Problem is that the school-to-prison pipeline is a very real thing and kids that are held back or don’t finish school are far more likely to end up in prison than those that finish. The way school systems work in most of the US, the differences in outcomes for those with and without a high school diploma are stark and depressing. Finishing is as important as the education itself.
Read: End of Policing - Alex S. Vitale
Fixing Education
Doubt
The purpose of a class is to instill a specific set of knowledge and skills.
The purpose of an assignment is to provide the student with sufficient pressure to study the expected knowledge, and practice the expected skills. The assignment is the pressure to learn; it is not evidence of learning.
To the student who has achieved mastery of that knowledge and skillset prior to completing the class, an assignment has no valid purpose. For such a student, the assignment is busywork, and serves only to distract the student from further study.
If your grading style does not allow for a student to demonstrate mastery and refuse busywork assignments, your grading is a problem.
A student with test scores equal or better than the class average does not deserve to fail your class for having refused assignments.
A student who ritualistically completes all of their homework assignments with excellent marks, but is entirely unable to pass a test on the subject matter, is a student who has failed your class.
It generally gotten worse but if I notice my opposite in an argument is most likely a US-American I don’t even bother replying to them anymore. The absolute majority of them lack any sense of reading comprehension, the ability to read between the lines or piece context together that it’s just a waste of time.
When I was a kid they just forced you through eventually because no about of education could offset the damage done be breathing in leaded gasoline exhaust.
Actual conversation I had with an admin after I graded ab exam with 70/100 after a student made 2 big and 2 small mistakes on an exam
You have to grade her exam 100
But she made a bunch of mistakes
She wants the grading 100 or she’ll leave
But then what is the point of grading?
The grading doesn’t matter, of they pay, they get each grade 100/100
Private school I guess? I don’t understand the “or she’ll leave” if not.
So they’re paying for fake grades?
So if you didn’t study and you’re confident you’ll get less than 50%, it’s better to not show up at all than to attempt the test?
Had a test graded on a curve in college. Actual score divided by two then add fifty. There were absolutely people that got a fifty. You’d think by dumb luck you’d get at least one right. It was multiple choice.
Meanwhile here in Croatia, some multiple choice tests actually have negative (penalty) points for choosing wrong so you can’t just guess.
I grew up in an era when they didn’t pass kids to get rid of them. This is why I had a friend in the 8th grade who had two kids.
No, sorry, actually teachers have always done that occasionally. It’s just that now administrators are forcing it to be done in bulk.
The other thing is grade inflation. A D is passing, right? But many bosses pressure you to give your worst students Bs. And that has definitely gotten worse, too.
They made Federal funding for education based on the yearly standardized test scores, and graduation rates. One of those is much easier to fudge than the other.
Your IGN score is a 7, you see the game has many flaws. Your IGN scors is also a 7, your game is well made and optimised, with great plot elements and good graphics.
Personally, I think a UBI-based society can do education better. Everyone should receive a UBI income by default, but working a job or being educated will replace the UBI with a larger amount of money. Grades for learning boosts income based on how good they are. An S-Grade student gets twice of what UBI brings in. ‘Real’ jobs start at twice the value of the S-grade student.
This means that students can go to college and get paid for it. While the prospect of the workplace can be alluring in a fiscal sense, a college student can stay in college for as long as they need to git good, to be fulfilled, or simply to pass time while waiting for a decent job opening. They aren’t held hostage by debts.
Kids also get paid for their grades. This encourages them to learn, because there are material rewards for doing so.
IMO, fiscal responsibility is a skill that is learned, and in America, we don’t teach kids how to handle money. Instead, they get the bulk of their fiscal learning when it is almost time to be kicked out of the nest. Which is dumb.
I long for a society where education, housing, medical care and food are structured for the people instead of the profit. Where education helps sort people into the work they’re suited for. Where housing is something no one does without. Where medical care is fully free. Where food is food instead of fillers, nutrition instead of chemical design, and feeds people over profit.
Ok but if the government is spending all that money on its own citizens then how are they going to fund their hobby of blowing up brown people on the other side of the planet?
Make the brown people pay for it?
the politicians will also get UBI. Maybe they can pool their funds together and get the party started
People gotta think about these things! Is a happy, supported, educated populace going to get the DOW over 50,000??? Unlikely.
Can I have 50% of my salary for doing 0% of my work?
that’s what landlords do
False. They get much more than 50%.
And they work hard, it’s not easy thinking of bigger numbers every month /s
Are they discworld trolls per chance?
Now ask, what a student should get, who did their assignment but only got 30%!
This is by design. MAGA wants kids to be stupid, only stupid people vote MAGA.
“I love the poorly educated” DJT
You are the only person 🧵 that pointed out the fact Grading is authoritarianism, and not education. For education we mentor, assign three tier groups (Highschool, Middle, Elementary), and rate by topics learned, and topics that require improvements. Number go up teaches nothing about “bad people in power abuse your freedom.”
This would’ve been a godsend to me tbh. I was really bad about completing buzywork homework assignments but I paid attention in class and already understood the material. In high school I’d ace every test and wind up with a C or worse because of the number of missing assignments, it wasn’t even intentional, I just frequently forgot about them because they weren’t interesting and probably because of some kind of undiagnosed neurodivergence. Of course, there are also kids who might struggle to complete assignments due to complicated home lives.
