Parents and citizens (and kids) like A's, until we realize that they don't match up with what is actually learned in the classroom.

WSJ had an editorial today talking about the growing use of "equitable" grading.
Examples (WSJ only talks about the first):

• Giving 50% for not turning in the assignment instead of a zero.
• Allowing students to retest or turn in assignments as many times as they want with no penalty.
• Allowing multiple ways to show mastery. For example, take the higher of exam average or homework average for final grades.

Most teachers disagree with this, about 2 to 1 in most cases.
WSJ puts this squarely on the administrators who are trying to hide the failure of public schools and evade accountability.

I disagree; this is on parents and citizens who vote for school boards that hire these administrators. But mainly on parents, because they are the ones that should fighting tooth and nail for their children. Also, let's nots let off the third of teaches that support this fantasy.

WSJ is paywalled.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/teacher-survey-equitable-grading-fordham-institute-55e33cf4?mod=hp_opin_pos_4

https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/equitable-grading-through-eyes-teachers

ETA - another calamity accelerated by the COVID fiasco

There is plenty of blame to go around for the overall education situation:

- Parents not emphasizing the importance of education; couple that with a broad home/societal deviation from Judeo-Christian values in the home/family and it's a bad mix

- Educators having their performance based on passing rates of kids encourages passing them on regardless of performance. This should be a component, but not the overbearing factor. (Teachers overall not the best and brightest doesn't help, either)

- Top-heavy administrations in most school districts puts a financial strain on the situation

- Government involvement and the red tape is ridiculous. We all know that gov't involvement is almost never a good thing.

All that being said, kids can be successful coming out of a terrible situation - just as some kids will fail to succeed even after given every advantage. Most is on the individual to make it happen.

It a government work program. No accountability at any level for poorly ran districts.

Thankfully my district isn't like this. I personally let them redo assignments but most students don't bother.

our education systems failures is a symptom of our overall failures as a society.

it all started with taking god out of the equation and here we are.

Public education was lost when we allowed politicians and activists to start regarding a high school education as a right instead of an opportunity.

Some of them need to be left behind…

Public schools are crappy because the government runs them…that is all.

When you say "us," you aren't including me. I have no kids, yet I pay taxes on three homes. I forcibly give the government every dime it says it needs. I can't help that schools blow billions of dollars and many parents pay no attention to their kids.

"Or consider Okun's offensive assertion that "punctuality" is a feature of "white supremacy"a claim that still shows up in teacher professional development nationwideand that regards as racist any grading of students on factors such as attendance or participation."

This is the type of left wing, egalitarian lunacy that is destroying public schools. If you don't root this garbage out and get back to traditional methods of teaching and grading, it will never get better.

Detmersdislocatedshoulder said:

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our education systems failures is a symptom of our overall failures as a society.

it all started with taking god out of the equation and here we are.

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Literally true, since the initial concept was to allow for all children to be able to read the Bible, post reformation.

Out of all the stuff that is annoying about this job, and there is plenty, the retesting, especially in our AP courses, is what frustrates me the most. I'll have some of them ask "when's the retest?" as I'm handing out the original one.

Might need to look around a bit and see if other ISDs allow retesting in AP courses…

Vote in conservative men on your school boards. Conservative is most important but we need to get the feminine touch out of the schools. It's completely run by women. Way too touchy feely and has led us to where we are with schools these days.

Bazooka Joe said:

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It a government work program. No accountability at any level for poorly ran districts.

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Case in point.

HarleySpoon said:

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Bazooka Joe said:

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It a government work program. No accountability at any level for poorly ran districts.

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Case in point.

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And yet another example why unions should completely eliminated.

I don't think blaming teachers vs parents is constructive, plenty of bad and good in both because it depends on the individual. Teachers for the most part are simply doing their job but they can't be held responsible for fixing bad kids or those that don't want to learn. Parents have far more power and influence than a teacher ever will. There is no greater predictor of academic success than having parents that value education and make learning a priority. You can be dirt poor and have minimal resources but if you have parents that emphasize education and do all they can to support it and are personally involved odds are you will have a very successful student, not always but it's the best predictor I have found.

The greatest fallacy is the idea that money fixes education. At best there is a weak relationship or it only works in the extremes (if a kid is sent to a great boarding school they will likely be successful for instance because almost all outside factors are controlled and the focus is on education but that's certainly not common in the US). On the other extreme is a kid lives in fear and has teachers that don't care it is very hard for a parent to overcome that outside of homeschooling.

For the other 90 plus percent of students though the idea simply seems to be throw more money at the problem and kids will learn. More special programs. Nicer facilities. Pay teachers more and of course administrators the most. Those factors have very little impact though compared to engaged parents. If you have parents that emphasize learning, help kids with homework or get them the help they need, and get involved with their school the kids see that it matters and they see that working hard at school will be rewarded with attention and praise from parents. Almost every kid has an innate desire to be loved and to make their parents proud. They crave that attention, it's just many parents don't realize that power or they squander it. No harder or more rewarding job than being a parent.

This right here is the missing solution. You absolutely are included in the "us" because you are a voter and have a share of control over the school board. You also have a vested interest in an educated voting base, which is the main rationale for public education in a republic.

