<p>“Are we also completely eliminating research projects for history, large scale essays and writing projects for English, and laboratory exercises and reports for Science?”</p>
<p>Yeah, I was going to say that “mastery” doesn’t have a lot of meaning in the humanities and social science context at a good high school (or good middle school, for that matter). You could know an assigned novel by heart and still not be able to formulate and express a coherent argument about it. There isn’t any point at which a student has “mastered” writing papers about Macbeth or researching the fall of Rome. In my view, high school courses are about honing those skills, and even students who are already performing at the college level can use such exercises to improve further.</p>
<p>I agree with this policy. I have never, not as a student and not as a parent, understood the logic behind some children failing to show mastery and the class moving on. I know teachers try to not let that happen but those standardized tests are coming down the track. </p>
<p>If a student wants to retake a test (ie do extra work) until they actually understand the material, I’m all for it. It would be easy enough to do something like averaging all the scores together for the final grade. Perhaps it would need to be phased out Senior year of high school or even Junior year but, my goodness, I know my math skills would much stronger if I had been given second chances instead of falling ever farther behind. </p>
<p>As for the second article, I find it fascinating that someone, really anyone, who works for a living would dismiss turning work in on time, as directed, and a good attitude. How long could one stay employed or keep a business afloat without putting a priority on those skills?</p>
<p>Frankly, I don’t trust teachers to assess my child’s attitude. For one thing, how can they discriminate between two outwardly well-behaved children who both do all their work on time? One child could truly have a terrific, positive attitude, while the other could just be a well-bred, polite child who is behaving respectfully even though he actually thinks the class is a waste of his time and the teacher is a moron (and he makes fun of her with his friends at the lunch table). What purpose would an attitude grade have, since it could only measure an appearance of something? In addition, it would only represent how that particular teacher defines a good attitude as evidenced by certain clues the teacher has selected. Is it vocally participating in class discussions, or showing an interest in the subject by talking to the teacher after class, or keeping one’s head down and writing furiously in one’s notebook, or getting along well with others during group work, or what? You’d run the risk of rewarding certain cultures more than others, and probably girls more than boys. For some subsets of students certain behaviors are more culturally acceptable than they are for other subsets. I’d guess that boys are less likely to brown nose than girls, for example.</p>
<p>My son was truly awful at getting his homework done, but did well on big projects, papers, lab reports, and tests. The difference? Well, he perceived homework as meaningless drudgery–practice work–and the other work as more interesting and meaningful.</p>
<p>I think all too much of high school is about meaningless drudgery. I took a course that taught methods of teaching AP calculus–and one of the projects that was suggested required a student to cut out 80 almost identical shapes and then paste them together, in order to create the volume under a curve. I was horrified at the amount of time that would be spent on “scissors skills” rather than learning. I expressed my doubt to the class (all of them high school math teachers). “Oh, but it helps the girls get their grades up and I always have them do it in teams.”</p>
<p>I think too much of formal schooling is meaningless drudgery and crowd control. Those are two of the reason we homeschooled but when PMKjr chose to attend a public high school, he chose to abide by the rules of that school. Including getting his homework in on time.</p>
<p>Perhaps I’ve been wildly unlucky but I’ve yet to have a job that did not have at least some meaningless drudgery built into it. It’s easy to do meaningful and interesting work. I’m a realist so my kid had to learn how to get the meaningless drudgery done well and on-time. I think it’s a valuable skill for all but the independently wealthy.</p>
<p>Completely agree. Too many times teachers have made mistakes on judging my own kids’ “attitudes”. I think it’s asking too much of teachers to grade on the basis of attitude. Let them stick to things that can be assessed more accurately.</p>
<p>Your horrific AP calculus story reminds me of my Ds middle school math class where the teacher would give extra credit for arts and crafts projects, including creating intricate 1 origami models of geometric shapes. When I explained that my D couldnt complete these without help (she just didnt have the manual dexterity, much less the interest) the teacher explained that these projects helped the students who couldnt raise their grades in traditional assignments and they usually got help from classmates or parents anyway. In other words, students who didnt learn real math could earn higher grades by working in groups to complete art projects. This same math class required regular journal writing on topics like, my favorite part of math and other fluff topics. On top of that, journal entries were never graded for content or grammar, just checked off for credit on their class grade.</p>
<p>So, a top grade in this class could mean either 1) the student mastered the class math skills and concepts, or 2) the student turned in craft projects and journal entries on time. This is exactly what the original article refers to, and if it isnt happening in your school you should know that it is happening in many other schools around the country.</p>
