Equity is not compatible with a free society. Equity is equality of result. That means no matter how smart or ambitious you are you can never be better than anyone else because it wouldn’t be equitable. This will create a society of pure apathy. Why try harder than the guy next to you when the result will be the same? Why should your efforts benefit the other person when they are doing nothing to benefit themselves?
Public schools are adopting the farcical equitable grading systems. Where actually doing the work and learning the subject isn’t rewarded with better grades. This will be as successful as creative spelling. Creative spelling was in vogue when my kids were in elementary school back in the 1990s. I didn’t buy into it and told the teachers they were doing my kids a disservice because I corrected their spelling at home anyway. I ended up moving them to private school.
My kids’ contemporaries learned that spelling wasn’t important and ended up being unable to spell simple common words. Yes, we have modern technology and spell check is everywhere. It’s fine when writing long articles and books because everyone makes mistakes. But, when having to actually write something out by hand not only is their handwriting worse than mine many times but they can’t spell worth a damn and are exposed as poorly educated.
Public schools from K through 8 should focus on teaching kids the basics on reading, writing, and math. High school is where more advanced topics can be covered because kids would have a base knowledge from which to launch. This is where you teach science, civics, and other pre-requisite topics to enter a university. Better yet, bring back the technical high school where they have shop classes to introduce kids to certain trades that might not need a bachelor’s degree. But no. Let’s instead focus on feelings and stupid concepts like equitable grading.
Las Vegas high-school English teacher Laura Jeanne Penrod initially thought the grading changes at her school district made sense. Under the overhaul, students are given more chances to prove they have mastered a subject without being held to arbitrary deadlines, in recognition of challenges some children have outside school.
Soon after the system was introduced, however, Ms. Penrod said her 11th-grade honors students realized the new rules minimized the importance of homework to their final grades, leading many to forgo the brainstorming and rough drafts required ahead of writing a persuasive essay. Some didn’t turn in the essay at all, knowing they could redo it later.
“They’re relying on children having intrinsic motivation, and that is the furthest thing from the truth for this age group,” said Ms. Penrod, a teacher for 17 years.
The Clark County School District where Ms. Penrod works—the nation’s fifth-largest school system—has joined dozens of districts in California, Iowa, Virginia and other states in moves toward “equitable grading” with varying degrees of buy-in. Leaders in the 305,000-student Clark County district said the new approach was about making grades a more accurate reflection of a student’s progress and giving opportunities to all learners.
Schools Are Ditching Homework, Deadlines in Favor of ‘Equitable Grading’ – WSJ
Seems silly season never ends.
Comments
2 responses to “Equitable grading will make students equally stupid”
I thought Physics to incoming freshman at University level and the main consequence of this system for Sciences is inability of students to do anything self critical. Example-asked to calculate force of a brick falling off the table on their foot miscalculation ended with the result of 1 million Newtons. Me, at their age would immediately go back through the work because it was trivial for me and my peers to see absurdity of the result and realize that I have made a mistake… however, none of my students had any capability to catch their own errors… “That’s what I got” they’d say. Very destructive for their future life and work.
Wow. Hopefully none of them went on to careers where these types of calculations are important! This is not good for any of us.