tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post3066238031402705343..comments2024-03-26T14:44:37.985-04:00Comments on D-Ed Reckoning: Social PromotionKDeRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06853211164976890091noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-3775097761508172162006-11-29T20:58:00.000-05:002006-11-29T20:58:00.000-05:00I'll add that I don't necessarily want mastery in ...I'll add that I don't necessarily want mastery in every single subject Christopher ever takes.....<br /><br />However, in math, grammar, spelling etc. - in the "basics" - mastery is crucial.<br /><br />I <I>would</I> object to an overall course grade of a C in any course.<br /><br />Unless the grading was off, that would tell me that he's essentially mastered nothing and will remember nothing a few months hence.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-24665441034085870482006-11-29T20:56:00.000-05:002006-11-29T20:56:00.000-05:00tests (be they standardised or grades within a sch...<I>tests (be they standardised or grades within a school) are just a means to an end. We don't want kids to get good scores for good scores' sake. We want them to get good scores to the extent that this correlates with actually knowing the subject material.</I><br /><br />ABSOLUTELY<br /><br />The <I>point</I> of good grades has been completely lost inside our schools.<br /><br />I've said this before, I know, but around here parents are constantly saying, "I don't care if my child gets As" and "I don't want to be the kind of parent who thinks her kid has to get As."<br /><br />Every time I hear this I come back with, "I am the kind of parent who wants my child to get all As. An A means 90% correct on a test and 90% correct on a test means mastery. I want my child to master the material he's been taught. If he hasn't mastered the material, I want it to be retaught & retested until he does master it."<br /><br />blank staresAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-35345545468932487732006-11-29T20:49:00.000-05:002006-11-29T20:49:00.000-05:00Is it scores? Or did I miss some sort of fabulous,...<I>Is it scores? Or did I miss some sort of fabulous, instantly gratifying prize that they would actually care about?</I><br /><br />A good score makes kids and adults feel great.<br /><br />When Christian, the young man who works with our autistic kids, passed his college reading test he was THRILLED.<br /><br />He felt so proud, partly because I'd been lecturing everyone on the importance of reading comprehension, background knowledge, etc.<br /><br />That one placement test was major validation, and correctly so.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-56508739757288324402006-11-29T20:48:00.000-05:002006-11-29T20:48:00.000-05:00Incentives matter. That's why communist economies ...<I>Incentives matter. That's why communist economies fail at a fast rate and socialist economies also fail but at a slower rate.</I><br /><br />Definitely.<br /><br />Then when you add in the fact that students are constantly being tested and graded - i.e. given continual evidence that their not-caring is producing poor learning & performance - everyone gets even more browned out than he/she already was.<br /><br />It's a miserable environment.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-67359584927492450972006-11-28T20:44:00.000-05:002006-11-28T20:44:00.000-05:00Most companies know the difference between communi...<i>Most companies know the difference between community college graduates and Ivy League graduates, but usually these people don't vie for the same jobs.</i><br /><br />Quite probably. But an improvement in education efficiency and a decent groundwork in early maths could still make the lives of community college graduates better and make them more effective employees. <br /><br />And of course I think we can all agree that getting high-paying jobs is only one of the objectives of schools. Schools should prepare students for life more generally, including giving them the schools to be critical thinkers capable of making up their own minds about political questions, and to manage their own affairs more wisely. Students who go to community colleges are like Ivy League students in that they may well wind up obtaining mortages, calculating and paying taxes, adjusting recipe quantities, etc. <br /><br />A school should only give out good grades in maths to students who have actually mastered the material. Allowing students to work at their own pace is far more honest than giving them good grades even though they haven't mastered the material.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-32153303668765242232006-11-25T07:08:00.000-05:002006-11-25T07:08:00.000-05:00"I suspect when we get to a uniform grading system..."I suspect when we get to a uniform grading system, rather than applying a grading curve with average kids at a school getting a C, that will work as a disincentive rather than an incentive for individual kids. It might push the standardized test scores up, but if the best kids at a school only score a C+, that isn't much of an incentive."<br /><br />You don't understand the concept of a grading curve, I see. The top students would get As.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-27301017167174064612006-11-24T09:31:00.000-05:002006-11-24T09:31:00.000-05:00"Wonder what would happen in colleges if we had un..."Wonder what would happen in colleges if we had uniform grading across all colleges. An A at Temple, equal to an A at Haverford."