<p>Exactly as TheGFG wrote in Post #37:
</p>
<p>And this can present a problem for colleges when evaluating high school grades.</p>
<p>I mostly agree with this, but I don’t want my children to become discouraged and penalized by “meaningless drudgery” that robs them of precious learning time in school. I’d rather teach them about meaningless drudgery myself. :D</p>
<p>Not to add to my opinion, but to clarify one more time as it appears some drift is going on here. THe school district in the article in question is not talking about eliminating meaningless drudgery and personality points. It is talking about giving students grades based on only end of the term exams. Nothing else. No term papers, no writing assignments, only end of the term exams. At least that’s how I read it, and that’s what I’m against. I think that’s the British model. In fact, I’m not sure if they don’t just give “end of school career” exams over there. I don’t like that model, although I’m sure others may.</p>
<p>I don’t think anybody is a big fan of meaningless drudgery or pointless busywork (although I do agree with PMK on the necessity of doing it in life). These are convenient straw men.</p>
<p>So I like the school’s idea for “standards based” education. I just believe the standards should include more than in class testing…</p>
<p>Generally, I am in agreement with you, bovertine, that longer-term “research” projects are a great idea, and middle school is by no means too soon to start. (They could be online, library, and experimentation-based, depending on subject area.) Locally, though, projects tended to devolve into arts-and-crafts, sometimes on ridiculous scales. I was very grateful to QMP’s Latin teacher at the high school for announcing that he did not give any credit for “macaroni maps of Italy.”</p>
<p>To be fair to the people at Ellis Middle School, the scores that count are not end-of-semester, they are “end-of-unit.” I’d guess that the middle-school units probably last 2 or 3 weeks; in any event, they are probably not longer than 6 weeks. There is one “stinger” for the lax-about-homework crowd: The tests can be retaken at any time, provided that the student has completed all of the homework.</p>
<p>Also, I am no great fan of our state’s NCLB testing, but it was not all multiple choice–there were essays and problems to be solved, with explanations written out.</p>
<p>As for extra credit for bringing in Kleenex (registered trademark)? I have a problem with that. And yet, blessed are the Kleenex-bringers, for they shall slow the spread of infection. I can see that a teacher cannot realistically afford to provide Kleenex for all of the students. It seems to me that this is a problem for the PTA/PTO/whatever to handle.</p>
<p>^^^
I think I agree with everything written here.</p>
<p>My father was never one to excuse my poor performance in anything, let alone not turning in almost any assignment.</p>
<p>But I remember vividly bringing home Cs in “Handwriting” in 3rd or 4th grade. And it’s not like I didn’t work. I worked much harder on that than the subjects I got As in. </p>
<p>My dad politely commented “That’s a load of crap. As long as the teacher can understand what you’re writing. Do your best and don’t worry about the grade, in a couple years you won’t have to worry about a grade in that.”</p>
<p>I think that was the first and last time I ever got a pass from my dad for anything in school.</p>
<p>“What purpose would an attitude grade have, since it could only measure an appearance of something?”</p>
<p>I’m not sure I agree with grading on attitude, but this isn’t the reason. When it comes to getting along with others, appearance is what matters. You’re entitled to have a bitter, sarcastic heart if you want to. You just can’t spew vitriol at your coworkers, even if they are fools who deserve it. Check out the “duct tape” thread in the cafe…being a good team player often means figuring the right and wrong place and time to express your true feelings. Every good manager, teacher, lawyer, doctor, etc. needs that skill.</p>
<p>“Writing skills can and should be assessed for mastery relative to the student’s grade level.”</p>
<p>Yes, I suppose you can have mastery of paragraph transitions, sentence structure rules, etc. But I believe that a good school has to push capable students far past “grade level” if it wants to produce good writers.</p>
<p>“Are you suggesting that students who have problems with getting things turned in on time or getting their forms signed just have bad parents?”</p>
<p>Sylvan, I am not suggesting that in the least. I was not even referring to the behavior of turning things in on time. I was referring to basic respect and non-violence. I was describing a school that used to have three fights a day, some of them involving many students, which now has practically no fights because of a positive behavior incentive program that is NOT grades. But I think that it is interesting that providing incentives to the kids caused the parents to turn in forms. I am wondering if, by extension, rewarding the kids would encourage the parents to show up for parent-teacher conferences, or for meetings, or to otherwise participate in the school. I am aware, however, of the huge numbers of students in this school who live with neither parent. It is not at all uncommon in this school for a parent to be incarcerated, or for the students to have been removed from parents because of alcohol/drug/mental health issues, etc. I never even say “parent”; I say “Who lives with you?” and then take it from there. So, I should have said “parent or guardian” in reference to the forms.
