The dreaded F has been all but banished from the grade books.
The report cards that arrived home late last week showed few failing grades but instead marks of "I" for incomplete, indicating that students still owe their teachers essential work. They will get Fs only if they fail to complete assignments and learn the content in the months to come.
[snip]
Mary Mathewson, an English teacher, says a number of her colleagues are "livid" about the grading change, which "takes away one of the very few tools we have to get kids to learn." The possibility of failing is a motivator, she says, and now "kids are under the impression they can do it whenever they want to, and it's not that big of a deal."
[snip]
"If we really want students to know and do the work, why would we give them an F and move on?" Noonan said." . . . I think the students who are struggling should not be penalized for not learning at the same rate as their peers."
This is what we as Americans get in our education system when we have a government (local, state, federal) that believes in "home schooling," no extra funding, and poor salaries for teachers and educators. The "rich" don't deal with this because their method of "home school" is a private school education, one in which they realize they have to pay bucket loads of money to get their kids educated. Unfortunately, the irony is lost on the rich and privileged. They don't want their kids educated in a public setting and they strive as a unified block to cut any funding for education. One of the prominent aspects of America used to be its free public education system. Now it's so pathetic that they have to start experimenting with taking away the dreaded "F" from the grading lest we "alienate" the kids from properly addressing the course of study they "failed" at.
As the rich get richer, thanks to the selected few that control our society, our children waste away. Of course, there's always the indoctrination one can receive at certain right wing Christian schools, and of course, those that actually do home school (many of them right wing Christians) -- these people may know their Bible, spelling and math, but they sure as hell don't get it when it comes to geography, history, social studies and science, which in many ways makes them just as stupid as those that come out of the public school system.
Just my opinion.
2 comments:
Teachers are paid well in Jersey. I advocate an 8 - 9 hour school day in failing schools, an in-loco-parentis approach where kids are fed, taught, tutored, exercise, do all their homework, & when they go home they're done with it until next day.
Such an approach is only encountered in "other" countries, cough cough, which is why the Beltway crowd and their stupid followers advocate just the opposite.
God forbid we actually have an intelligent electorate.
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