Whistleblower 9: New grading practice could boost students' grades

wsoctv.com Charlotte, NC ^ | May 17, 2013 | Scott Wickersham

[Soul of the South]

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A Whistleblower 9 investigation uncovered a new grading practice in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools.

[Soul of the South]

Another example of progressive educators unwilling to deal with student failure while improving the scorecard for the school.

[staytrue]

Same thing is being investigated in Columbus Ohio.

[Da Coyote]

“Progressive Educators” is an oxymoron.

[Tax-chick]

If the school system employees were “educators,” the students wouldn’t be making Fs.

[Chode]

"Educating them is not the goal; getting them out of the way for the kids who are coming behind them is," said Judy Kidd, president of Classroom Teachers Association.

and there it is...

[ontap]

I’ll start caring about students when they start paying union dues....

Quote: Union Thug

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Our schools have been ruined to accommodate a defective demographic. This practice outlined in the main article merely accelerates the process.

[gop4lyf]

I have taught for eight years and have never been allowed to give a grade lower than a 50. The reason I am given for this is, “It is just too hard for students to make up their grades if they receive a zero.” Excuse me, but they don’t “receive” zeroes, they earn them. What they “receive” is 50 free points when they refuse to do an assignment.

[Chode]

over the years i've had several teachers tell the class on the first day that "Other classes tell you you start out with 100 points, HERE, you start with ZERO points and are going to earn every one you get!"

i wonder why i learned the most in those classes?

[gop4lyf]

I have had struggling students who worked their butts off only to get a 50. A real 50, not one given to them. They then see that they could have gotten the same grade without even trying and it then becomes extremely difficult to convince them to work hard and keep trying.

[urtax$@work]

Other articles i see from the SW US always show the latest
triumphs of education , failures of the testing, disparities
between the races etc. and the papers almost NEVER look beyond
the education heads statements to see the BS.

Very disjointed reporting missing important facts like
the “non english speaking children” {of illegal parents} scoring lower and throwing off the real test results —
and then demanding more ed. money taxes.

[Chode]

that, is a real uphill battle...

[JCBreckenridge]

“I have had struggling students who worked their butts off only to get a 50. A real 50, not one given to them. They then see that they could have gotten the same grade without even trying and it then becomes extremely difficult to convince them to work hard and keep trying.”

I had one with a 35 over 2/3rds of the course and 72 on the final. 23.45 + 24 = 47.45. Needed a 78 to pass. Failed, retook course the next term and passed easily with a B. She’s now a nurse and doing well.

I could have passed her but she learned her lesson having to repeat the course. The best part was breaking the chain. Once she realized she could do the material - she was fine. Other teacher wasn’t happy when she heard what happened she complained to me about it and I told her - the reason she’s doing much better is because of what I did with her last year.

[RHS Jr]

This is going to be hard for some people to believe. I have taught HS science and math at a public county school and at a private Christian school; policies were very similar; they were not how I was taught or wanted to teach. I had to fudge grades to be sure no more than two kids failed the class for the year (no athletes ever failed anything) or be fired; a failing student was interpreted as the teacher failed to teach the student. Students begged me to go over the exact questions that would be on my test because other teachers did just that for theirs. The first seven questions on a test were so easy a 5th grader who never attended class should get them right. The next three were to separate A’s, B’s and C’s. Then there was an extra-credit question. I gave partial credit if any part of the solution made sense. Two curves were used in the classes: one A to F for students that were on the high curve (avg about 80) and one A to F for students on the low curve (avg about 30); race was the difference. The school would not let me group students by ability because certain parents would “riot”. I averaged the test for all classes and classes below average got points to bring that class to the average; this was because the same test averaged higher as each later class took it that day (I was forbidden to give different tests to different classes of the same subject). For the six weeks grade, I threw away the lowest score for each student. I must have missed the memo on recording grades below 50 as actually 50. For the annual Nationally Normed Student Achievement Test, the school reported “grade equivalents” to parents instead of the percentile rankings (because they were obviously very low).