It’s the worst Canadian import since Celine Dion, says Fordham’s Education Gadfly: Ken “The Grade Doctor” O’Connor’s standards-based grading idea. One North Carolina school system is looking to throw thousands of dollars at the Toronto-based consultant to speak to its teachers about why they shouldn’t lower grades for cheating, misbehaving or blowing off homework.
“When you are focused on students’ achievement on standards it makes no sense to judge (i.e., grade) students on anything other than achievement,” O’Connor tells the Raleigh News & Observer in an e-mail message. “In a standards-based system, grades need to be as pure measures of achievement that we can make them and they should not be inflated by good behavior or deflated by ‘bad’ behavior.”
(Cue rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. Kindly step aside to allow teachers to run screaming into the night.)
“Students are quickly learning that they do not have to be held to deadlines and timelines,” says one Wake County, North Carolina teacher. “They have learned that they can redo or retake, and not have to be held to high standards. When the bar is set lower, it is as high as the students will aim.”
Gadfly wonders if Wake County school officials are lacking in critical thinking skills. It may surprise my friends at Fordham to learn we already have a great deal of standards-based grading as de facto policy. In my school, there was absolutely, positively no way to hold a kid back–or even compel him to go to summer school–if he scored even a 2 (euphemistically called “approaching grade level”) on either the state math or ELA test. This included the kid who was absent for more than 60 days, and the kid with over 100 latenesses and zero — I mean this quite literally — work done for the entire year. Classwork? Homework? Report cards? Attendance?? Dumb shows and circuses. The test was the alpha and omega; all else was optional. Calling it standards-based grading would at least give it a patina of respectability.
Taken to its logical conclusion, doesn’t standards-based grading reduce all education to the equivalent of earning a GED or passing a CLEP exam? Once you’ve proven you know the material, you get the credit.
Dude gets $8,000 a day. If he actually had good ideas, would he get more or less? In our bizarro K-12 “consultant” supply and demand system: less!
Comment by GGW — May 18, 2009 @ 8:05 am
Approximately two years ago Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio closed as a result of a similar philosophy.
My son left after one semester when he realized most of the students attending were taking advantage of laissez-faire attendance and grading policies. A complete lack of structure led to a corresponding non-enrollment of students. Parents opted to stop paying $35K per year for a simulation of what college was supposed to be and the school was forced to close its doors.
The schools needs approximately $12 million in pledge money by 2012 if it hopes to reopen. Not looking good.
Comment by Paul Hoss — May 18, 2009 @ 8:33 am
My school in CA sounds like your old school, Robert: virtually impossible to retain a kid, even those who don’t do a lick of work all year, who cannot read, who’ve missed 2/3 of the year… I will send a list of my recommendations for retention to my principal, superintendent and maybe school board members, but I view it as a symbolic gesture: no one is going to feel any consequences, except perhaps me, who will be viewed as a child-hating crank! The conventional wisdom is “Retention doesn’t work” –meaning, the kid who gets held back often flunks again –but what about those kids who actually start to work for fear of being retained?
Comment by Ben F — May 18, 2009 @ 9:29 am
The phrase “retention doesn’t work” or variations on that theme has the same effect on me as the phrase, Niagara Falls. (Slowly, I turned…).
I will resist the temptation to go off on it. But what a temptation. Suffice it to say that we have this magical belief in the power of a high school diploma (“Studies show a child who is retained is 50% less likely to graduate from high school…”) as if it’s a talisman that guarantees future success. If the goal is merely to graduate students so we can put a check mark on the To Do list, by all means, forge ahead. Pay no attention to the quality of the education, and the unintended consequence of creating a minimum competency culture. If we hold higher standards, take a broader view of education and accountability, well then….
Slowly I turn.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — May 18, 2009 @ 9:37 am
Everyone wrote such nice long comments( I mean that, not being snarky). I’m gonna keep it short.
Standards without consequences to back them up are pointless. What forces anyone to stick to them. Nothing except goodwill.
A diploma should mean something, high school and college. The ripple effect of meaningless diplomas hits every sector of American life.