<br /><br />If they enforced this, then few would get college degrees. <br /><br />I worked at a company and was one of a team that went out recruiting students at colleges. We only went to good colleges. We knew that we would have to pay higher starting salaries, but it was well worth the cost. Students from poor quality schools were just not worth the price. <br /><br />Most companies know the difference between community college graduates and Ivy League graduates, but usually these people don't vie for the same jobs. Some companies seem to want college graduates (of any sort) because they think it means something. (Supply is greater than demand.) This has fueled the image of college as the key to success. It has also fueled the lower end of college level expectations. Many lower-level colleges seem to be more concerned about whether a student can pay than his or her academic credentials. Besides, there are always remedial courses.<br /><br />The end result is employer beware!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-78101063070510924232006-11-24T09:12:00.000-05:002006-11-24T09:12:00.000-05:00"... the web of lies associated with the social-pr..."... the web of lies associated with the social-promotion ..."<br /><br />Yes.<br /><br />There are different levels and methods of motivation. It would be nice to think that all students are self-motivated, excited little learners, but few kids are born that way. The main goal is to get them learning and keep them learning. At some point maybe they will realize that they are good at something and the kids will really take off. Maybe not. However, schools have to use whatever motivating tools they can to get kids to that point. If you leave all learning up to their own motivation, then it won't happen. <br /><br />This isn't a grand new idea. Most parents know that they have to be motivation enforcers for many things. You can't just allow kids to be motivated only for those things they like to do from the start. Someone I knew explained that parents have to be like moving walls; slowly, continually pushing (against all complaints) to keep kids moving in the right direction. At some point, hopefully, they won't need the wall anymore.<br /><br />Grades set the pace for the best students, and they can be the kick in the pants the least motivated kids need. This doesn't preclude other types of motivation, like a teacher's knowledge and love of the material; like a teacher's caring and support for the kids.<br /><br />You can easily see this in sports. Few would ever think about not keeping score, but that doesn't mean that coaches don't use many other techniques to motivate kids. Most kids are motivated by scores, but it ends up being much more than that. What is really motivating is that they come to realize that hard work pays off; that they come to value the coach's high standards. It's amazing to see the change that comes over many kids. Scores might me a motivating tool, but the end result is so much more.<br /><br />Grades are a framework for motivation - not the goal. If schools and teachers are very careful (from Kindergarten) about setting high year-to-year standards and carefully teaching and supporting kids, then the issue of grades would not be so important. Also, many of the problems of grades have nothing to do with grades - they are just the messenger. You don't fix something by saying that the grades are the problem or that the grades are not important.<br /><br />Problems of motivation do not start in high school, they start in Kindergarten. Social promotion never helps, it just ignores the problem and makes it worse. If you wait long enough, you can then blame it on external causes. That's what schools do.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-46414666316299464312006-11-24T03:29:00.000-05:002006-11-24T03:29:00.000-05:00So what are the incentives for the kids to do well...<i>So what are the incentives for the kids to do well under your proposed system? Is it just promotion to the next level of school? Is it scores? Or did I miss some sort of fabulous, instantly gratifying prize that they would actually care about?</i><br /><br />laura -<br /><br />You may or may not be surprised to know this, but when teacher sets up achievable challenges and give their students the tools to master them, it feels good to them. <br /><br />Have you ever had to do something that seemed almost impossible at first because you couldn't quite wrap your mind around the task? Do you remember how you felt when you did it successfully? I'll bet that if you have you'd remember quite well. That's where the motivation comes from.<br /><br />The best way to create motivation (and self-esteem) is to provide clear expectations before an activity and honest praise and criticism afterwards. If a particular student did badly in relation to the expectations laid out he will know it, so there's no use in trying to hide it. In fact, the web of lies associated with the social-promotion mentality goes a long way in creating apathy among the students it's inflicted upon.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-69180172733571679312006-11-23T16:03:00.000-05:002006-11-23T16:03:00.000-05:00Massparent: If you don't want kids to pass in the ...Massparent: <i>If you don't want kids to pass in the school but then fail on standardized tests, the logical conclusions are you either lower the standardized test passing threshold, or go to uniform grading.