School district doesn't like failure rates - redefines an "F" - Granite Grok

School district doesn’t like failure rates – redefines an “F”

As I just wrote:

Which means that 67% AREN’T PROFICIENT.  Haven’t we learned that doing the same thing, over and over, with results like this, is just insanity? This is our national standard of excellence – the majority of kids failing to learn?  An entire nation?

Well, if you can’t do well on the standardized tests, play games with the grades that go home to Mom and Dad – like this! Emphasis mine, reformatted:

California school district lowers the bar for an ‘F’ to 20 percent

Cotati-Rohnert Park School District in Sonoma County, California, is courting controversy over the restructuring of its grading scale. Called the “equal interval scale,” it “departs from the traditional A to F scale in which students receive F’s for scores below 59 percent.” “Instead, the scale awards F’s only for scores below 20 percent.”

Are they SERIOUS?

Wait, as you can surmise, it gets FAR worse:

Twenty through 40 percent would be the range of “D” grades, 40-60 percent would “C’s,” and so on. An “A-” would be between an 80 and 85 percent which, for most of academic history, has been a “B.”

Regarding the drastically lowered “F,” Superintendent Robert Haley says that “They’ve [students] still flunked, but they don’t have as much to do mathematically to climb out of the F range.”  “It doesn’t eliminate the F; it doesn’t lower the bar.”

It doesn’t lower the bar?  Who does this guy think he is – Obama’s Press Secretary Josh Earnest who has to lie all the time as a professional career?  Or is he trying for Baghdad Bob status?  You know who he’s hurting the worst?  Yeah, the kids that would get A’s under the grading scheme that the rest of us use.  Consider this the equivalent of affirmative action but for stupid kids.  And the regular A kids will now be suspect by colleges – is it or is it not a “worthy A”?  Is this the grading equivalent of “social promotion” – or just a different way of doing it?

Heck, given a multiple choice test, I could Christmas tree my way to a D and maybe with a bit of motivation (like actually opening my eyes and read a couple of pages of homework), get a “gentleman’s C”. Imagine that – a 45 would get me to “academic middle class” (Obama would be proud – he who is always telling us to strive for the Middle Class instead of striving for excellence – the traditional American aspiration to be rich).

Yup, this is the equivalent giving out “I showed up” trophies for the “self-esteem” tournament – and some teachers are just DANDY with this:

Others, like teacher Valerie Ganzler, have warmed up to the new system. “I would see students in my classroom who for whatever reason, they would see themselves get further and further behind and at some point you would see some give up and check out,” she said.

Right – got news for you Ms. Ganzler – you are giving them feedback that they are succeeding – when they actually are failing.  What are you going to say to them when they’ve graduated and have gone nowhere?  When they’ve found out you lied to them about their education?  How will you be able to look them in the eye?

And yet, we are told that Government schools are the ONLY way to educate our youth.  If only they actually did such.

 

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