People's perspective gets distorted when they become parents and it's their kid who isn't making the grade. Teachers have their livelihood at stake. Third party voters like you need to step up and speak common sense into the system.

Ultimately, it comes down to the break up of the nuclear family, and God being taken out of schools.

Also, standardized testing sucks, parents are usually more of the problem than any help, and administrators are largely covering their own rear ends.

Most teachers Iknow are just trying to do the best they can. They are fighting against an avalanche of everything else against them. Not to say that there aren't bad teachers. There are lots of them.

All of these are reasons why I am no longer in public education. It wasn't worth the stress, my sanity, etc. I am now on the university level doing a job which has no stress.

You're replacing experienced teachers who wanted to be there with people who don't have the experience or credentials. I have a friend who is an assistant principal, and half of her teachers don't even have two years of college.

The schools don't wanna fix the root problem: responsibility

Conservatives need to be elected to school boards?

Who has been the Texas Govenor for the last 30 years?

Abbott - Conservative
Perry - Conservative
Bush - Conservative

So Texas education should have been getting better not worse right? Right?

How many of you went to school in Texas in the last 30 years? or ever? What was different for y'all pre-90s?

Do you know how Schools are ran? An elected school board that dictates the curriculum.

Where does texas rank in the US on the education? The top? Which states are the worst and best?

What are you wanting your kids to actually learn that you can't teach them yourselves? I wonder how many of you could teach reading and math above 4th grade.

We want christian based education (ignoring anyone else's beliefs) but which one? The baptists? Mormons? Catholics? medthodists? Church of christ? Assembly of God?

Do we need to listen to anti-science and felons in RFK (vaccines are bad) and trump (34 felony convictions from a jury of peers)?

Teachers and parents have inherited a crappy system. It's crazy to me that in a lot of towns and cities, the public schools system is the largest employer.

It's a system that has forced most families into outsourcing their children's education, sending them to public schools for 8 hours a day, even feeds a lot of children for free (it even happens where school lunch programs extend through the summer months when there's no school), and then points fingers at the parents. The system is a failure because it's built on a faulty premise.

Even the fact there's a whole industry, degree programs through the PhD level, for teaching. Teaching as a subject is dumb. Who teaches the teachers who teach teaching anyway? They're not experts in the thing they teach. They're "teaching experts".

The most basic problem is culture rot though. We used to care about our kids' formation beyond training them to work in the corporate world. Even just basic modesty isn't enforced in school dress codes anymore. Every year around prom and homecoming, my wife's Facebook feed is full of parents posting their daughters' group pictures with 6-10 girls dressed like hookers. I guess we don't need to raise chaste women if they can go to an awesome college and get an awesome cubicle job doing data entry for a mega corporation so she can chase her dream of being a middle manager with a small side office someday.

Bob Lee said:

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Teachers and parents have inherited a crappy system. It's crazy to me that in a lot of towns and cities, the public schools system is the largest employer.

It's a system that has forced most families into outsourcing their children's education, sending them to public schools for 8 hours a day, even feeds a lot of children for free (it even happens where school lunch programs extend through the summer months when there's no school), and then points fingers at the parents. The system is a failure because it's built on a faulty premise.

Even the fact there's a whole industry, degree programs through the PhD level, for teaching. Teaching as a subject is dumb. Who teaches the teachers who teach teaching anyway? They're not experts in the thing they teach. They're "teaching experts".

The most basic problem is culture rot though. We used to care about our kids' formation beyond training them to work in the corporate world. Even just basic modesty isn't enforced in school dress codes anymore. Every year around prom and homecoming, my wife's Facebook feed is full of parents posting their daughters' group pictures with 6-10 girls dressed like hookers. I guess we don't need to raise chaste women if they can go to an awesome college and get an awesome cubicle job doing data entry for a mega corporation so she can chase her dream of being a middle manager with a small side office someday.

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You should see how they dress once they get to college. It's even worse, because there is no dress code. Most of them are basically wearing bikinis bottoms; but, bikinis cover more.

There are two big problems that won't get fixed anytime soon, and the bigger one is government, especially in Texas. We have leaders in Austin that treat teachers like crap, and they make it worse every two years. In the last twenty years, they've done one thing right: banning cellphones in classrooms. But the morons in Austin keep piling on more monitoring of this, more reporting of that, and nothing has gotten better. The ISDs have to hire more people to do all the paperwork that the state and federal government requires. And that leads to the second problem: a top-heavy administrative/management system. There's been explosive growth in administrative roles in schools to do all that useless crap, and those jobs cost money; a lot more than the teachers are getting paid. So instead of teachers that want to make a career out of actual teaching, you have people that view teaching as a necessary step to become an administrator; they're just in the classroom to get their years before they can apply for one of those jobs.

zooguy96 said:

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Bob Lee said:

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Teachers and parents have inherited a crappy system. It's crazy to me that in a lot of towns and cities, the public schools system is the largest employer.

It's a system that has forced most families into outsourcing their children's education, sending them to public schools for 8 hours a day, even feeds a lot of children for free (it even happens where school lunch programs extend through the summer months when there's no school), and then points fingers at the parents. The system is a failure because it's built on a faulty premise.

