Texas school districts would no longer be allowed to mandate minimum grades for failing students under a “truth-in-grading ” law unanimously passed by the State Senate Monday. Controversies over such policies have flared up here and there in the last few years, but I’m not aware of any states banning the practice to-date.
“Teacher groups, who have called such policies the ‘ultimate grade inflation,’ are strongly supporting the Senate bill,” the Dallas Morning News reports. The Texas School Alliance, made up of large, urban districts is crying foul saying it usurps local control of schools.
I get the arguments that minimum passing grades provide a “safety net” for potential dropouts. Still, it’s hard to preach high expectations out of one side of your mouth and no failures out the other.
I understand the sentiment behind having minimum grades as there’s a difference between a kid who tries but still fails and a kid who simply does not try at all. But there’s got to be a better way to deal with the situation. Perhaps allowing the student a second chance to master the material through the use of make-up assignments? It’s tricky, though, since that practice might be seen as unfair by the students who got it right the first time. I’m not sure what’s the best answer to this dilemma…
In my district, the minimum grade is 50, while the passing grade is 65. The result is that if you have 2 quarterly grades of 80, you can do absolutely nothing for the other two quarters.
The other result is that the kid who earns 49% gets the same grade as the one who earns 2.38%. Sure, you can add the comment “Actual grade is lower than reported,” but parents can’t see how much lower.
For the most part, districts are more concerned with keeping retentions down than they are with actual education. As in life, no consequences means no effort. If you don’t allow people to fail, you make it impossible to succeed.
So much time and energy wasted on these grading disputes…. What really counts is whether or not the student learned something, right? I think I’d be happier if grading were taken out of the individual teachers’ hands and pegged to students’ performance on state-wide or nation-wide standardized end-of-course exams. This would insulate the schools and teachers from haggling…the proof would be in the pudding. Of course this would require a state-wide or nation-wide curriculum and well-crafted tests.
Can someone please explain why there is a minimum grade of 50 or any other value? Why is there s minimum grade at all?
I grew up in India where students would regularly get 0/100 if they were absent on a test or if they did not get a single question correct or could not show any significant attempt at solving a question. Passing score was a standard 40% which was considered an abysmal performance and anything over 75% was a distinction. Scores over 90% were reserved for the brightest and best, ‘exemplary’ performers.
Of course, those were not days of high scoring standardized multiple choice tests but of open-ended questions. For such questions not only does the student need knowledge, skill, and good expression to do well, but the teacher too needs all her/his skill to mark and not just an answer sheet, or worse, a computerized scanner.