Eyebrows raised over city school policy that sets 50% as minimum score
Don’t worry, junior, you’re not stupid – you’re only half-wrong!
While some districts use “F” as a failing grade, the city uses an “E.”
The ‘E’ is to be recorded no lower than a 50 percent, regardless of the actual percent earned. For example, if the student earns a 20 percent on a class assignment, the grade is recorded as a 50 percent,” said the memo from Jerri Lippert, the district’s executive director of curriculum, instruction and professional development, and Mary VanHorn, a PFT vice president.
Yes, that’s right – students in Pittsburgh are now the SMARTEST kids in the world! NONE of them fail! And to reinforce this amazingly twisted logic, an example!
And she said one teacher she knows already worries about how awkward it will look when a student correctly answers three of 10 questions on a math quiz — and gets a 50 percent.
Just call it “new math” and move on!
“We want to create situations where students can recover and not give up,” she said, adding a sense of helplessness can lead to behavior and attendance problems.
I clearly remember the incentive we had to recover from mistakes and not give up. It was a simple desire to do well, occasionally assisted with a little bribe (a dollar for an “A” on my report card!), and sometimes chased with a bit of the proverbial “unspared rod” for under performing. Somewhere along the line some hippy decided that being “best friends” was more important than maintaining a parent-child relationship, and kids lost their natural incentive to simply please their parents by doing well in life.
Lovely.
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I can’t even blame this on the administrators – the linked article specifically mentions “The district and teachers union” – which means you card-carrying, union loving, lemming following, milquetoast teachers are equally responsible for this idiocy.
This is one case where the “educators” aren’t overworked, crowded, underpaid, and deserving of our sympathies. In this case, they all need to be fired and forced to work in the booming fast food industry alongside the skilled laborers they’ve been training.
