Posted on 04/29/2022 9:26:58 AM PDT by karpov
Inside some University of California academic departments and colleges, an atypical idea is gaining steam: deemphasizing, or even ditching, the A-F grading system and rethinking how to assess student learning.
Divisions like UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry and UC Davis’s Department of Mathematics are deliberating whether to change how they grade students. In some cases, that means awarding students a pass or no-pass grade rather than a letter grade. Other times, it may mean allowing students to choose which assignments get the most weight in determining their grade.
At UC Irvine, Academic Senate leaders are currently evaluating long-term options around grading and have met with officials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where students don’t receive letter grades for their first semester, to learn about that university’s approach.
Departments at other UC campuses also are experimenting with making changes to how they test students, putting less emphasis on high-stakes exams, because some students aren’t good test-takers but can demonstrate their understanding of the material in other ways. Some departments have begun using two-stage exams: Students take a standard individual exam before also taking a group test where they work with other students.
The changes are especially being considered for first-year students to give them more time to get used to the rigors of college work and learn the material over the course of a semester rather than discourage them early on with low scores on tests and other assignments.
All the possibilities are a welcome development to Jody Greene, the associate vice provost of teaching and learning at UC Santa Cruz, who argues that letter grades aren’t necessarily indicative of whether a student has mastered the material.
(Excerpt) Read more at kqed.org ...
Future headline: UC grads face challenges entering workplace.
When I attended a community college back in the early 1970s there was no “fail”. Grading was credit, credit with honors credit with high honors, and deferred credit.
Hmm, why aren’t other divisions such as those for social studies also having to consider this ????
They will make sure that they pass the right number of “minority” people so they won’t be accused of discrimination. So those minority people won’t have to work hard. Many employers will hire them and pay them to sit around and fulfill a quota.
Meanwhile, the non-minorities who actually study and do the work are called racist.
> a pass or no-pass grade rather than a letter grade.
Future graduates will brag about being the passest student in their class.
A liberal just told me her kid going to an expensive art school in Chicago and she can’t wait until he graduates and she no longer needs to support him! 🤣🤣🤣
“Future headline: UC grads face challenges entering workplace.”
I’m telling you this from experience. College degrees are almost useless now. If they want a quality engineer then that person must have a certificate from ASQC. ASQC tests and certifies that you know the material. Plus, to maintain the cert takes money and a course every year. The same is true for most of what used to be covered by just a college degree. If you ask why, they’ll tell you because the quality of the grads is sub par.
Minorities, not counting Asians, are educational failures.
I don’t care why, I just know they can’t compete.
I’ve seen far better qualified white men get passed up for underqualified women and minorities.
Typical liberal half-way measures - don’t just eliminate grades, eliminate degrees as well, and instead award “participation certificates”: kinda like those participation trophies they give to even the most lame players in the kid’s sports leagues.
“Portfolio based assessments”. Welcome to the mid-90’s and outcomes based education. Rerun season!
This is another swing by the teachers union crowd to eliminate standards based testing, because it measures everybody equally. They present it as “fair” because each student is an individual. Okay, fine. Do you want your physician to not be tested against standards? Do you wan your attorney to choose what subjects he’s better at and screw the rest? Or do they get licensed because they FELT ready?
The union crowd wants to end testing almost as bad as they want two more months of summer break and 2 hours less instruction per day...for the same pay. We can’t POSSIBLY determine who’s the best teacher, based on efficacy, and who needs to go back and work at McDonald’s struggling to put the fries in the bag right side up. If there’s no testing, then everybody’s the same. Unions, you see, are all about the lower sustainable denominator and those who excel beyond expectations can just, well, live with it. No soup for you!
This bad idea comes up every 25 years or so and it doesn’t get any better no matter how much lipstick they put on the pig.
Fight for $5! Fight for $15....
Admitting weak students for diversity reasons creates pressure to pass most of them, regardless of performance.
Next will be just giving them diplomas, like Oz gave to Scarecrow.
Ditching western culture to accommodate the tribal and mentally defective.
Pretty soon all public school kids will Have to do to graduate is just state “present” at the beginning of the day when asked, then leave and do whatever they like for the rest of the day
Everyone gets a participation trophy and a graduation certificate!
Man, I would have loved that kind of permissive non-testing when I was studying for my masters degree...
Of course each diploma will cost in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand bucks.
[[ a pass or no-pass grade rather than a letter grade.]]
Not good enough for the left- they will claim that it discriminates agaisnt kid’s who “can’t pass” (ie kids who don’t even bother trying to learn)
Instead of an actual degree designation after one's name, such as MBA, BBA, future students will have "CA" after their name.
Doing that at two schools will earn the lucky recipient a "CA CA" designation.
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