didn’t they respect him and his accomplishments? What had he done wrong? Since the teachers posted grades by student ID# on the classroom wall, he knew his were the highest, but for some reason they kept overlooking that objective fact. Their response? They said that other kids seemed to be working harder than he did. The teachers felt his A’s came easy to him, whereas others appeared to be striving more. How on earth could they know how hard he worked at home or how difficult assignments were or weren’t for him? During the study hall period, he had band and other activities, so it’s not as if he were goofing off then and that left a bad impression. Most likely it all came down to the fact that during the study hall period he didn’t go to the teachers for help like other kids did, so the teachers didn’t see him working hard with their help. So they didn’t feel as personally responsible for S’s success as they did for the success of other children. They claimed they rewarded effort as they perceived it. S told them it wasn’t his fault that their curriculum was such that he could achieve high A’s without appearing to be working hard.</p>
<p>D experienced the same problem in sports. Despite being a top athlete, the coach simply didn’t like her because she came in to the program already good. He probably did not feel involved in her success as much as he did others’, and he preferred the kids he felt he had “made”. </p>
<p>When our third child came along, I commented to my H that she’d likely get the same or higher grades in school as her older siblings, despite not being nearly as intelligent (special ed.) simply because she’d probably ask for help a lot and would seem needier and teachers really like that. Guess who has high A’s now in middle school? Clearly, her A’s don’t mean the same as the A’s my other two achieved. Their knowledge and understanding base was drastically superior, and that should be reflected in the grades.</p>
<p>PS to the above: my friends who have children in Catholic schools tell me that some class grades have a behavior component which includes such things as having one’s uniform shirt tucked in. Yes, I know it’s important to dress properly for work later in life, but do we really want to mix grades for behavioral measures like that in with academic assessments like test grades?</p>
<p>In a neighboring school district, the administration has eliminated all homework (all work that can’t be done in the classroom), and they now have a policy that allows students to retake tests as many times as necessary to show mastery. The reasoning for the tests is that everyone learns at different speeds, and students should not be punished for grasping the concept late.
How different colege will be for these kids that will never have to budget time for term papers, outside assignments, juggling multiple priorities. After all, if Johnny bombs his test because he wanted to work on football/play/Xbox, he will have the chance to do it on his schedule.
I would take the mastery only any day. At my own school district, they switched to a consistent policy where finals are 20% of the grade. It hurt the kids that floated by with A+ for homework and helped those kids that could effectively analyse the material and build on it.</p>
<p>This seems like a little much. I don’t know of any high school math class that would put that much emphasis on homework-especially an honors class. In my district it is mandated that homework cannot be more than 10-15% of the semester grade.Homework for math class is just practice unless of course this was some big research project or something special. I can’t imagine a school wanting to drop a top student out of honors math (and not being willing to accommodate his need for routine). Is this a public school?</p>