Comment by Derek — May 18, 2009 @ 10:14 am
Ok – but what about the students who do well on classroom and standardized assessments, but still fail the course because they don’t complete assignments and homework (allegedly designed to support learning) and then, enter credit recovery programs and get credit for passing a test?
This doesn’t make sense. Course work should be supportive and encourage students to do better and learn more. Course assessments should be assessing the knowledge and skills gained in the course. I am are not talking about students who don’t attend, can barely read, etc. There are too many punitive practices based on meaningless and repetetive assignments resulting in too many low grades and failures, even when the student is apparently competent based on assessments (even AP tests).
Busy-work assignments do not encourage self direction or student engagement – they possibly do foster a certain work ethic. The students described above too often become discouraged and end up in alternative or credit recovery programs. Something should change – perhaps not to the degree proposed by the Grade Doctor.
Comment by Susan S — May 18, 2009 @ 11:24 am
I have to agree with Susan B. One of the challenges today is boredom and meaningless homework. So…if a students demonstrates mastery of the subject shouldn’t they be allowed to move on to the next level? So..what is wrong with the last sentence in the blog entry of earning a GEB or CLEP? Let them go on to pursue college, technical school or whatever is of interest to them (positive interest of course).
Remember…adolescence’s is a relatively new feature. It really was not around in the 1800 this was invented with the onset of forced er public/manadatory schooling. Academic expectations have been lowered dramatically over the past century…
Comment by tim-10-ber — May 19, 2009 @ 6:24 am
My grading policy for intro college courses is two-pronged. If you do well on test and papers, that’s enough to get a good grade, and you don’t gain or lose credit for attending review sections or handing in study guides.
However, if you’re not doing well, I give (some) credit for doing the things I believe will help students do better, like attending review sessions.
Comment by Rachel — May 20, 2009 @ 12:55 am
One problem with the mastery assessment argument is that all too often students who choose not to do homework, attend, etc then fail traditional assessments but are granted “alternative” evaluations. It has been my experience that few of these alternative methods measure mastery but are simply social promotion poorly disguised as legitimate accomplishment. Effective homework is not busywork; it is engaging and facilitates learning. I teach subjects that are traditionally thought of by students as “hard’ or irrelevant to them (math, sciences). I have never had a student complain that homework was boring. If yours do, you need to take a look at what you’re asking them to do.
Comment by Peter — May 22, 2009 @ 10:51 am
Aren’t we forgetting in this whole discussion the total lack of respect for authority that is shown by the student who is not doing the work assigned by the teacher? Life isn’t always about only doing what you want to do or what you see value in doing. Sometimes we just have to do what is expected of us or what we’re told to do. I don’t see any promise for a society that lets kids (who are not known for seeing the big picture) make decisions about whether or not they’re going to do homework, show up for school, etc. There have to be consequences and, to me, a consequence of not working in school should be not passing the course or, at the very least, getting a minimal grade for knowing the subject matter, but not doing the required work.
Comment by Janelle — June 3, 2009 @ 2:29 pm
As an ardent Core Knowledge and high standards supporter, I could not respectfully disagree more. The problem with this logic is the assertion that students “quickly learn that accountability doesn’t matter.” Tell that to the students in my school who lose significant privileges for not completing work. Further, they are graded and consequenced in their study skills score. Since our move to standards-based grading, homework not being completed has dropped significantly, and performance has increased. Do not forget, most of the children we are concerned about do not care about their grades. But, they do care about their privileges! Once they realize that recess “ain’t happenin’ until they show more responsibility, things start to change). They aren’t getting off the hook for not learning, so easily.
In the end, how many of you have a mark on your driver’s licenses that indicates how well you did the first time you took the test? How many doctors have it indicated on their diplomas how many times they cut an artery on a cadaver? Of course there is a final assessment, but everything before then is a chance to improve for that final piece of accountability.
All of that said, social “promotion” is an entirely different issue. The two should not be confused and are not necessarily even related.
What an interesting dialogue! I’m so happy to see people interested in this topic on both sides of the issue!
Comment by Mike — October 30, 2009 @ 1:47 pm