Obama's College Proposal

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/25/obama

On grading...

“Shouldn’t effort count for something?” We all know students who attend every class and turn in every assignment yet still do poorly, sometimes because they don’t test well or because they didn’t have the prerequisites to succeed in the course. Such students may not deserve to fail, but should they earn an A for their effort? And what about the students who are so far ahead of their peers that they can goof off in class, blow off homework and yet ace the midterm and final. Do they merit an A? Shouldn’t a student earn credit for showing up on time, for being respectful of the teacher and peers and for trying, even when the results fall short?

I once taught a cocky 20-year-old who’d been suspended from his prestigious university and ended up in my evening class at a community college in Florida, where the average student was about 60. The young man had already taken a similar course at his former school, so he was disgruntled to be repeating the same material and sitting next to classmates wearing orthotics. His displeasure showed. I gave him the A, but it hurt. On the other side of the grading equation, I’ve taught diligent students who respected their classmates, arrived early, stayed late, but flubbed the tests, usually because they entered college without the necessary fundamentals.

The author somehow misses the obviousness of an idea that she actually includes in her text. Shouldn't grades represent what you know? How did we get away from the idea that a grade represents what you have mastered of the subject matter at hand, nothing more and nothing less?

Sweating the small stuff

The Weekly Standard recently reviewed this book; a great read for anybody interested in seeing what actually works. The book also explains why we see more of what doesn't work instead of what does work...

The three legs of the education establishment tripod--teacher unions, education schools, and the district bureaucracy--are all unlikely to embrace key elements that make paternalistic schools work. Requiring teachers to work longer days and years would violate union contracts. So would allowing principals to handpick teachers (who may or may not be certified), evaluate and pay instructors based on their effectiveness, and fire those who are not successful in the classroom. Frequent testing, teacher-directed instruction, and flunking students who fail to meet academic standards are all unpopular at schools of education. District bureaucrats, meanwhile, are loath to grant individual schools the freedom to do things differently.