Warning: The following post is an angry rant on teaching issues. If teaching and rants are not your thing, check back in another day!
Grades were due last week. A full 18 weeks of essays, homeworks, readings, worksheets, packets, and group work logged, graded, and delivered.
Or so I thought.
An student-athlete of mine ended up with two F’s. One in my class. Rules state that no athlete is allowed to play if he receives two F’s.
Well, ok. I understand that. The student comes first in student-athlete. I can get behind that.
When the student complains and my grade book is pulled up I am told: It looks like Student received less than 50% on some assignments. We have a policy that if a student turned in something, he scores at least a 50%.
What?
So, what I’m hearing is that on a 10-question assignment, if a student answers one question, they get half credit for the whole assignment?
Yes. That’s exactly it.
I sat there and changed his points on multiple assignments. Squirming. Uncomfortable. Livid.
“Explain these bad grades”
What are we teaching these kids?
“Oh, hey, you showed up at work for one hour out of your 40 this week, here’s half your pay check.”
“Oh, hey, I know you tried to be prepared for that court case for your client who is facing life, so we’ll just let him go.”
I take particular affront to the fact that this is a student athlete. Where student comes first. Where his grades, throughout the whole season, should have been first and foremost in his mind. Where he knows the meaning of hard work as a varsity athlete. And here we are, just confirming what’s been speculated about professional athletes being above the law. I digress.
Now it’s required that I go back through my entire grade book, change all similar issues for other students, and give them points they did not earn. By doing this, I am telling my students that virtually no effort will still get you what you need.
The logic of it all, from what I could understand, was that 50% is the same as 0%. An F is an F.
No. No it isn’t. If this were true, changing his grades to 50’s wouldn’t have brought him from a 40% to a 68. You see, not all F’s are created equal. There is the F where you actually did try, where you answered each question with effort and some semblance of thought. And then there is the F where you just scribbled something on one question and called it good.
Which, for me, begs the question again: What are you teaching these kids?
RQ: What do you think? Does giving half credit for not even close to half the work make sense to you?
I’m Brooke Selb, a Personal Trainer and Health Coach specializing in helping busy moms and moms to be to easily juggle mom life with family friendly recipes, and easy exercise routines to help you achieve your fitness goals that fit in with your already busy life with sound nutritional advice.
This world is seriously disgusting. I have no kids. After trying for kids for 15 years, I’m kind of at the point where I don’t even really want them anymore b/c of reasons like this! It is freaking unbelievable how much this world takes blame off one person and puts it on another person. And parents just bail their kids out of EVERYTHING! NO RESPONSIBILITY!!!! UGH! I’m getting fired up now so I need to stop. I can only imagine your frustration. Good thing I’m not a teacher!
I totally feel your pain on this!!
Years ago (before kids) I taught middle school and we had the same stupid rule. I HATED it. Since this was before everything was computerized (I did grades manually) – I always did it the school’s way and the real way – so that the true grade was on the report card.
Another thing that I couldn’t stand was the fact that a student could only be held back once during middle school (6th, 7th, 8th at this school) so if they failed 6th grade it didn’t matter how poorly they did in 8th grade (I taught 8th grade science), they would still be promoted to 9th grade at the end of the year.
That’s seriously a policy?! Holy crap. I would also be livid. I’ve heard the “no-zeros” argument before, and I agree that if a system were truly standards-based, there would be no zeros. But our systems will never be truly standards-based, because we have to teach kids things that aren’t in the standards — like responsibility, punctuality, etc., — but that still affect their grades.
Now I’m ranting; sorry. But your anger over this is absolutely justified.
I’ve sat here for five minutes trying to harness everything I want to say into a coherent, straight point. I am unsuccessful so I will just say I completely and totally understand your frustration, and A-freaking-men.
This is disturbing. 50% that isn’t even earned? In the long run, who does that benefit? Seems like it’s a loss for all involved. What a shame. Definitely understand why you’d rant about this. SMH.
As a parent disgusting.
As a parent of a student athlete who has for three years competed in the USA T&F the STUDENT comes first, if grades are not where they need to be, guess what coach gets a call. She will not be training or competing until they are where they need to be either a B or an A… I have never had to make that call. She just got into San Francisco State University, because of her grades, not because of her running, that comes second, although they are very happy to get her as a runner too.
I have a problem as an accountant with the math department who gives out 50 questions a night and grades on completion and not accuracy!!!! Who the heck does that????? So it took me a while to figure out why my kid was getting A’s on homework and D’s and C’s on tests….
Oh she was being given A’s no matter what, what an idiotic way to grade…. They are still doing it and it makes no sense to me!!
Your thoughts on this?
And what about the kids that put the effort in and get good grades? You can’t get higher than an A right? so their extra effort is then worth less because someone with no effort can still pass. It’s absolutely ridiculous!!!!!!!!
This has rubbed me the wrong way since I first heard of it.
There are advocates of it that can articulate (quite well, actually) why this policy is fair-er than how most of us would expect a teacher to grade. The best I can suggest about how to deal with it is to read the articles that are in favor of it to better understand the perspective. That DOES NOT mean to say I agree with it! Understanding that perspective only means you can A) argue against it with more authority or B) wrap your brain around it more.
I am SO SORRY you had to do this for a STUDENT-athlete (who is, as we now know, a student-ATHLETE). It goes against every fiber of your being, makes you wonder why you just spent the last however-many weeks grading papers, and really makes you feel like you’re sending a terrible message to kids. 🙁
Sorry to be so slow, but wow, this makes me incredibly angry too. I can see the argument toward giving SOME credit for trying, but if that’s the case, it should be more something like 25% credit per question for trying, 75% per question for getting the right answer. So in the example you gave where someone answered only one question out of ten, fine, they won’t get a 0%; they’ll get a 2.5%.
It really bothers me that so many schools espouse the “everyone’s a winner” philosophy. My high school didn’t name a valedictorian because “it would make everyone else feel bad that they didn’t get that title.” We still were ranked as a class, so you knew exactly where you stood, but god forbid we give out the title or let the smartest person in our class speak at graduation. In real life, everyone is NOT a winner and I think it’s better to learn that lesson sooner rather than later. I think it would be far better to let kids know where they are deficient, but foster a growth mindset and help them to improve – that’s a much more valuable life school.