</i><br /><br />May I suggest that another logical conclusion is that you teach kids well enough that they pass in the school and on standardised tests?<br /><br />This has the beneficial result that not only will they pass the tests, but they'll also know maths a bit better than they were in the old system, which will be useful in the rest of life whenever they use the topic.<br /><br />Don't lose sight of the idea that tests (be they standardised or grades within a school) are just a means to an end. We don't want kids to get good scores for good scores' sake. We want them to get good scores to the extent that this correlates with actually knowing the subject material.<br /><br />When a kid goes on to, say, engineering at university, it's their knowledge of the subject matter that matters, not their knowledge relative to their fellow students at school. You either know how to find the roots to a quadratic equation or not, and if you don't you're going to struggle at engineering school. Giving high grades at high school regardless of work, or lowering standardised test scores, is not going to lead to any improvement in knowledge in itself. <br /><br />So your case of a school where the top kids only making C+s, then the solution there is to improve the teaching of the kids, and make sure they master each lesson as it happens. A school may wind up moving its kids through the curriculum a lot slower than a school with a smarter base student population, but whatever the kids cover they should know. If they wind up taking the standardised test three years after most of the kids at the higher socio-economic school, then so be it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-51058628278292245162006-11-23T00:14:00.000-05:002006-11-23T00:14:00.000-05:00I suspect when we get to a uniform grading system,...I suspect when we get to a uniform grading system, rather than applying a grading curve with average kids at a school getting a C, that will work as a disincentive rather than an incentive for individual kids. It might push the standardized test scores up, but if the best kids at a school only score a C+, that isn't much of an incentive.<br /><br />If you don't want kids to pass in the school but then fail on standardized tests, the logical conclusions are you either lower the standardized test passing threshold, or go to uniform grading.<br /><br />Wonder what would happen in colleges if we had uniform grading across all colleges. An A at Temple, equal to an A at Haverford.MassParenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07146102995122011221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-69076100468365797312006-11-22T22:35:00.000-05:002006-11-22T22:35:00.000-05:00"Are scores going to make them believe they're goo..."Are scores going to make them believe they're good at reading, math, etc. and make them want to keep doing it?"<br /><br />You betcha!! <br /><br />Or, are teachers so incompetent that they can't figure out how to create proper tests and grade homework. I'm not talking about trivial state standardized tests here. <br /><br />Good grades are very motivating. Bad grades and the risk of flunking are also very motivating. High expectations are very motivating. If they don't get those expectations at home, they darn well better get them at school.<br /><br />"Will graduating suddenly matter to them?"<br /><br />You're looking at high school kids. Please reread Ken's comments. By the time kids get to high school, all problems look external.<br /><br /><br />"What do you think of their assertion that scripted teaching is a form of censorship?"<br /><br />Schools and teachers know all about censorship. They practice it big time. It's called the public school monopoly that allows no input by parents on curriculum and pedagogy. Teachers are experts? Experts in what? Their own opinions.<br /><br />School choice. Then those teachers can complain all they want about censorship - or just go teach somewhere else.<br /><br />The arrogance is palpable. Their employer tells them to do their job a particular way they don't like and they call it censorship. This is incredible!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-33716122815357303852006-11-22T17:02:00.000-05:002006-11-22T17:02:00.000-05:00So what are the incentives for the kids to do well...So what are the incentives for the kids to do well under your proposed system? Is it just promotion to the next level of school? Is it scores? Or did I miss some sort of fabulous, instantly gratifying prize that they would actually care about?<br /><br />In an atmosphere that places on value on the constructs of education, how are these things going to matter or even register as the all-motivating success you predict? Are scores going to make them believe they're good at reading, math, etc. and make them want to keep doing it? Will graduating suddenly matter to them?<br /><br />Incidentally, I thought of you last week. I've been recruited to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Standing Committee Against Censorship--many of whom make me look like Pat Robertson, I confess. What do you think of their assertion that scripted teaching is a form of censorship?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com