Pop quiz time, parents. Did your kid actually earn the grade he got on his last test? Are you sure? Maybe this will help you decide: a high school teacher has been suspended from his job for actually giving kids a 0 if they didn't turn in their homework or skipped a quiz.
Lynden Dorval is a physics teacher -- scratch that, was a physics teacher -- who has been labeled "unprofessional" and been kicked out of the classroom because he's been “negatively impacting student achievement.” Huh. So, the way the school's administration looks at it, it's Dorval's fault that kids didn't turn in their homework or take their necessary quizzes. That makes ... absolutely no sense at all.
Is it any wonder kids are increasingly plagued with a bad case of me first and the gimme, gimmes? School administrators are quite literally telling kids they don't have to do any work.
Dorval's battle with the school board over the 0s is going on up in Canada -- he works in a district in Edmonton. But this problem is hardly isolated to our neighbors to the north.
Just last weekend I sat down with a group of local teachers and was shocked to find out one school does not allow its educators to give any grade lower than a 50. Period. It doesn't matter what the child has done -- or hasn't done -- they can't get a grade lower than that. Another district has a similar "nothing lower than a 50" in place for the entire first marking period. After that teachers are actually given leave to, gasp, grade honestly.
I was only slightly comforted by the fact that the ridiculousness of this faux grading system wasn't lost on the frustrated educators. They want to push their kids to work, but they aren't allowed.
Their only hope is that we, the parents, realize our kids are slacking off and hold their feet to the fire. And we should! Ultimately what happens to our kid is our responsibility, and we are partners with their teachers in their education. But it's not exactly easy to tell your kid isn't handing in her homework if the teacher isn't allowed to give her a 0 for it, is it?
Hey, but that's not the school administrators' problem, is it? We're the ones who have to take care of our kids when they graduate from high school knowing absolutely nothing ...
Should kids be allowed to fail or get an inflated grade?
Image via Justin_D_Miller/Flickr
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Comments 49
I don't know of any school or teacher that inflates kids grades. Usually it is the exact opposite. Usually the story goes something like this.. Kid attends school regularly, completes assignments regularly and on time, participates in class etc BUT they still ultimately fail the class because they did not do well on a standardized test or due to learning disabilities can't pass a math class etc.....
Im a student who did benefit from a teacher failing me. In high school. I never did my homework, I didn't like it but I always got A's on my tests so no teacher ever failed me. My 10th grade math teacher finally did, I had to go to summer school and after that I always did my Math homework and ended up transferring to a regents class.
Grades are called grades for a reason. To give a number to learning levels. This is not doing that. It's just making stuff up. My biggest beef with my school is the opposite too. They don't have a problem handing out a bad grade but they don't seem to do much to prevent it either. If our kid is having issues with a class, they don't make an effort to notify the parents except once during a progress report mid-term. It seems like a big "oh well that's too bad" when the report card arrives and the worse grade is usually a result of a missed paper that she left in a locker at school one day or some other factor we have no inkling is occuring. They should be glad they have teachers who care.
In Canada, all public schools get the same amount of funding regardless of standardized test results or graduation rates. We do not withdraw funding to public schools if they are struggling and likewise, we do not extend extra grants to school who are willing to jump through multiple hoops to get it.
Seriously? Good grief! Why don't we just send the report card home blank and let Mom and Dad fill it out with whatever THEY feel is right? That's where we are headed!
It is sad that educators have been subjected to this and the administrators are the culprits. They are in fact teaching students to fail not only in school but in life. What happens when or if they get into college. Those professors/instructors are not there to babysit but to further educate and are under the assumption that the students in their classes have thus been so far. The grades they will receive will reflect what they have learned, their understanding of the content, and based on work completed and turned in on time. I see this as failure on the administration and the fact that they want the students to fail in a legal systematic way.