Colorado tries to be dumber than California
Colorado School District Drops Grade System
The community college they will be applying to? "No sir, I don't have my GPA per se, I have my transcript saying I met all the requirements to graduate from school, well I guess you could also call it a GED" The big schools will laugh that crap right out of the admissions office.
The new system lets students in the Adams County School District progress at their own pace, meaning students could graduate earlier, or later than fellow classmates, the station reported.
Students will be required to master 10 skill levels in order to graduate, according to MyFOXColorado.
An explanation of the new system will be included on transcripts for students applying to college.
School officials told the station the new system will focus on students' competence
The community college they will be applying to? "No sir, I don't have my GPA per se, I have my transcript saying I met all the requirements to graduate from school, well I guess you could also call it a GED" The big schools will laugh that crap right out of the admissions office.
posted by davis14633 at 06:15
7 Comments:
It's transplanted southern Californians that're ruining Colorado and northern Arizona. They're spreading like algae, consuming everything and producing nothing but an ugly, stinking mess.
California's economy is weak, so it would hurt the national economy less than ever if it sank into the ocean. I think we should start the Nuke California Now! campaign. Before it's too late.
N.B. - as a bonus, we'll take out millions of illegal Mexicans in the process. I call that a bargain!
Well, you can't have it both ways! Less than a week ago, you were saying that the educational system is suffering from “fascist” methodology, then turn around and criticize a school for trying something new. Trying new methods is how innovation occurs; it doesn’t happen if you stubbornly cling to the old system and react to any change with fear and condemnation.
I agree that our educational system is falling behind, in part due to increasingly centralized enforcement of a system that was implemented decades ago. All of the so-called "educational reforms" lately are thinly disguised efforts to bring the system under federal control, taking it away from the educators themselves. Is it any wonder that competent teachers are becoming more and more rare? They are frustrated that they are forced to follow some bureaucratic moron's idea of a lesson plan instead of allowing them to control what occurs in their own classroom.
At least this school board is trying to take some responsibility for their local educational system themselves, rather than following the current trend of appealing to the national government for help. Teachers actually have a chance of getting their feedback to the local school board, whereas getting a member of Congress to listen requires.. well, lots of money and a good lobbyist. Even with that, the chances are that they would be unable to understand what an educated person was saying to them without translation into bureaucratese (usually in the form of a campaign contribution). Of course, the school board is just another government body, but at least they live close enough to their “subjects” to have to worry about where they parked their cars. ;-)
I can’t say that I agree with removing letter grades as a measure of success/achievement; I think that competition can be very motivating for students (the ones that actually care, anyway). However, I do think that the progression of grades (by year) in public schools is hopelessly archaic. Many students learn faster (or slower) than the current progression allows and they should be allowed to progress at their own pace instead of being stuck in courses whose subject matter they have already mastered. Colleges and corporate educational systems follow this model with a great deal of success, why shouldn’t public education be allowed to try it?
We don't need any more "new methods." That's what got us into the trouble we're in now. What we need is to go back to what worked, before the politicians go hold of the system and destroyed the methods that had been time-tested.
Colleges and corporate educational systems follow this model with a great deal of success, why shouldn’t public education be allowed to try it?
Because colleges and business are dealing with self-motivated adults, not children. You don't perform your job, you get fired. You fail a college course, then you (or daddy) are out the money for that course, and now you have to do it all over again.
Treating kids like adults is another of the things that has put us in the bad position we're in now. They're children, and no matter what they think, they are NOT capable of complex rational decision-making and long-range planning.
The system worked. Then the system was broken by former hippies who never grew up and who thought they could solve all the world's problems by force of their supposed intellect. They were wrong, and if steps aren't taken to correct the idiocy they've saddled us with, we can all start learning to speak Mandarin.
Bandaur, I don't know if you have kids or if you do, what grade they are in. What I can tell you from my experience dealing with government and the education system is that they are probably not making this decision with the kids in mind.
Many of the school districts today have special programs for accelerated learning for "smart" kids. Many of these programs are centralized at one school, which also happens to be a low performing school in the district. They do this to "hide" the low performing kids and school so that they don't have to deal with these kids. They use the smart kids to balance out the schools average.
On the other subject, yes, kids learn at different speeds and to expect one person to teach 20-30 kids and keep them all engaged is asking for the impossible. We will have self paced learning when it is all moved to computers and the "teacher" is there to assist the child when they become stumped. I figure we are about 20 years from that, and that would be a fantastic thing for kids and schools alike.
Having young children who are about to enter school or will in a short number of years I have to chime in on this.
The system talked about in the article doesn't strike me as good or bad in and of itself. Like different forms of government, it all depends on how well it is run.
Change can bring about innovation that is good. But change in and of itself doesn't accomplish this. It needs to be accompanied by planning, testing and analysis before it is put into place. In other words, we need to really use our brains when deciding if something should be changed or not.
