I think perhaps we should stop referring to these places as schools
What a brilliant idea – “equitable grading”:
Self-discipline is just another form of white supremacy, according to the Left, as is the idea that people must actually work for what they want. Thus, testing, grades, and any other form of academic rigor are being discarded as outdated symptoms of systemic racism.
Several school districts nationwide have embraced this move toward “equitable grading,” a system in which students are expected to learn classroom material without ever being rewarded for it or penalized if they fail to do so. Under this new model, homework is assigned but not emphasized, according to the Wall Street Journal, and tests come with multiple retake opportunities — that is, if they are given at all. And behavior, including attendance, is no longer a factor in a student’s final grade because it has “nothing to do with whether they can write a competent, argumentative essay,” according to Tanya Kuhnee, a teacher-support specialist who helped implement equitable grading in Albuquerque, New Mexico…
Equitable learning certainly has changed the way classrooms feel and operate, but not for the better. One student who experienced these grading changes for himself said they incentivized poor work habits and noted that even some of the highest-achieving students in his Las Vegas high school have stopped showing up to class unless there was an exam…
Proponents of equitable learning believe they are helping underprivileged students, but in reality, they are setting them up for failure.
Actually, it’s setting up many more students than that for failure, with only the most self-motivated continuing to push themselves. It probably lightens the load of teachers, too, because they have a lot fewer tests to design and to grade. But since the left is interested in dumbing down America as much as possible and making the vision of the movie “Idiocracy” a reality, it’s probably all features and no bugs as far as they’re concerned.
I was a good student, but I received the foundation of my education in public schools for elementary and high school that emphasized homework and lots of testing, as well as attendance. However, I didn’t like school and found it boring. The solution would have been to present students with more interesting material, but that was rare. There is no question in my mind that the homework I hated and found to be a chore was necessary in order to get me to pay attention and actually learn whatever it was they were teaching, even though I was probably more motivated than most.
But it was in college that attendance was no longer required, and I found myself taking full advantage of that, cutting the classes I found boring and attending those I found more interesting. My grades stayed good, but I still had the incentive of testing and graded papers. Without those, I don’t think I would have learned nearly as much – and again, I was a pretty self-motivated learner. Could my school experience have been better? Absolutely. But throwing out tests and grades would definitely not have made it so.
And I doubt it would make it better now for the vast vast majority of students. What a travesty.
I attended Catholic schools from grade one to high school graduation. The nuns in elementary school were very judgmental and seating in the classroom was arranged by grades. We had frequent spelling bees and each loser had to sit down until the winner was the only one left standing. Diagramming sentences took up a lot of time. I got terrible grades in hand writing but that was my only weak subject. Each report card had a “deportment” grade.
In high school discipline was enforced in imaginative ways. One small Christian Brother had been a flyweight champion boxer in Ireland. An unruly kid would often be invited to “put the gloves on,” and given a boxing lesson. One day in senior year we were all ordered into a study hall and took a test, which was the SAT. No practice or retakes. That was it.
The Left’s ultimate goal is both to dumb down curricula and to foster dependence. Individual initiative, independent thought, discipline, focus and attention to detail all buttress self reliance and self sufficiency. That’s anathema to the Left. The vast majority of the population must be kept helpless, passive, relatively ignorant (with just enough intelligence to swallow and spew Leftist propaganda without question) and most importantly…utterly dependent on Big Brother.
I never had much use for attendance requirements. I figured if the teacher couldn’t tell whether I’d been attending class by my performance on exams, what was the point of his live teaching? Why should anyone care whether I attended? Maybe the reading list was all that mattered, or maybe I’d already learned the material in a some other class or on my own.
But I’m looking at exams as a way of determining whether a student has mastered a specific body of academic material, not as a way of distributing rewards. For that reason, I also don’t care how many times someone has to take a test before passing. We had “self-paced” courses in which we just kept taking the tests until we’d learned the stuff. For a semester’s material, that might happen in the first week, the last week, or anywhere in between. There were some time limits, but they had to do with the convenience of the teaching staff, who had limits to the time they wanted to invest in any one student. Some self-paced college courses were a lot like taking an AP test to qualify out of a course, if the high school course in that subject had been adequate, as some accelerated classes were, even at a good college. I’m speaking now of the 1970s.
