Well, a few good things…I get emails from teachers. Long emails too. I also receive daily progress reports from Edgenuity via email…something that would have been nice to get from day 1. Now I get a daily snapshot of my child’s grade going down because it is still locked.
Still no resolution. I’m not thrilled that this “experiment” seems to hold so much weight. On the flip side, because of one class that actually was not locked for long periods of time…it helped a course to get within 1% of passing. Yes, I said 1%…not 1 point. The grading is still foreign to me. I cannot make heads or tails of “M, N, PM or NM”….I know “I” is incomplete!!!
I also cannot grasp the concept of allowing kids to retake tests. I would have been an honor student if that had been done for me. Problem with it is, some kids have test anxiety (me) so no amount of “retakes” help. Additionally, if a student always has to take retakes…should we not be looking into some sort of intervention for that child….BEFORE…..they get into the dark hole of “failure”? Everyone knows, once your grades fall getting them back up is 100x harder! To top it off, you are struggling with moving forward because you didn’t fully grasp the previous concepts.
My whole argument with “standards based grading” or “common core”…when does
LIFE
give you retakes??? Not everyone learns the same way. We’ve taken the personality out of learning. Removing books from kids hands was the WORST thing we could have allowed happen to education. What does a backpack contain now, besides a large collection of handouts from books in a poorly organized binder, hair accessories, sunglasses, iPod, iPad and/or empty water bottle? Kids don’t know what it’s like to be responsible for books. What it’s like to have to make covers from brown bags or newspaper. Experience the “fun” of carrying books until your arms hurt. Or, boys trying to be a gentleman to impress a girl and carry her books to class for her. Lockers are used for pom poms, the forgotten jackets or hoodies, a mirror and brush. That dreaded feeling of forgetting where your locker is among the hall full of same colored boxes. The panic when you forget your combination as soon as you arrive at your locker. The fun chatter among your locker neighbors that gets you through the day. The fear of that book falling out from above, yes, I had bottom lockers too!!! The excitement of slamming the locker at the end of a week, only to end a Friday the 13th with your hand in it as it slams. Or the feeling of opening the locker and finding a cute love note from a known or unknown admirer. Kids, at least mine, don’t have those experiences. Just like they don’t sweat a million calories as your homeroom teacher hands out those little carbon paper report card slips that parents have to sign…for a grade!!!! Heck, we don’t even GET report cards…we have to login to a computer.
I believe memory lane has made me realize…kids today are one day going to run this country and I am afraid…very afraid.
CLIMB ABOARD MY SOAPBOX 