As jar(egg)head pointed out, the old system worked fairly well before to much interference happened. Although if we were to examine all aspects of it I'm sure there were areas in need of improvement all along. That said, going back to the old system would be better than the current mess. In the end, I don't care what system they use as long as it produces adults who know their ass from a hole in the ground without the use of torturous methods. After all, educating the populace is intended to cut down on the number of clueless people that holding us back as a society. At least that's my take on it.
While I understand the idea of a grade system (A, B, C etc...), I would be just as happy if they had only two grades. That being competent in the course material or not competent. Grade levels such as 1st through 12th work fine as long as you make sure the student is ready for the next grade. I could see splitting up subject areas such that you go to the next grade/level in a given subject (math, grammar, science etc...) when you show you are competent. If that means you have to go to two different buildings each day because your lagging in math and not the others then so be it. And yes, I'm aware of the logistic problems that could cause. As I said, to make a change requires planning and analysis of the proposed change. It's possible that the only way to do that would be what davis mentioned with computers. You could stay at the same school building through all your grades and simply have teachers there to guide and assist. *shrug* not sure how well that idea would work. Some testing of the idea would definitely be needed.
All that aside, I remember thinking how screwed up school was when I was going to school. Now that I'm older and I look back at it, I find that my opinion has not changed. School was already a mess by the late 70's. Pointless course material inserted by nose in the air twits, too much opinion allowed in grading assignments, not nearly enough teacher evaluation (Evaluation by other teachers that is, not some stuffy bureaucrat.), children were allowed to get away with way too much crap (And that has only gotten worse.) and what courses were mandatory vs elective was, and I imagine still is, in great need of change.
On the subject of teachers, and I will do my best to tread lightly here, I have found that most people can do an ok job. Assuming they give a crap and are not overwhelmed with to many students. Oh, and they do need to know the material being taught. What I want to focus on at here is the screw up teachers. Like the one posted about recently pulling the global warming crap. An assignment asking a student to give a particular point of view to the best of their ability is ok in and of itself. The thing that made that assignment inappropriate was one of motivation. If the subject matter was more open it would be one thing. In this case the subject is a politically motivated propaganda campaign and should not have been used without presenting and allowing both sides of the argument.
Anyway, I could probably write a 100 page book on the subject of education so I'll stop where I'm at. I would like to end by saying we should make this a recurring rant. Education is very important and I wouldn't mind having discussions about it easily accessible.
Later
You've got me there. I have no children and my experience with educational methods is all centered around adult learning. Children are different, especially when it comes to what motivates them - they are much more competitive than adults. That is the flaw with the "non-competitive" mentality that would have grades and dodge ball eliminated from schools. In their efforts to avoid the shame of failure, they also avoid the joy of success. IMO, it is the pursuit of success that is essential to becoming a motivated adult.
I disagree that the old system was perfect - that's just nostalgic wishful thinking. It was good, and its ideals are a great place to build from, but there is always room for improvement. I was lucky to have some excellent teachers, but there were plenty of shortcomings in the system when I went to public school. If we stop even trying to improve, then we stagnate and wither. As Churt says, the challenge lies in analyzing different methods and finding the ones that produce the best results for the students and for the community, not to push a political agenda or protect them from getting their feelings hurt.
I never said it was perfect; I just said it worked. And it did. There's room for improvement in any system created and run by human beings.
The real problems started when non-teachers, in the form of administrators with insufficient classroom experience, politicos in superintendent positions, and worst of all elected politicians started poking their nose in to try and fix things that weren't broken in the first place.
Like Churt, I could probably write a book on this; I could get plenty of interviews from family and friends. But it all comes down to the same thing: creative and smart teachers are being gradually pushed out of the system in favor of "facilitators." Time-proven methods such as lecturing were made taboo, and patently stupid concepts like putting children in groups to "teach themselves" were instituted. The new techniques have, by and large, proved themselves to be utter failures. The SAT scores started suffering, largely as a result of these new techniques, in the early nineties, so what was the answer? Make the SATs easier. That's not education, that's self-deception.
Teaching is an art. Some are good at it, some suck at it. Like doctors, the person doing it must have a natural passion for it, or they'll be a miserable failure. Replacing teachers with computers is not the answer; finding a way to attract bright, resourceful people back into the profession is the answer. And the only way to do that is to allow those people latitude to do their job in creative and innovative ways, as free as possible of bureaucratic burden.
Sure, you'll get a lot of different views of any given topic -- it won't be "standardized" -- but that is as much a strength of education as a weakness. It's the very core of what used to be called a liberal education -- meaning a diversity of subjects and concepts, taught by many different people, from many points of view, utilizing varied techniques. Such an education produces the most important skill any adult can possess: the ability to think critically. As anyone who has tried to hire good help in recent years can tell you, that skill is increasingly scarce. So is self-motivation, but that's a different topic.
If you try to turn education into a science, you lose the art, and instead of well-rounded graduates with a wide range of experience and exposure to many different styles, you end up with automatons whose only useful knowledge is how to pass a state-standardized test. We may as well just stop having kids and start building robots. It's much more cost effective.
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