Dallas school district grading requirements

[33girl]

It's stuff like this that makes me want to go back to school, get my education degree, and be the bitchiest teacher the world has ever seen.

Re the red pen - there were eras before when its use was discouraged because red = communist.

I think the teachers are all going to snap and be calling up the parents and saying "your kid's a flipping idiot. Bite me."

[texas*princess]

I agree that even the smart (but maybe sometimes lazy) kids could start slacking and they will never reach their full potential.

Such a shame.

God help those kids if they ever have to transfer out before the end of high school... they will be in for a scary surprise the first time they crap out on a test thinking they can just retake it later.

If I were a teacher in that district, I'd want out ASAP.

[BabyPiNK_FL]

Maybe the parents will get mad when the kids ask to take the SAT (and other costly tests) for the 5th time.

If I was a teacher there, my U-Haul would have been ready to go THAT DAY.

[AGDee]

I'll go a step further and say that if my kids' school did this, I'd school of choice them out of there in a heartbeat. I was already ticked off at that math teacher for not *really* grading their math homework. It made no sense to me that a kid could do every problem wrong but have the right heading on the paper and get 100% but another kid could do every problem right and forget to put the hour on the paper and get an 80%. The only way I found out that he was grading that way was because I was concerned that my son was getting 100% on every homework but scoring in the mid-80's on quizzes and tests so I thought he wasn't retaining the information even though he did the homework correctly. I asked the teacher about it at parent teacher conferences and that's when the teacher told me that the homework grades had nothing to do with whether the problems were done correctly! I was thinking I might need to get him a tutor or something. Then it turned out, he wasn't necessarily doing his homework right. I think of grades as feedback on performance. If a kid is getting 100% on everything, then the natural conclusion is that they are performing well. Once I knew the truth, I started looking over his homework and checking it myself so if he was making errors, I could show him what he was doing wrong. Guess what? He started doing better on tests too!

ETA: Hmmm, is that helicoptering? LOL

[Thetagirl218]

This school district need serious help...... for several reasons not just the issues the article brought up...

1. They need teachers badly

2. They need teachers so bad that they had billboards up all around Florida.

3. No teacher in their right mind would want to teach in a district that has those policies. There is no way in h@# that you could get me to use those rules in my classroom!

Me and my teacher alter ego is now going to analyze these policies.

•Homework grades should be given only when the grades will "raise a student's average, not lower it."

Is homework going to change names to "fluff assignments"? Or are students going to be expected to never do homework? Because part of homework and assignments is that you might not do well at first! So then you do more activities and assignments to improve and maybe just maybe....learn something!!!!

Teachers must accept overdue assignments, and their principal will decide whether students are to be penalized for missing deadlines.

Seriously....How big are their high schools? Because in a normal size high school (2,500-3,000 students). The principal will never have a chance to follow up on this...or the assistant principals....They are just too over stretched as it is with discipline issues.

What about accountability? If they have a project to do at work and don't turn it in, what happens? Well lets just say someone remembers that you didn't turn it in!

•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."

If a student fails....guess what???? They FAIL!!!!

I am sorry if that sounds callous to some, but failure is important step in learning! This mean said, I am encouraging my students to fail, but if they don't follow the directions of an assignment or don't even turn it in....I am going to fail them! Hopefully they can recover their grade with other work, but failure is part of life!

On the other bullet....
1. No district should tell their teachers that they can or can't give a common sense grade.
2. Who is supposed to "make an effort"...The parents? The Teachers? The Parents most likely don't care and the Teacher has tried everything in the book to help.

•High school teachers who fail more than 20 percent of their students will need to develop a professional improvement plan and will be monitored by their principals. For middle school the rate is 15 percent; for elementary it's 10 percent.

Here is my take on this.....20% of your class should not fail.....but when you have 150 + students...you may have 30 students that don't get Cs! It happens!!!!
Now that being said.....I can understand the improvement plan....most districts have all their teachers do PIP regardless of their fail/pass status.

My last thing.....Did the people who run this district ever actually teach school?

[LightBulb]

Originally Posted by AGDee

It made no sense to me that a kid could do every problem wrong but have the right heading on the paper and get 100% but another kid could do every problem right and forget to put the hour on the paper and get an 80%.

Yeah, that's crap. Likewise for English papers - a student might get points off for for not following MLA style... but she should lose more for having poor content.