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[Pejo]

Oakland Unified among Calif. school districts phasing out D, F grades for high school students

The move is potentially a step toward "mastery-based learning" in which students are assessed by what they've learned, not how well they perform on tests on a given day or whether they turn in their homework on time.

abc7news.com

What do you think GAF? In their eyes this will shift the focus from one-time test metrics to "competency learning" by allowing students to make mistakes but learn and grow from them.

Opponents are saying that it will make lazy school kids even lazier since the new lowest grade is still a C.

 

[EviLore]

 

[AJUMP23]

I would give the American public school system an F. it has produced an abysmal product for the past several generations, and failed multiple generations of poor people.

 

[poppabk]

Sounds good on paper, but I imagine the reality will be a giant mess, with a whole bunch of kids who don't give a shit having 'incomplete' as their final grade.

 

[eddie4]

Yes, let's just eliminate things and make the kids dumber, instead of actually trying to teach them. Might as well just give everyone a "participation" diploma. Better yet, don't even send them to school, just hand out the diplomas, problem solved. Who has time to teach kids, just give them a smartphone, they will learn to live from TikTok.

 

[Nobody_Important]

As long as it's handled properly I think this is a great change potentially. As the op said it allows students to learn from their mistakes instead of being punished by them or being buried by them. A student may no longer be screwed out of a proper education or miss out on going to their college of choice just because they had one bad year of high school or even just one bad semester. Growth based learning to me would produce not only more competent students but more eager students as well. The students would know that they are actually learning and not just memorizing.


Which is obviously a good thing, but only if it's handled properly. And the other issue is that it would need to be more widely adopted you can't just have a handful of school doing this. If you only have a handful of schools doing it then students that are coming from the more traditional methods will be put ahead of students that are coming from these new ways of doing things.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Lmao, the article says that grades are too "subjective," yet assessing what someone learned would somehow be objective? You can't make this shit up.

Also love how they position the fact that most grades are linked to time as a negative. What do they think most performance at a job is linked to? Do you think customers will wait extra weeks for a delivery because the workers wanted to take their time? Your boss is going to give you extra days for a deliverable? You think a regulator wont care if you respond to them late?

 

[Hari Seldon]

I would give the American public school system an F. it has produced an abysmal product for the past several generations, and failed multiple generations of poor people.

There is no "American public school system". Public school is 100% up to the state with the worthless Fed educational department occasionally dictating useless decrees that they tie to funding which a state can ignore if they don't want the funding.

 

[AJUMP23]

There is no "American public school system". Public school is 100% up to the state with the worthless Fed educational department occasionally dictating useless decrees that they tie to funding which a state can ignore if they don't want the funding.

Don't take something that is a broad statement and apply it to a literal meaning. While there is no set School system of America, there is an American education system that is run by states and funded by state and federal taxes and no matter the state you are in, has had multiple cases of generational failure in poor areas of the country. From Rural poverty to inner city. Even in affluent areas we are seeing parents now being treated like criminals because they are actually concerned about the cover up of rape within the school system.

The school system that exist in America for the use of the public that is run by the individuals states has been an abject failure for the last 30 to 40 years depending on your zip code.

My wife is a public school teacher.

 

[Aesius]

Measures like this only further the privilege gap because parents of means (and even those who can't really afford it but sacrifice to do so) will be even more likely to put their kids in private schools.

 

[Nobody_Important]

Yes, let's just eliminate things and make the kids dumber, instead of actually trying to teach them. Might as well just give everyone a "participation" diploma. Better yet, don't even send them to school, just hand out the diplomas, problem solved. Who has time to teach kids, just give them a smartphone, they will learn to live from TikTok.

The current US education system is a giant pile of poorly funded crap last time I checked. Especially in the poorer states. You basically just have a system that encourages memorization instead of actual learning or experience. Having them memorize pointless bits of information or trivia that they will never use again in their life just so they can have a good score on a test is not a very good way of educating someone. And we do all of this while leaving huge gaps in information they actually need to know in order to function as an adult in society. For example most public's schools in the US have no real financial education for their students. We do not teach any of our kids how to properly manage their finances or prepare for retirement. How to invest properly. We don't even get taught how to properly do our taxes. A basic thing that you need to do in order to be an adult. Another huge problem is that classes that are built around teaching them skills like technical education and such have had their budgets cut to hell and back. My last year in high school was the last year that we were going to have a journalism class, a technical education class, and a farmer's education class due to budget cuts. Valuable classes that can teach people actually useful skills that can be used outside of a test completely wiped off the map due to budget constraints in favor of random memorization so that schools can look good on paper because like so many other things in the US schools are being run like businesses rather than what they're meant to be.



