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worried, night time headache thingy
By audhill | January 19, 2008
I work in a district that has a very active parent body. Most of the time and with most parents, that’s a wonderful thing. But around grading time,it gets a little sticky… mainly because parents want good grades and every year one or two of them try to bully teachers into giving grades that their children do not deserve.
But, crazymaking parents notwithstanding, I didn’t pull any punches in the first marking period. Just as an experiment, I decided that I would give the straight out truth this year. (not that I don’t try to be truthful every year…. but I’ve been known to overlook an assignment here and there. This year…. every kid got the grade he or she deserved. No squinting my way through to a C where a D was called for. You could say I was ethical, but actually I just wanted to see if gloss-free reporting improved performance.
The problem with being ethical (or experimental) is that there ar
e no rewards for it. A little grade inflation would have saved me from parent calls, emails,and meetings designed to deflect a sour feeling of parental responsibility and worry. It would have garnered me more love and much less time creating materials to use in evaluation. Because let’s face it… if you are inflating, you don’t need three essays where one will do.
Giving the grade deserved is a radical stance and many of my colleagues don’t do it. The consensus is that it’s just not worth it. Just before and after marking periods, I have to ask myself… why do I do it? I know I get more and better work when I don’t give an the option to get a undeserved good grade… but I pay a price for it. (as a former student of mine once said, “Grades come first Ms. Hill. It doesn’t matter what you teach or how nice you are, we like the teachers who give us good grades.”)
Last marking period, instead of a good night’s sleep when I posted my grade, I was awake and staring at them… checking them and preparing my defense. I toyed at the end, knowing which grade was the threshhold grade in each case, which parents would ignore any grade of C or better, which ones would be in asking about a B, which parent just wants their child to pass and which ones want to know exactly why their child got an A and not an A+.
I held my ground. I believe in grades… not because grades have value, but for the reason why they were first developed: to give information about performance and effort when intrinsic information is unavailable. Grades are consequences and acknowledgement.
This marking period is upon us; good luck to me.
Topics: education |
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