Posted on 09/10/2008 4:47:53 AM PDT by yankeedame
Here’s an easy question: What would happen if children were allowed to come up with their own grading rules?
Common sense — not an immediate recollection of the plot of Lord of the Flies — is all one needs to possess in order to know that rudderless kids just might come up with a system that puts immediate gratification before, say, scholarship. It’s not unlikely, for example, that 20 5th graders could put aside their feuds to agree on the following:
The Dallas Morning News reports that the rules are the latest step by DISD to standardize instruction across the district. Slacker kids in Dallas already had it pretty good thanks to a policy that prevents students from getting a grade lower than a 50 for any one grading period. Trustees reaffirmed that rule last year for this reason: students who fall below 50 have no motivation to bring up their grades.
The obvious fact that the new “get out of jail free” policies offer an incentive for children to do poorly in school (the opportunity cost of playing video games goes down as homework becomes optional) seems to have escaped those entrusted with the education of Dallas students. If there’s one thing I learned during my seven years as a teacher in South Los Angeles, it’s that kids aren’t dumb — especially when it comes to taking advantage of grown-ups.
From the article: “One student thought that some students would exploit the rules knowing that doing so would come with light or no penalties.” A high school senior, also able to put two and two together, said, “This seems to teach procrastination.” You don’t say!
Unfortunately, American students seem to have already mastered the art of procrastination.
Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, recently gathered together some shocking statistics:
The 2006 High School Survey of Student Engagement found that 55 percent of high school students spent less than one hour per week “Reading/studying for class.” Only 10 percent exceeded ten hours per week.
The University of Michigan reported in 2004 that homework time for 15-17-year-olds reached only 24 minutes on weekend days and 50 minutes on weekends. Weekday TV time was one hour, 55 minutes.
In 2004, the Horatio Alger Association found that 60 percent of teenagers logged five hours of homework per week or less.
There’s no doubt our nation’s public school are a disaster, and I wholeheartedly support school reform options, including vouchers, merit pay, and charter schools. But should it be verboten to think that even the worst school could improve dramatically if students were expected to work hard and not granted an inordinate amount of power relative to teachers? Although teachers’ unions usually do all they can to stand in the way of education improvement, I couldn’t help but nod my head in agreement when I read the reaction to the DISD polices from Aimee Bolender, head of the Alliance/AFT teachers’ organization. “There is a constant shift of accountability away from the students and onto the teachers,” she said.
Indeed, a closer look at the DISD policies reveals that if any Dallas student were to decide to turn off their Wii and hit the books for a couple of hours one night, their teachers would be … at fault! Middle school teachers are told to assign “no more than 1.5 hours per night or seven hours per week.”
Meanwhile, Dallas school superintendent Michael Hinojosa claimed the new rules were aimed at curbing the district’s alarming ninth-grade failure rate.
So let me see if I’ve got this right. Eight graders who very well may be at risk of dropping out of school shouldn’t be assigned more than an hour and a half of homework, even though “in 2007 80 percent of [ninth graders] scored below the 40th percentile in reading on the Iowa Test of Educational Development.”
Has assigning “too much” homework become the equivalent of grading exams in red ink? You’ll remember that teachers across the country retired red pens a few years ago after color psychologists said purple “calls attention to itself without being too aggressive.” What’s next — investigating teachers for yelling? Don’t laugh. Education Department officials are already doing just that in Australia.
What’s missing from so many public schools today is old-fashioned authority. As all good teachers know, it’s more important that kids respect you than “like” you. I can’t wait to get my copy of David Whitman’s new book, Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism, which seems to support what I’m saying. Whitman explains what makes the high-achieving schools he profiles in the book work:
By paternalistic I mean that each of the six schools is a highly prescriptive institution that teaches students not just how to think, but also how to act according to what are commonly termed traditional, middle-class values. These paternalistic schools go beyond just teaching values as abstractions: the schools tell students exactly how they are expected to behave, and their behavior is closely monitored, with real rewards for compliance and penalties for noncompliance.
School districts across the country take note. The first way to turn your struggling schools around is to not force teachers to take a student at her word when she says her dog ate her homework.
why not bring back the 1960’s with no walls, carpet blocks, and calling the teacher by their first name.
When the inmates run the asylum....
