With the adoption of standards-based education, most states have created examinations in which students are compared to a standard of what educators, business people, parents, and other stakeholders have determined to be what every student should know and be able to do.  Students are graded as exceeding, meeting, or falling below the standard.  The advantage is that students are not compared against each other, and all have the opportunity to pass the standard.  However, the standard is typically set at a level that is substantially higher than previous achievement, so that a relatively high percentage of students fail at least some part of the standards in the first year, including an especially high percentage of non-college bound students.  California announced this morning that in math classes if a child gives the wrong answer – if that child can explain why he thought five and five was eleven instead of ten – then he would receive a passing grade for having the right answer.  So, why can’t that teacher actually show him why his answer was wrong?  Maybe she doesn’t know herself!  Folks, in the real world this is not going to get it.  If you have ten apples, you have ten apples, not eleven and there isn’t any explanation that can be accepted.  Same thing goes for the Florida’s school grading system which has lost all credibility.  An expensive, unpiloted system was built on viewing their neighborhood schools filled with their sweet children as A’s or F’s.  As parents, we teach our children empathy for others and the importance of fair play.  How do we tell our children that although their grades are improving their school is an F?  How do we explain that a school grade is not true but arbitrary?  Where’s the truth in a statistically invalid system?  How do we find “truth” with zero transparency?  Our children deserve so much better than this.  My suggestion is that if a child is not making the grade –  separate classes should be set up to bring that child “up to speed” and quit this “gerrymandering” that is going on in our schools.  We have accelerated classes so why can’t we have  “up to speed” classes.  Is it because it “might hurt someone’s feelings?”  So many people at this point are being sent out in the real world with their “hands tied behind their back” because of our educational system being “stuck on stupid.”

kommonsentsjane