Good morning! WJCC schools say they want to encourage learning by looking at new grading systems....a guide to July 4 fun...and James City County looks at land trusts for housing affordability.
My fear is that it will result in exactly the "diminishing of accountability or standards" the superintendent mentions. Already, a student can refuse to do any work at all in a class, and the burden falls on the teacher to justify why the student should fail, including having to contact the family personally; school policy makes it so difficult and labor-intensive for a teacher to fail a student that it's simply easier to give the student an undeserved passing grade, artificially inflating the school's pass rates--and principals encourage it, because it makes them look more effective. A new grading system that provides more feedback and multiple "re-does" [sic] for every student will place an even greater burden on teachers, and "We want students to have the opportunity to demonstrate success" sounds like division-speak for "We want to make ourselves look pioneering and innovative at the expense of overburdened classroom educators actually doing the hard work on the front lines."
Society needs to stop mollycoddling our children. Stop trying to make everything easier. As it is, children growing up today have the attitude that if they have to work hard for what they want, they quit. They already do not understand work ethics, working for what they want, or discipline. If it is not easy, or they don't earn $100,000/year right out of high school, they want no part of it. They think everything should be given to them, for free and because they want it, without any regard as to how to pay for it. Why are we not teaching them old school ethics and discipline, manners, and good old-fashioned hard work? Kids today have never felt the sense of accomplishment for having completed a task on their own.
I am old-school, literally. I graduated from high school in the early 60s and seemed to recall six or seven point grading scale. I’m a tad cynical and have a sense this new system is more feel good than substantive.
My fear is that it will result in exactly the "diminishing of accountability or standards" the superintendent mentions. Already, a student can refuse to do any work at all in a class, and the burden falls on the teacher to justify why the student should fail, including having to contact the family personally; school policy makes it so difficult and labor-intensive for a teacher to fail a student that it's simply easier to give the student an undeserved passing grade, artificially inflating the school's pass rates--and principals encourage it, because it makes them look more effective. A new grading system that provides more feedback and multiple "re-does" [sic] for every student will place an even greater burden on teachers, and "We want students to have the opportunity to demonstrate success" sounds like division-speak for "We want to make ourselves look pioneering and innovative at the expense of overburdened classroom educators actually doing the hard work on the front lines."
Society needs to stop mollycoddling our children. Stop trying to make everything easier. As it is, children growing up today have the attitude that if they have to work hard for what they want, they quit. They already do not understand work ethics, working for what they want, or discipline. If it is not easy, or they don't earn $100,000/year right out of high school, they want no part of it. They think everything should be given to them, for free and because they want it, without any regard as to how to pay for it. Why are we not teaching them old school ethics and discipline, manners, and good old-fashioned hard work? Kids today have never felt the sense of accomplishment for having completed a task on their own.
I am old-school, literally. I graduated from high school in the early 60s and seemed to recall six or seven point grading scale. I’m a tad cynical and have a sense this new system is more feel good than substantive.