Apparently a new trend in public education is to dump grades. Wake County school officials are considering bringing in a consultant who endorses that idea. Price tag: from $1,000 to $8,000 per day. From the Raleigh News & Observer:
O’Connor, who calls himself “The Grade Doctor,” also advocates not issuing zeros when students miss assignments or tests.
“When you are focused on students’ achievement on standards it makes no sense to judge (i.e., grade) students on anything other than achievement,” O’Connor said in an e-mail message. “In a standards-based system, grades need to be as pure measures of achievement that we can make them and they should not be inflated by good behavior or deflated by ‘bad’ behavior.”
School leaders in Wake and nationally have been looking at grading practices for several years.
O’Connor was one of the consultants brought in by Wake when elementary school report cards were changed in 2004 from letter grades to a Level 1 through 4 scale. The report cards eliminated classroom conduct and work habits from the grades.
Individual Wake schools have instituted programs such as “Zeroes Are not Permitted” (ZAP), in which students who don’t hand in assignments are required to do them while at school. Some schools encourage teachers not to give grades below 60.
No need to wonder why some kids are in such trouble.