I don’t think making an incomplete count as a 50 is really making grades meaningless. A 50 is still going to hurt you, it just doesn’t drag your grade into oblivion. If a student gets 100 on three assignments and misses a fourth, is a grade of 75 really the most accurate representation of how well they understand the material? Counting the incomplete as a 50 would make that an 87.
Sprinkling in zeros can really drag your grade down and can make it feel like your grade doesn’t really have much to do with your understanding of the material, and has more to do with being willing and able to work outside of school hours (or to just copy down answers from a friend five minutes before class, which I also didn’t do).
Assignments are not evidence of learning. Assignments are pressure for students to learn. They are motivation to spend time acquiring knowledge and practicing skills expected to be acquired from the class.
For students who master this knowledge and skill without that pressure, assignments are distractions from further study. They force the student to expend time and energy on previously-mastered material, rather than allowing them to focus on unmastered subjects or additional classes.
If I were building a grading rubric, I would say that the test score at the end of each unit is the minimum score recorded for any assignment in that unit. My tests would be killers: I would target 80% raw scores, but final test scores would be on a curve, with the median score being recorded as an “A”.
Score a 100% raw score on a unit test, and every assignment for that unit is raised to 100%. The student has demonstrated complete mastery of the subject matter; any grade less than 100% does not reflect their true capability.
Score an 80% raw score on the unit test, and every assignment for that unit is at least an 80%. A 95% assignment stays a 95%, but a 45% assignment is counted as 80%. Missing assignments are counted as 80%, not 0%.
I would go further: the raw score on the final exam replaces every lower grade in the grade book. You ace that indomitable horror of a final exam, you ace the class, regardless of how much effort you put in.
This is called grading for equity. It is really hard to do with short attention kids needing instant gratification. The question “is this graded?” being asked for every assignment shows their mindset. If you carefully explain that they will improve the tested skill with the practice, they lose all interest and score poorly on assessment if they even try. The learned need for progress points stymies equitable grading. The majority of students see schooling as a grind for points. They want to earn just enough points to level up without actually retaining skills so they can get back on TikTok.
Rather than giving students points for not doing assignments why not just not have busywork assignments. Just make the grades an even 50% tests and 50% large projects unless the student needs their busywork graded.
I was in the same situation as you (except I did wind up diagnosed with ADHD in my 20s). I aced all my tests and never did homework so was constantly on the verge of failing classes. I always hated having to do the same repetitive memorization busy work when I already knew the info. The best teacher I had in highshool had a rule where they would only ever grade your homework if doing so would improve your overall grade. So because I did well on the tests, in class work, and biger projects I never had to actually do any homework. It’s the only class I ever scored over 100% in because I aced every test and did one extra credit project. Why the hell should anyone have to waste their time doing pointless busywork and waste their teachers time grading that pointless busywork when it isn’t benefitting their learning in any way. If the student doesn’t need it then just skip it. The only reason I can see for it is to desensitize students to doing pointless busywork jobs but we should be eliminating those jobs not conditioning the next generation for them.
Yeah, although tbf some people struggle with tests and for them homework brings up their grade, and it might help some people learn. But I 100% agree that it ought to be optional and shouldn’t be able to tank your grade if you demonstrate an understanding of the material.
I can sympathize with people who work hard and still score poorly on tests. But if someone’s a quick learner and they’re motivated by learning then naturally they’re going to put in less effort once they understand the subject, and making grades a reflection of effort rather than understanding feels unfair to people like us.
Exactly. Like I get that some people learn slower or some even just have a mental block when the word test is used even if they know the material. So for them homework is important. But if it’s not actually benefiting a student then why punish them for not doing it? The system my one teacher had where homework wasn’t graded unless the grade would help your overall grade seemed to work really well but it could probably be improved a bit because it did primarily just benefit those who were good at tests.
The best solution would probably just be something along the lines of having the grade be made up 4 point pools; tests, projects, classwork, and homework. Then just have the overall grade for the class be an average of the top 3. As long as you’re doing well in 3 of those pools then you clearly know the material. Some students struggle with homework for already stated reasons. Some students lock up on tests even though they know the material. Some students have a disruptive homelife that inhibits their ability to work on larger projects. Some students have health or family issues which frequently keep them out of class. With this solution, none of those students would be punished for one of those issues alone provided they can still demonstrate in the 3 other areas that they know the material.
tbh, it probably also benefitted the teacher because they didn’t need to grade as many papers and may have benefitted the other students because they may have gotten more targeted feedback on their homework (because the teacher had more time)
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Exactly. It also gives students the ability to improve and not just give up.
Let’s assume 10 assignments determine your grade in a class. You completely skip the first 4 assignments and get 0%. If you completely turn around and score 100% on the next 6 assignments, your overall grade is 60% and you fail the class.
But! If you were the student who skipped the first 4 assignments, what incentive do you have to even try and improve?
The 50% score is to give students without hope a chance. If it’s college level, sure maybe failing is the best option. But high school? Middle school? Even younger? Give kids a chance to improve.
