Sunday
12Oct
Dallas Public Schools: New Leaders in Entertainment
Sunday, October 12, 2008 at 03:56PM Recently, the Dallas Public School system implemented a new grading
policy intended to ensure "fair and credible evaluation of
learning—from grade to grade and school to school." Here are the key
points in this plan:
- Homework grades should be given only when the grades will "raise a student's average, not lower it."
- Teachers must accept overdue assignments, and their principal will decide whether students are to be penalized for missing deadlines.
- Students who flunk tests can retake the exam and keep the higher grade.
- Teachers cannot give a zero on an assignment unless they call parents and make "efforts to assist students in completing the work."
I don't teach in Dallas, but I am a public high school teacher of nearly twenty-five years, and I can tell you that similar policies are creeping into school systems across the country. Soon, I believe, these blueprints for teaching students to ignore—or even celebrate—mediocrity and failure will become commonplace practices in our nation's public schools.
For the politically naïve (and yes, the shaping of school policy is ultimately political), here is why every student must be forced to "succeed" on paper:
It's because public schools can't tell the truth. And the truth is that as a society, we are becoming incapable of raising children to be responsible adults....
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