Educational standards - how low can you go?
This is not compassion - this is condeming kids to failure the rest of their lives. Why? School is supposed to be built on that which was taught last year. And if last year was a failure? Right, most students are not likely to catch up. Good intentions like these just don't make it.
Expectations should be set high. Believe it or not, most people will work to to meet those expectations.
Let's put it this way - the importance of self-esteem is way overrated in our society. Yes, a healthy modicum of it is essential, but as the following shows, educators have just taken it way too far.
Especially when it trumps actual achievement.
THE NEW MATH: FAILURE=PASSING
Do lenient temporary rules to round up grade-point averages of .5 or higher amount to 'soical promotion' in the Recovery School District?Sunday, April 01, 2007Under a new and exceptionally lenient grading policy, high school students in New Orleans' Recovery School District can pass their classes even if their quarterly grades average an "F" for the year.
For example, a student can earn F's in three quarters and a C in one quarter and still pass for the full year. Another way to pass: two D's and two F's, under a policy that educators locally and nationally said falls far below typical standards.
Mathematically, it would be nearly impossible to design an easier standard: The only way to fail a course is by getting F's for all four quarters. That's because the policy calls for rounding up grade-point averages of .5 or higher. If, for example, a student makes two D's and two F's, the .5 grade-point average is automatically raised to a 1.0, or D "average."
I understand compassion; almost everyone needs some at some point. However, this is not that - this is just nuts. This is making excuses for students - hardly compassionate when the results of this time in school will have a big effect on their lives later on. Mess up here and it gets way more difficult to compensate.
And will those educators and their tax dollars be there to make the difference?
And even students who fail to meet that reduced standard can still earn credit for one semester: Three F's and one D -- mathematically a .25 average -- earn students a "half credit," meaning they only have to repeat half the course.
The state-run Recovery School District, which operates 21 New Orleans public schools, revised the grading policy several weeks ago and said it will apply only to this school year.
New Orleans and the state of LA are not known for having steller systems in the first place - and they think that this is the way to go?
The district lowered the standards in recognition of the stress many students have undergone since Katrina and the fact that many trickled in well after the school year started, including some who had not been enrolled in any school last year, system Superintendent Robin Jarvis said.
Not to make light of the situation, but just living is stressfulIf one lowers standards, people will meet those lowered expectations.
Critics say the policy codifies the low expectations that plague many struggling school systems.
"These standards are just horribly low -- there is no way to fail. You have to work to fail," said Martin Davis, a senior writer and editor at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based education reform group
Davis said he has also come across lenient standards to pass classes in districts in Tennessee, Illinois, North Carolina and Virginia.
Thomas Payzant, former superintendent of Boston public schools and now a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said school systems hurt students by lowering standards. That only makes the transition to college and the job market tougher, he said.
"It just sounds to me like the expectations are too low," Payzant said. "You can't have a watered-down curriculum and low-level standards and expect that students are going to have what they need."
The temporary policy -- in effect only for the rest of the school year -- stands in stark contrast to the nearly unanimous mantra of the state's politicians and educators, who have decried "social promotion" -- moving students through grades even though they haven't mastered the work -- as dooming students to failure in school and a more difficult adult life.
The Recovery School District has about 9,300 students in its 21 schools. The city's remaining students attend a cluster of 31 independent public charter schools and five traditional public schools overseen by the Orleans Parish School Board.
Read the whole article.
The last thing to point out are the number of independent charter schools now in New Orleans. When I was there last year, the buzz was all about how much better they were than the public schools they replaced, given that they were parent choice based and had high parental involvement.
