VA School Wants to Improve Students’ School Performance: Will Stop Giving Students F’s… What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on November 14, 2010
This time, public education lunacy isn’t in liberal California or in Massachusetts.
It’s in Fairfax County in Virginia. School officials in Alexandria want to solve the problem of high school students failing their courses by eliminating failing grades.
I’d guess then that “D” grades would become the new “F’s.”
Banishing the F… what could possibly go wrong?
Reported by Washington Post, At West Potomac High School, taking F off the grade books:
Depending on whom you ask, West Potomac High School’s latest change to student grading is either another sign of a coddled generation or a necessary step to help struggling kids.
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.
The change in educational philosophy is intended to encourage students to continue working toward mastery of material rather than accepting a failing grade and moving on. Schools throughout the Washington area and the nation have made other moves to improve grading methods, especially as they affect low-performing students, though few have gone so far as West Potomac High, in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County.
“It’s a huge paradigm shift,” said principal Clifford Hardison, who recalls that when year-end grades were tallied last June at West Potomac, he counted nearly 2,000 Fs, with a large group of teens racking up more than one failed course.
The new strategy has critics – both within West Potomac and beyond – who fear that reducing the possibility of outright failure gives teachers less leverage while also giving students unrealistic expectations about the adult world they soon will enter. Some worry that the reordering of deadlines and test opportunities will also affect the transcripts of the college-bound, giving some students an advantage.
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.”
Alternatives to eliminating failing grades for students to be successful… I’ve written about the Harlem Success Academy Charter before.
In this first video, John Stossel investigates the effect of Harlem Success Academy, a charter school in Harlem, New York. He discovers that the teacher/school unions are opposed to the school and why parents want so desperately to send their children there.
What’s the Deal with Charter Schools?
On the DC school voucher program that Democrats killed last year…
School Vouchers Killed by Democrat Congress – All poor children to be left behind now – Glenn Beck | 2009
Three Parents at the Harlem Success Academy Charter School
Class size has been determined to be a major contributor to a student’s learning abilities. The larger the class, the poorer many students do.
32nd Street School – A Magnet for Success
Socioeconomics often influences a student’s success/failure in his or her studies. More than one-third (37.2 percent) of West Potomac’s students are enrolled in the school’s free or reduced-rate meals program. Does this have anything to do with students failing? Critics are divided on this volatile issue — a study was conducted with surprising findings by the Education Resources Information Center Expecting Success: A Study of Five High Performing, High Poverty Schools. Click here for the PDF of the study.
Teaching phonics instead of conventional reading was another experiment that liberal educators launched several decades back. It helped in some, didn’t do well in other schools… and it apparently still isn’t doing well in Kansas City schools: KC schools stuck on a road to failure:
You would think the teachers of the Kansas City School District would catch a clue. If they do a good job, the public would have good schools, the teachers make good money, and they get to keep their jobs because the kids are staying in school. Doing a good job, the job you were hired to do keeps you employed. But why bother? The teacher’s union will get you raises and tenure no matter what you do.
Does this make sense? From where the citizens sit the answer is “no.” The schools spend all their money, cry and scream for more, we’ll do better we promise, it’s not my fault, and it’s the parents’ fault as they don’t care.
When will the media start a down and dirty, no holds barred, clean house, and save our kids from further abuse of not being taught phonics so they can read, going to all-girl and all-boy classes with uniforms that are worn properly? When will the Kansas City media look into schools that demand kids straighten up and fly right and start learning?
In other cities, failing schools have turned around with leaders who care.
There are so many contributing, complicated factors to students failing in the public school system — quality of learning, apathetic public school teachers, local crime rates, gang infiltration, dysfunctional families, large classes, huge amounts of money intended for students going to the unions instead, and many other factors.
Eliminating F’s isn’t going to address those factors.
And despite its good intentions, it’s a short-term bandage. West Potomac High School is inadvertently sending a dangerous, misleading message to students about the real world.
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