I’m not getting the information I need
Bookworm on Mar 16 2007 at 6:45 pm | Filed under: Education
When I was a law student at a fairly prestigious school, I interviewed with a fairly prestigious law firm. One of the interviewers, when he heard I was from the Bay Area (although that’s not where I went to law school), told me that his firm almost never hired people from Boalt law school in Berkeley. I was surprised, because it’s always among the top ten lists of public law schools. He told me that it was the grading system.
It turns out that, in an effort to decrease competition among the students, Boalt had done away with traditional grades. (I don’t know if this is still the case, especially since the absence of grades had not decreased Boalt’s reputation for classmate competition one iota.) Students either failed (although I’m sure the term was more PC), or they passed, with the kids at the very top of the class getting some special commendation.
This system meant that a law firm, unless it got the kids at the very top of the class, had no idea whether it was getting a great student, a good student, or someone who just avoided failing. Considering the cost involved in recruiting and training young attorneys, it turned out that a lot of law firms weren’t willing to take the risk that they might not get one of the academically solid kids.
I keep thinking of this when I get the report card from one of the Bookkids’ schools. As with Boalt, you have your extra special kids, who score at the top in any given subject. That means that, as to that subject, the child “consistently meets 95-100% of the District’s grade level standards with complete understanding and may exceed the standards.” (There’s more, in the same vein.)
It’s the next category that bewilders me, the “proficient” one. The student who is marked proficient on a subject “regularly meets and demonstrates adequate understanding in 70-94% of the District’s grade level standards.” What does this mean? That’s a huge spread — 70-94%. When I went to school, that was a spread that took you from a C or C- all the way up to an A or A- (depending if the school did minuses). To me, this means that kids marked “proficient” range from those doing mediocre work to those doing very good work. That’s a huge difference.
To show how meaningless that “proficient” mark is, consider the different comments from the teachers that went with these marks. Of one child, the teacher said, “he is exceptionally good at math and shows an understanding in advance of his grade level.” Of the other child, the teacher said, “she’s still struggling with certain basic math concepts, but is showing progress.” Since I know my children very well, I agree with the written assessments, assessments that make the bland, sloppy, broad “proficient” seem only more meaningless.
All I can say (or, rather, ask) is I wonder why they bother?
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7 Responses to “I’m not getting the information I need”
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Hah! I knew it would come to this as soon as the Kumbiyah infested liberal private school the ex sent my kid to couldn’t hold grades more challenging than a smiley face for two months! Get Red Foreman and Archie Bunker on the job pronto, I say. IMAO, there’s only four grades, from top to bottom: Nothing to Worry About, OK, Meathead, and Dumbass.
There’s only one person who benefits from that wishy-washy, as-you-like-it grading system, BW, and it’s not the student.
I don’t think the grading system is that bad. What is a problem though, is that you can’t tell which people have improved. If a person improved from a 80 to a 90, isn’t that different from someone who improved from a 73 to a 94? Or even, 85 to 73.
The ability for a student to improve his own skills gives a good idea of his future performance on other things. Even though companies might not know if an A student, 90-100, is creative and able to adapt to new challenges, they do know he works hard and knows the material, even if basic. Raw material that they can work with.
So the conclusion then becomes, I wouldn’t be against the 70-94 grading system, Book, if they actually needed that to improve a person’s performance and learning abilities.
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When I was a kid, a score of 69 was an F and 94 was the lowest A, so 70-94 spans from the lowest D to the lowest A.
It seems to me this system would be a BIG problem. I know what each of my kids are capable of in each subject, however with this system, with the exception of 95+ grades, you’d have no idea of whether or not your child is goofing off, doing exceptionally well, struggling, etc.
Also, as a student I was one of those kids who was very grade-motivated. I can tell you without a doubt that if I had been in that system and knew that in any one subject I wasn’t going to make the cut at 95%, I’d have slacked off, because the next cut-off that matters is all the way down at 70%.
It’s just another reason to be glad my kids are homeschooled, I guess.
A St. Paddy’s exception to my continued absence from commenting on this blog: “Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.” W. B. Yeats
How ’bout two grade categories? On fire or Not on fire LOL