Get 2 out of 10 questions right and pass!
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The coming dark age: A California school district has instituted a new grading scale that allows students to pass with a score of only 20 out of 100.
Some teachers have tried to hang on to the traditional grading system but have been tripped up by a blanket new policy that students, even if they do not hand in homework or take a test, get 50 percent. Under the new rule, it’s possible for a student who skips a test to receive a better grade than a student who takes the test and does poorly. “This is just incomprehensible. I don’t have words,” said Lanny Lowery, who has taught English at Rancho Cotate High since 1980
And then there’s this: NYC schools passing failing students, colleges accepting them.
In other words, you can now graduate having learned absolutely nothing. Should make for an interesting future for the student and the society that student helps shape.
Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar to the right or below. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.
The coming dark age: A California school district has instituted a new grading scale that allows students to pass with a score of only 20 out of 100.
Some teachers have tried to hang on to the traditional grading system but have been tripped up by a blanket new policy that students, even if they do not hand in homework or take a test, get 50 percent. Under the new rule, it’s possible for a student who skips a test to receive a better grade than a student who takes the test and does poorly. “This is just incomprehensible. I don’t have words,” said Lanny Lowery, who has taught English at Rancho Cotate High since 1980
And then there’s this: NYC schools passing failing students, colleges accepting them.
In other words, you can now graduate having learned absolutely nothing. Should make for an interesting future for the student and the society that student helps shape.
My wife and I were interested in sponsoring a scholarship; at one point! We gave that up as the standards we graduated under are no longer anything but history.
Good grief. Why bother with grades at all?
Of course colleges take underperforming students, they charge kids for years of remedial or introductory coursework. And even if you were a good student in high school, you are forced to fill up several years of study in areas not related to your major.
Robert wrote: “In other words, you can now graduate having learned absolutely nothing.”
Of course the government wants the current students to learn nothing. If they learn too much, they will question authority. They will have the knowledge to be skeptical of Al Gore (et al.) when they tell us that the globe has a fever. If they know nothing, then they have to believe whatever the politicians tell them.
Ironically, “Question Authority” was the motto of the same generation that gets so offended when their own authority is questioned.