This new approach to education however would mean that the students would actually be required to learn rather than just memorize which is two different things. It would allow more students a chance to grow and make something of themselves rather than just allowing a top percentage of the group to rise to the top while all the others sink to the bottom.


However in order for this to work properly we would have to actually give the school's money in order to be able to hire more competent teachers to be able to pull off this higher level of education and growth. You would need smaller class sizes and more competent teachers who are properly compensated and properly armed with all of the tools that they need. Because an overworked and underpaid teacher with a class of 30 is not going to be able to pull off the necessary attention that a student require for this to work. And let's be honest and overworked and underpaid teacher with a class of 30 is not going to be able to teach much of anything to anyone very well.

 

[ymoc]

As long as it's handled properly I think this is a great change potentially. As the op said it allows students to learn from their mistakes instead of being punished by them or being buried by them. A student may no longer be screwed out of a proper education or miss out on going to their college of choice just because they had one bad year of high school or even just one bad semester. Growth based learning to me would produce not only more competent students but more eager students as well. The students would know that they are actually learning and not just memorizing.


Which is obviously a good thing, but only if it's handled properly. And the other issue is that it would need to be more widely adopted you can't just have a handful of school doing this. If you only have a handful of schools doing it then students that are coming from the more traditional methods will be put ahead of students that are coming from these new ways of doing things.

This is such a naive way to look at education.

Fact number 1: Kids aren't dumb (per se)
Fact number 2: Kids always find the path of least resistance
What this kind of policy spells: disaster

I have some students who have been staying at home during the corona time. Their academic performance has turned to utter shit. They have become lazy, passive and complacent. They don't give a shit.
Now imagine they can't never fail or even get a bad grade anymore.

 

[EviLore]

Mastery-based learning makes sense, but only if students are engaged with and placed on individualized tracks tailored to their abilities. Only taking the consequences away from failure as a broad measure instead of a full remodeling of the system could have a demotivating effect.

 

[Nobody_Important]

Mastery-based learning makes sense, but only if students are engaged with and placed on individualized tracks tailored to their abilities. Only taking the consequences away from failure as a broad measure instead of a full remodeling of the system could have a demotivating effect.

Exactly the main problem being that schools are too poorly funded right now to pull that off. In order for this to be done properly states would have to make a concerted investment into the educational infrastructure of their states. More teachers, better teachers, smaller classes, and more technical based classes.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

And the other issue is that it would need to be more widely adopted you can't just have a handful of school doing this. If you only have a handful of schools doing it then students that are coming from the more traditional methods will be put ahead of students that are coming from these new ways of doing things.

 

[ClanOfNone]

The public school system in Florida was hot garbage 30 years ago when I was in it and it's even worse now. It needs to be overhauled from the ground up, and it'll never happen.
If you've got the money, sending your kids to private school gives them a pretty significant boost in the learning department.

 

[Hari Seldon]

Don't take something that is a broad statement and apply it to a literal meaning. While there is no set School system of America, there is an American education system that is run by states and funded by state and federal taxes and no matter the state you are in, has had multiple cases of generational failure in poor areas of the country. From Rural poverty to inner city. Even in affluent areas we are seeing parents now being treated like criminals because they are actually concerned about the cover up of rape within the school system.

The school system that exist in America for the use of the public that is run by the individuals states has been an abject failure for the last 30 to 40 years depending on your zip code.

My wife is a public school teacher.

Oh I agree. But if you are in a good zip code, at least in my state, you have an elite public school not a failing one. There are pockets that are failing and they are unrelated to the pockets that are doing great. I fundamentally disagree that there is some type of magic bean one size fits all solution that will fix the entire public school system. What is needed is to do the hard work to localize fixes in the areas that need fixing.

 

[chromhound]

How about making them learn something that will be useful in life ?

 

[wvnative]

That reminds me I just saw something on twitter about dumbing down math for "children of color" and now I see this...

The education system may well be America's greatest failure

 

[Nobody_Important]

The education system may well be America's greatest failure

Definitely Top 3.

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

How dumb down education system even more.
I wonder if eventually people will get passing marks just by coming to the school.