After I posted, I realized that people on this thread have no familiarity with the “behavior” that I was describing, or with kids in situations such as these kids, and that they were referring to “behavior” as work habits.
Nevertheless, my point was that there are other incentives besides grades that can reward behavior.</p>
<p>bovertine, although this thread has drifted a bit, I dont agree that discussing meaningless drudgery or pointless busywork is a convenient straw man. The school in question is greatly minimizing the weight of homework for grading purposes, and it is often the homework that constitutes unnecessary busywork. So this is very pertinent to the original point.</p>
<p>Mastery in writing goes beyond what you reference in your first sentence. Grade level mastery should incorporate appropriate competencies in grammar, logic and rhetoric. So I don’t think that it’s necessary to push students “far past grade level” as long as assessments are done correctly. (Of course, writing assessments are another whole topic of school dysfunction, with so many students graduating from high school with poor writing skills.)</p>
I think I would be fairly safe in inferring that the terminology “meaningless drudgery or pointless homework” is a negative general charactrerization of all outside the classrooom assignments. If something truly falls under this category, then yes, get rid of it.</p>
<p>What if I asked if you believe relevant, substantive, outside of class projects should be included in the grading, as opposed to just exams (which can also be meaningless depending on who designs them)? And that completing these important assignments basically on schedule (assuming there are no other explanations for the tardiness) is also important?</p>
<p>Assume these asssignments are designed and evaluated by the same individuals or groups that design the exams you seem to approve.</p>
<p>If you think these types of assignments are reasonable evaluation tools in additon to exams, I don’t think we disagree on much.</p>
<p>
Just so I’m reading correctly, the school is not greatly minimizing the homework, it is eliminating it completely as part of the academic grade. Along with everything else except end of unit exams. At least that’s what I see. The homework only enters in if you want to retake an exam.</p>
<p>Here is my take having grown up both abroad (K-7) and in the U.S. (8-12). </p>
<p>When I moved to the U.S. I noticed that school was so much easier. Your grades were based on homework, a few fluff projects, tests that covered only a few chapters at a time (a lot that were multiple choice…I’d never taken a multiple choice test until I moved to the U.S.), etc. There were even extra credit opportunities in order to boost your grade. The people that did best were those that, as the article points out, “had learned to do school the best” not those that mastered the subject matter. I never saw or heard of a kid in my U.S. schools that had been held back. Ask most kids if they remember what they learned in a class 3 years ago (even kids that aced the class)…most can’t tell you anything other than maybe something really really high level. </p>
<p>In contrast when I lived abroad, even in elementary school, most of our grade (60-80%) were based on tests (non-multiple choice) with all material being fair game (not just the recent chapters covered in class but material from the whole year AND from prior years). The other 40-20% were research projects and homework. You were heavily disciplined for having poor behavior but it didn’t affect your grades. We consistently had 3-5 kids per class (in a class of 60-80 students) that were held back each year (some for the 2nd or 3rd time) for not having mastered the material to the point that the people in your 1st grade class were completely different from those in your 6th grade class. That said you asked kids what they learned in a class 3 years ago and a good percentage could tell you even going into detail. </p>
<p>Then I went to colllege in the states…guess who were the academic rockstars in all my classes? The international students. They were just so much more prepared for the way that college works (grades based mainly on a midterm or two and a final…with a projects or problem sets accounting for a small percent of your grade). Plus they had a much higher level of mastery of the basic subjects needed as pre-requisites for some of our classes…they would bring up things in discussions that most of the American students could very vaguely remember.</p>
<p>^^^
wharton, I think you pegged it, as far as I’m concerned. THe question is not whether it’s tests, or assignments, or projects, or whatever. The question is how well the evaluation tool actually reflects subject competence, whether it be an exam or something else. Heavily curved MC exams are not the best means, IMO.</p>
<p>Except for let me ask you this. You didn’t have to do case studies and projects at business school? They weren’t a significant part of your grade (not the major part, but at least important)? </p>
<p>There were many classes in my college career (granted, I didn’t go to Penn) where I certainly could not have recieved an A if I didn’t do well on assignments other than exams. I guess that’s why it’s important to carefully pick your school. Or maybe grad school is different than undergrad.</p>