Smacking of Deception...
In a recent conversation about the grading practices in many schools, one of my colleagues said, "Sounds like "all the children are above average" syndrome to me, which smacks of deception, not accomplishment."
What a great phrase, huh? Does anyone else believe that the grades that teachers on your hallway give "smack of deception?"
Here's why I ask: over the course of my career, I come to believe that the grades that we put on report cards smack of deception. In my experience, the A or B or C is rarely based on academic knowledge alone. Instead, it is a Gourdian knot that consists of a mix of content mastery, work behaviors like task completion, "pretty-fying" the paper, and teacher interpretation.
In my opinion, mixing all of these factors together into a magic potion that spits out a letter grade decieves parents and students because they never get a true picture of a child's academic ability or work behaviors. Instead, they have to decipher what the As and Bs their student earned really mean.
How do we ensure that parents understand the true abilities of their kids? What can we do to make "evaluation" of students more reliable and consistent across a hallway?
Why don't teachers push for this kind of work? Is it because we can't defend our letters or numbers? Because we don't have the time? Because we don't want to?
Does this resistance cheapen our standing as professionals? After all, we claim to be the experts in evaluation----but in most classrooms, that "expertise" remains an unexplained mystery.
Interesting questions, huh?
In a recent conversation about the grading practices in many schools, one of my colleagues said, "Sounds like "all the children are above average" syndrome to me, which smacks of deception, not accomplishment."
What a great phrase, huh? Does anyone else believe that the grades that teachers on your hallway give "smack of deception?"
Here's why I ask: over the course of my career, I come to believe that the grades that we put on report cards smack of deception. In my experience, the A or B or C is rarely based on academic knowledge alone. Instead, it is a Gourdian knot that consists of a mix of content mastery, work behaviors like task completion, "pretty-fying" the paper, and teacher interpretation.
In my opinion, mixing all of these factors together into a magic potion that spits out a letter grade decieves parents and students because they never get a true picture of a child's academic ability or work behaviors. Instead, they have to decipher what the As and Bs their student earned really mean.
How do we ensure that parents understand the true abilities of their kids? What can we do to make "evaluation" of students more reliable and consistent across a hallway?
Why don't teachers push for this kind of work? Is it because we can't defend our letters or numbers? Because we don't have the time? Because we don't want to?
Does this resistance cheapen our standing as professionals? After all, we claim to be the experts in evaluation----but in most classrooms, that "expertise" remains an unexplained mystery.
Interesting questions, huh?
posted by Bill Ferriter at 10:17 AM
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