 

[Ownage]

Not surprised. Most people are C grade at best. Let them be labeled average.

During the Cultural Revolution and Bolshevik Revolution, the A and B grade individuals were either mass murdered or sent to the gulag in the frozen ass end of nowhere to die. The C grade individuals and other really lazy and inept idiots took over. That what you see of China and Russia today.

Idiocracy is simply a retelling of 20th century history.

 

[strange headache]

Competence based learning is the new trendy buzzword, but even before that teachers didn't only test for knowledge. Reading, writing, speaking, calculating... these are fundamental competences and if you master those, you're able to teach yourself most other things too.
Besides, how are you supposed to check if a student has mastered a specific competence? Through testing of course!

Learning stuff by heart and acquiring knowledge through basic studying are important training for the brain so it can memorize things better. These activities heavily accelerate the formation of dendrites which are important to store more information. Basically, your brain is not a hard-drive it is the opposite: The more information you acquire, the more dendrites are being formed, the more knowledge you can memorize. For example, somebody who masters 3 languages can learn a fourth one in half the time than somebody who only speaks a single one.

Here are the dendrites being formed on a single synapse through the simple effect of basic studying and reading:

In essence, the more you learn the more you're able to learn. In contrast, passive learning and excessive media consumption (tablet, mobile, tiktok, youtube, etc...) reduce dendrite formation by about 40%. We are basically turning our children into mindless zombies.
I cannot fathom why we so desperately seek to move away from that tried and true formula.

This will only lead to a further dumbing down of the educational system.

 

[Soltype]

I think people fail to realize that education is something you have to actively engage. It's not the school systems job to entice children to secure their future, that's a parents job. I work in the school system and I can tell you the biggest problem now is all the money being wasted. They are burning money on all sorts of tech and curriculum to get the same result. American kids are lazy, I saw it when I was in school, and I'm still seeing it now, and it's getting worse.

 

[Max_Po]

lori loughlin redeemed...

 

[Northeastmonk]

It makes sense for kids with intellectual disabilities because they might not be able to have a career in anything.

 

[West Texas CEO]

It's ok, we'll just import more Italians.

 

[chromhound]

How dumb down education system even more.
I wonder if eventually people will get passing marks just by coming to the school.

They need people to fill those shitty underpaid jobs

 

[StreetsofBeige]

So if the bottom mark becomes a C, are they adjusting the % range too? My schools were 60-69 = C. 50-59 = D. 0-49 = F. and you get the + or - if its the low or high end of the range.

So for this school, someone not showing up getting a 0, someone scoring 40 and a guy getting 69 all get a C?

Do people getting C's fail? Or now it's impossible to fail?

Well, if it means more people cant fail, that means it'll equate to artificially having people graduate high school when they should actually be flunkers. On the plus side, college and universities (at least in Canada) look at your numeric score not the grade letter. So if you got a 52% youre fucked even if the school wants to call that an A+.

 

[TheMan]

Basically a way to push through the difficult students

 

[Rival]

The public school system in this country is an embarrassment.

 

[HoodWinked]

Is this something they wanted to do initially for Oakland unified to push kids through the system then thought that would be racist so expanded it to several other districts?

How come when they "reimagine" it's always so much worse.

Teachers unions are really failing society it makes sense why they're doing this from a self serving perspective. Pushes kids to graduate even if they are undereducated. Then they get to point to greater number of graduates and claim they are helping struggling minorities.

 

[DeepEnigma]

 

[Hari Seldon]

Is this something they wanted to do initially for Oakland unified to push kids through the system then thought that would be racist so expanded it to several other districts?

How come when they "reimagine" it's always so much worse.

Teachers unions are really failing society it makes sense why they're doing this from a self serving perspective. Pushes kids to graduate even if they are undereducated. Then they get to point to greater number of graduates and claim they are helping struggling minorities.

Everything these days is about optics. Doesn't matter if shit is good or bad in reality, it is about how it looks to twitter cretins that only read hot takes from moron celebrities. So yes while this is extremely racist in reality by pushing minorities to graduate without educating them, the optics are better for twatter arguments so that is all that matters.

 

[CGiRanger]

Everything these days is about optics. Doesn't matter if shit is good or bad in reality, it is about how it looks to twitter cretins that only read hot takes from moron celebrities. So yes while this is extremely racist in reality by pushing minorities to graduate without educating them, the optics are better for twatter arguments so that is all that matters.

