Posted by
Garnet92 on Thursday, August 21, 2008 3:22:34 PM
Following are excerpts from:
Teachers give Dallas ISD's new grading rules an F
12:00 AM CDT on Friday, August 15, 2008
By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News
/ The Dallas Morning News
Tawnell D. Hobbs, Stella M. Chávez and Karin Shaw Anderson contributed to this report.
Dallas public school students who flunk tests, blow off homework and miss assignment deadlines can make up the work without penalty, under new rules that have angered many teachers.
For example, the new rules require teachers to accept late work and prevent them from penalizing students for missed deadlines. Homework grades that would drag down a student's overall average will be thrown out.
School officials said the new guidelines are needed to ensure that all district teachers operate under the same rules and to create a "fair system" for grading students. "The purpose behind it is to ensure fair and credible evaluation of learning – from grade to grade and school to school," said Denise Collier, the district's chief academic officer.
Some teachers said the new rules offer kids too many loopholes.
"It's like we're sending the message to kids that deadlines don't matter, studying is optional, and no matter how little you do, you're still [going to] pass all your classes anyway," said Ray Cox, who teaches world languages at Franklin Middle School.
The intent may have been to create a uniform grading policy, but the result was to lower standards, said Dale Kaiser, president of the teachers' group NEA-Dallas. The school board and superintendent "talk about elevating standards and holding high expectations for kids, but we're telling the kids that whether they do the work or not is irrelevant," he said.
Last school year, Dallas' board of trustees reaffirmed a policy that prevented teachers from giving students a grade lower than a 50 in any one grading period. The reason given was that students who fall below 50 have no hope or motivation to bring up their grades and just give up.
Teacher reaction was swift and overwhelmingly negative.
One recent DISD graduate commented that he thought the new rules would give students the wrong impression of how businesses operate.
“Babying the rules so that [students] have almost unlimited chances to pass, that’s unreal,” said Joshua Perry, a 2007 graduate of Skyline High School. “In the real world, you don’t get a whole lot of chances or other ways to make something up.”
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Even the teachers and the NEA union are against this bone-headed move.
Liberalism and your tax dollars at work – to further dumb-down our kids. As if it wasn’t already bad enough, this group of Mensa members (apologies to Mensa) decides to ease up on the poor, overworked students – after all, won’t we still need people to do the jobs that non-Americans won’t do – like hustle fries and shakes?