This last sentence is the essence of this non sequitur for me. If you have no possible way of determining who a test belongs, of course the person it belongs to will get a zero. What else could you do?
But if you manage to figure out whose test it is, well, a 10% reduction is indeed better than a zero. It’s better than expulsion. It’s better than jabbing them with a hot poker. It’s also better than summary execution. But none of those comparisons mean it’s an appropriate penalty for an innocent oversight, despite the horrible, horrible ordeal it creates for you. Jeez, do some teachers really believe they are entitled not to have to deal with annoying administrative matters? Must be nice to be able to make all the rules.
You, OTOH, seem to have a reasonable policy, if I’m understanding it properly. Don’t go over to the dark side!
For some reason, in my head, this was accompanied by a visualization of Darth Vader (well, Mr. Vader in the classroom), force-crumpling a test before dropping it in the trashbin.
My daughter is in fifth grade. She had her first* research paper earlier this year. She forgot to put her name on it. The teacher docked her 20%. She got full credit for everything else. I just told her she did a good job on the rest and needed to be more careful the next time. I don’t know whether or not it will cost her a letter grade in the class.
*First time required to use four or more sources, write a bibliography, etc.
Only 10% off? If I were the teacher and I found a no-name paper, it would get pitched straight into the trash, and whoever turned it in would have wound up with a zero.
Do you do this at work too? If something you receive is not filled out right, do you pitch it in the garbage, or do you put a smidge of effort into getting it correct?
One thing that has been touched on here, but is still being largely ignored, is the fact that this is a seventh grade class.
What impact does a final exam in 7th grade have on a student’s future? Unless the 10% penalty changed the grade from a D to an F, not a bit.
Is your grade going to keep you from going into 8th grade? No
Will it keep you from getting into high school? No
Do colleges ask for your 7th grade transcript when considering admissions? No
Do employers look at your scores from 7th grade? No
IMHO, 7th grade is a great time to be teaching students the value of following instructions. A lower final mark in 7th grade has no “real” consequences of lasting impact, but it can be a good wakeup call.
Because, as others have noted here, when you get to high school and college the results of not following directions can be much more severe.
I guess I’m the only one in the thread who did occasionally turn in papers without a name. Probably more than twice and under half a dozen times in my school career.
It’s a miracle that I’m not living on the streets.
The way I taught, if a student came up to me and said, “I took this test and didn’t get a grade,” I would let the student dig through the unnamed papers folder and find it. They would then get to put their name on and turn it in. If the student didn’t take the initiative to talk to me about it, the paper goes in the trash.
It depends. If I got a resume without a name on it, I’d toss it. In fact, back when I was hiring software engineers, I’d often get 100 resumes for one job. The first filter was to discard every one where the cover letter misspelled the company name or my name (inexcusably sloppy). The second filter was to toss every one containing two or more spelling/grammar errors in the cover letter. Then I’d actually read the remaining resumes, stopping to toss out anything from someone who claimed to be an expert in COBAL, PURL, C+, or Javascrip.