Yep, this is gonna backfire so bad just as "Defund the Police" has. And it'll hurt the most impoverished. Standards are supposed to exist to elevate. Now we're lowering them to bring down everyone to a regressive level.

 

[NickFire]

I smell a plan to cut the budget. I want to believe the schools will help the worst students actually learn the material, but my gut says they will just be passed along to the next grade even when they probably shouldn't be.

 

[Termite]

I have no idea how the American education system works (I'm Irish), but grades from more than two years ago shouldn't follow you around. In Ireland we do our Junior Cert exams at 15 and then the Leaving Cert at 18. If you stay in school and complete your Leaving Cert, that determines which college and course you have access to. Anything you did prior doesn't matter - and why should it? So if the American system is still counting grades kids got when they were 13 at 18, then that's a problem. You shouldn't be sunk just because you're a slower learner / developer. I can understand getting rid of those grades for younger kids is that's the case.

However, the point about getting rid of the low grades mirrors something that is happening here with people who want to abolish our exams and find alternate ways of placing kids into college - people are simply terrified of telling kids that they've failed, that they've lost. They see it as some kind of injustice. What they don't understand is that this HAS to happen sometime. Not everyone can be a doctor/engineer/software dev. At some point along that road, most will fall off it. And yes, that starts in the teenage years as it becomes apparent which kids are academically talented and which aren't. Delaying that realization isn't really doing any of the kids any favours. It may even delay them finding the thing that they CAN make a career out of.

So you can ask the people who want to get rid of exams what they want to replace them with and they say "Well, how about continuous assessment?" (And all the inherent teacher bias that brings, but never mind.) But when you tell them that there won't be any extra places in medicine in university and 99% of those continuously assessed kids will STILL fail by that metric, and they get upset all over again.

Life is a competition, and it doesn't wait until adulthood to start.

My big pet peeve is in lower-income schools, how disruptors and bullies are allowed to ruin the education of an entire classroom of 24 because it would be "wrong" to exclude them. So we sacrifice the futures of 23 well-meaning kids on the altar of fairness for that 1 cunt.

EDIT to add the following because it always seems to make Americans laugh - the passing grade in Ireland for a test is 30% in school and 40% in college. Apparently in the US it's way higher than that.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

Looking at the list of school districts doing this, I'm not surprised. They're all underperforming districts

 

[jufonuk]

wtf ? Sometimes having a shit grade is the lock up the ass you need to motivate you.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Looking at the list of school districts doing this, I'm not surprised. They're all underperforming districts

I was thinking the same.

I have no idea how good the students performance is in Oakland, but I dont know how or why a school district with top performing students would dumb down grades. If anything parents and kids in more prestige schools are gung ho about academics.

Those Oakland schools probably have idiot parents and kids and need to push them through high school with an easy peasy diploma so they at least they have that, and dont become drop outs. So at least the dumb ass has a piece of paper instead of a dumb ass with nothing.

 

[The Pleasure]

Isn't that the slogan for Smash Bros?

 

[BigBooper]

If they don't track scores it's going to make it really hard for employers and colleges to know who's competent. So, they will probably be more inclined to avoid graduates from those school districts, meaning the ones who were actually good students will end up getting hurt by this stupidity.

 

[kiunchbb]

Just remember that it is not just teachers that are grading students; the school is also grading the teachers. By removing D and F, both teachers and lazy students benefited, that's why you had so many teacher coming out to support it. Whoever is against it is probably too scared of being cancelled.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

It makes sense for kids with intellectual disabilities because they might not be able to have a career in anything.

Thats a lot of positions filled with idiots, so pretty standard really.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

One step closer to rewarding mediocrity even more.

 

[jshackles]

I had a professor in college that graded based on animals (the animals were never explained).

I got a crocodile in the course. 25 years later and I'm still not sure if that was good or bad.

 

[teezzy]

I had a professor in college that graded based on animals (the animals were never explained).

I got a crocodile in the course. 25 years later and I'm still not sure if that was good or bad.

We used to have that for "reading levels" back in one class to make the dumb kids feel better

I was always at Dolphin level and was allowed to bring my Stephen King books in while other kids were probably reading like Clifford or some BS

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Next up, darwin awards to be given out at school.

 

[ntropy]

 

[Trogdor1123]

As awful as this sounds, if parents did their job and supported their kids education almost no kids would fail. Too many lazy parents!