White people who live in Dallas send their kids to private schools because the school system would allow for them to be beaten to death and then demand an apology from the parents.
The teacher no longer "teaches"- the teacher is the "facilitator."
The push right now is for the students to learn by discovery, not by lecture (last heard from a 10th grade chemistry teacher-I mean,'facilitator').
Today, homework is something to do during commercials.
When my son comes home griping about a zero for late homework, I call the teacher and thank them for giving him a zero and for encouraging the work ethic and values that I'm trying to teach.
My son acquired a day of ISS (in school suspension) and I called for a conference with the principal. In the conference I thanked the principal for having the courage to discipline my son and told him that the school had my support and trust.
I've encouraged *my son* to accept responsibility for his own actions and thank the authority figures for disciplinary actions when they are fairly given. (He's an intelligent, fair kid and this happens much more often than one would imagine.)
The result? The school *loves* me and my son has gained a very good reputation and a lot of respect. Yesterday he had a conflict with a lunch lady (who exaggerated the situation) and after receiving a good tongue-lashing and a day of ISS for his part in the conversation, the administration settled down and allowed my son to tell his side of the story. One of the principals even believed him because he knows my son is an honest person who stands up for justice, even at his own expense.
If more and more parents would give credit where credit is due, the system would be encouraged to do the right thing.
But then there's a catch. You actually have to trust the school district. It took me years to find a school district I could trust and support. When I did, I moved there and nothing is going to make me leave.
Until I found it, I homeschooled. There's no healthy way to function in a broken system and I refuse to subject my developing children's minds to such a system.
By the way, the best school system I've come across in the last 10 years of wandering with the army with school-age kids is Lampasas ISD in Lampasas Texas. The educational part of the program is average, but they more than make up for it with common sense. As a homeschooling mom, I have no trouble picking up the slack in the “book learnen” department, but I can't handle a dysfunctional administration.
I found this school after asking several hundred military folk over the years what was their favorite school system. People from Ft Hood always had the highest raves about LISD, without exception. After a few years of consistent praise for LIDS, we moved here and have had no regrets.
I have to admit, I love my daughter's stories about the morning announcements. "And kids, I know it's hunting season so please remember to remove all guns and ammunition from your vehicles before coming to school. Please don't leave bullet casings rolling around the cab of your truck. If you do, I'll have to fill out paperwork and that really annoys me."
ping for your list
What else are teachers to do if they have a room filled with not-very-bright, unmotivated kids? Of course it would be easier just to give them all A’s.
Demographics of 25 biggest school districts
Dallas (158,059 students)
5% White
31% African-American
62% Hispanic
1% Asian
1% Other
http://www.city-data.com/forum/dallas/119513-demographics-25-biggest-school-districts.html
rotflmao!
“And kids, I know it’s hunting season so please remember to remove all guns and ammunition from your vehicles before coming to school. Please don’t leave bullet casings rolling around the cab of your truck. If you do, I’ll have to fill out paperwork and that really annoys me.”
Actually, I’m surprised nobody ever made that announcement at my high school, given that during hunting season, half the student body probably had guns and/or ammo in their vehicles at school.
Though, at the original article, the only thing the students came up with that I think is a good idea is the one that happens if the teacher fails 20% or more of their students. I go to college, and I’ve had some downright awful TA’s, and class averages of 32% on exams, and I’ve wondered why stuff like that didn’t set off a red flag somewhere. I mean, some students doing poorly is to be expected, but when the class can’t come up with half of a ‘passing’ grade on average (primarily because the TA let us fall behind schedule and didn’t update the exam, so as as result there was material on the exams that hadn’t been covered yet, and partly because he graded harder when he was angry, even angry at things that had nothing to do with us) then something is obviously not right.
Unfortunately, American students seem to have already mastered the art of procrastination.
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Teachers in general seem to have already mastered the art of lying.
Every time ( without exception) a youth graduates from high school less than proficient in math and reading, his teachers and principals have ***LIED*** to him and to his parents.
Every time a child is promoted from grade to grade without proficiency those teachers and principals are LYING to that student and his parents.
The Dallas school district is merely placing a government imprimatur on the the LYING that the teachers and principals are already doing.
So...Next time you meet a teacher, you should wonder. Is this teacher standing before you one of the liars?
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