The Left is very successfully implementing the Cloward-Piven strategy. Which foretells our doom.
Mike K- that is the same way I took the SAT. My score was high, and these prep and retake options are not useful.
What’s even scarier is that this all could be rendered moot in the near future. Given the rise of generative AI’s I can’t help but wonder what the hell kind of employment future any child in school today may have down the road anyway.
It’s pretty difficult to know anything for sure right now, but it’s hard to imagine that many of the sorts of jobs that are around today will continue to exist in 10 or 20 years. And who knows? There may even be new opportunities and emplyment niches that open up, like AI prompt creation. Pondering the near future is both fascinating and terrifying to me.
I have two black neighbors with school-age children who are being sent to private schools and ordered to study. In one case, it’s a Christian school, and the other goes to a local classical education school. Other neighbors have kids in local public schools, but these are very motivated parents whose children study, or else.
In general it’s time to get kids out of public school systems, which are now merely indoctrination centers, not educational institutions.
I’m rolling over in my grave finding out I was a white supremacist for wearing a suit and bowtie. 2023 is the worst year ever for my self esteem.
I found school at the primary and secondary levels fairly interesting, often very much so. Those classes and subjects that weren’t interesting to me were hard. So, either interesting or hard. Very rarely boring. I was never the sharpest pencil in the bunch but I mostly did okay. As I matured I increasingly enjoyed the company of girls. The classes with pretty girls were not boring and I was motivated to do well in those classes so that the pretty girls would think favorably of me. I never skipped classes willfully, only when I was sick. I discovered that attending every class and taking part in discussions was key to getting a good grade and, not coincidentally, to learning the subject matter. For me, everything I learned that was worth learning, in a broad-based humanities sense, I learned in high school. By contrast, college was a total bust, a total waste of time — a massive scam. A graduate course on Yeats and Irish poetry is the only thing I remember favorably. The rest of it was BS.
There were no prep courses for SAT where I grew up. At least I wasn’t aware of any and I didn’t know any kids who enrolled in them even if they did exist. Many years later I asked my dad about this. He growled, “High School was supposed to be your SAT prep course. That’s what we pay property taxes for.”
The damage done by this ridiculous agenda will not be known for years. There’s a reason Asians generally outperform other minorities in education. It’s not because they are smarter, it’s because they do the work, and strive to be the best.
We have reached the point that not homeschooling your children is child abuse.
Mike K. – Thanks for your comment, very interesting!
As I have pointed out before, the average score on student’s IQ test has been declining for 50 years. Todays school students are not very bright, and it shows. To hide the decline the teachers have to stop giving grades to students.
As I have pointed out before, the average score on student’s IQ test has been declining for 50 years.
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Sez who?
I got terrible grades in hand writing
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They have courses in pharmacy school to deal with you lot.
thats would they used to say about my handwriting, but it was shorthand,
looking at samples of what i’ve seen students turn in, to which the pen is a foreign instrument, it looks like sanskrit or some other dead language,
Wasn’t this covered in Calvin and Hobbes 40 years ago?
@ Art Deco,
The evidence for this decline are data from the “General Social Survey” on mean IQ by decade among graduate students, undergraduates, and high school students. The IQ scores have been declining for years.
Forgot the link. I’m old and my memory isn’t what it used to be. Go here.
https://gss.norc.org/
“Hand writing” was called “Penmanship.” That was the 40s and 50s. One report care had a “-” as my grade in penmanship. I guess I was destined for medical school. South Shore was a lovely area when I was a kid. Now, driving through is dangerous.
This was South Shore when I was growing up.
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When I mentioned taking tests repeatedly, I was thinking of subject-matter tests, not aptitude tests like the SAT. I don’t mind kids re-taking the test, but their various scores should be averaged.
I do think there’s something to SAT prep. I never did a formal prep class, but a friend and I used to take practice tests. It improved my vocabulary enormously, and there is a certain practice effect from increasing familiarity with the usual question format. Since practice can speed up response, it can perhaps increase a score by giving a student time to get all the way through the questions. But anyone can get practice tests. Practice tests don’t take money or influence, only motivation.
The teachers figured out that with “equitable grading” they could do less real work.