Even the fact there's a whole industry, degree programs through the PhD level, for teaching. Teaching as a subject is dumb. Who teaches the teachers who teach teaching anyway? They're not experts in the thing they teach. They're "teaching experts".

The most basic problem is culture rot though. We used to care about our kids' formation beyond training them to work in the corporate world. Even just basic modesty isn't enforced in school dress codes anymore. Every year around prom and homecoming, my wife's Facebook feed is full of parents posting their daughters' group pictures with 6-10 girls dressed like hookers. I guess we don't need to raise chaste women if they can go to an awesome college and get an awesome cubicle job doing data entry for a mega corporation so she can chase her dream of being a middle manager with a small side office someday.

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You should see how they dress once they get to college. It's even worse, because there is no dress code. Most of them are basically wearing bikinis bottoms; but, bikinis cover more.

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One of my prof buddies is has been in a wheelchair for 35 years since he wrecked a vette. He claims that the way girls dress "almost" makes up for it. Great that he keeps a sense of humor.

Bonfired said:

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Out of all the stuff that is annoying about this job, and there is plenty, the retesting, especially in our AP courses, is what frustrates me the most. I'll have some of them ask "when's the retest?" as I'm handing out the original one.

Might need to look around a bit and see if other ISDs allow retesting in AP courses…

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When I taught HS, I was certified in math, CS, and Science Composite, so I taught more than my share of AP. But, I didn't even think about this. What a joke.

It makes no sense to prepare for an all or nothing exam with allowing students to retake exams in the course. I guess there might be a few that are taking the course with no intention of sitting the exam?

I did something similar in a couple of courses, where students could retest. But, I made them come in for 20 hours of tutoring first. Work? I am doing 40 hours, you only have to come in for half of it.

But those were the first programming and first DB courses, and I was trying to impress on them the need to study at a different level.

We can't fix parents but we can target the system and teachers

Until discipline is restored in the classroom, educational outcomes won't improve.

Hard pass on school's teaching my kids personal finance, taxes, and social etiquette.

A lot of the things on that list are things parents should be teaching anyway. Let's let the schools focus on the basics until they can get that right.

The "no grade lower than 50" has been around for over a decade in the ISD where I taught. Same with the right to retest.

One thing to remember when you look at aggregate student achievement scores in Texas: many of those millions of illegals who came across the border are now enrolled in Texas public schools.

Not to mention that "charities" such as the main Catholic one have dumped illiterate Afghani and Iraqi students into public schools as well, in San Antonio, for instance, completely changing the demographics of a number of schools on the north side of town.

You forgot swimming and gun safety.

Over_ed said:

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Bonfired said:

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Out of all the stuff that is annoying about this job, and there is plenty, the retesting, especially in our AP courses, is what frustrates me the most. I'll have some of them ask "when's the retest?" as I'm handing out the original one.

Might need to look around a bit and see if other ISDs allow retesting in AP courses…

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When I taught HS, I was certified in math, CS, and Science Composite, so I taught more than my share of AP. But, I didn't even think about this. What a joke.

It is indeed a joke. But, it's district policy, no exception for AP courses.

It makes no sense to prepare for an all or nothing exam with allowing students to retake exams in the course.

We're on the same page. I have brought up the shortsightedness of this policy to anyone higher up the ladder that might be able to change it, but to no avail.

I guess there might be a few that are taking the course with no intention of sitting the exam?

I usually end up with about 80% or so of mine that end up taking the AP exam. Our district does not pay for everyone to take it and students are not obligated to take it.

They're all playing the GPA game since our district ranks students on a true 100-point scale, so there are some that think mine (Statistics) is an "easier" AP course (I don't know who puts that bug in their ear, but it's not me) and take the class with with no intention whatsoever of sitting for the exam.

I did something similar in a couple of courses, where students could retest. But, I made them come in for 20 hours of tutoring first. Work? I am doing 40 hours, you only have to come in for half of it.

Left to my own devices, I would never retest in an AP course.

But those were the first programming and first DB courses, and I was trying to impress on them the need to study at a different level.

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sam callahan said:

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Hard pass on school's teaching my kids personal finance, taxes, and social etiquette.

A lot of the things on that list are things parents should be teaching anyway. Let's let the schools focus on the basics until they can get that right.

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Those things are more basic than a lot of the things they learn in school. Honest question, if you don't trust the public schools to teach them things like social etiquette, why should we trust them to teach anything?

I can assure you I am and do. Saw two longtime board members tossed last year, and the superintendent run out of town and gunning for more. But I am not the problem. I just finance the problem.

Are you suggesting our schools are not run by liberals? They most certainly are in most districts. Let's not forget the FWISD superintendent who couldn't send enough boys dressed as girls to shower with actual girls. The curriculum and mandates tend to be liberal as well.

Education is dominated by leftists, even in Texas.

Under what administration was education first socialized in this country? Wasn't it the original tyrannical president?

Bazooka Joe said:

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It a government work program. No accountability at any level for poorly ran districts.

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Run. Poorly run.