Put 25 teens in a room. Tell them learning is on the honor system.
They’ll still get lessons and tests. Have reading to do.
But no grade. No gifts or prizes.
All kids will have to write a paper on what they learned that time period.
Guess how many blank pages the instructor will see back?
Plus,
In an era of politicians wanting to pull education money. Or some scam crap about private school vouchers (Tx). Everything in that school building is in jeopardy.
No school is really gonna take a chance to lose more funding by not having progress reports, parent meetings, testing, and the day count of the school year. No one wants to be found non-complying.
Our county schools consolidated into one school before my kids graduated. Guess which school was shut down?
The school that had poorer test scores.
Don’t take that check to the bank. It’s not guaranteed.
Of those 25 kids, maybe 5 have parents who read the notes from school and actively work with their kids. (Maybe gifts or cash is involved)
10, parents don’t even know if their kid is at school.
10 leftover, who only go on peer pressure, possible embarrassment, and maybe one or two who respect the teacher enough to want them happy.
I 100% agree, but if we want learning to be for learning’s sake, paying for grades is bad in the way that putting nail polish on a gaping wound is bad.
Schools are hugely motivated by test scores, and that passes down to students who are stressed at the age of seven and eight over their test scores and grades. 8-year-olds are shamed with getting Ds and Fs on report cards, or pleased by As and Bs.
In my classes, I’ve stopped giving out grades, because I can, and because it means I can focus on intrinsic motivation. As long as grades exist, and as long as they carry any weight, extrinsic motivation has entered the chat.
Teens? Maybe. But if so, I’d argue it’s because they’ve been beaten down with grades for so long that they’ve lost the thrill of learning.
Younger kids? I have 50 or so kids rotate through my room every day, and while some of them are checked out, there are a lot more who aren’t, who work together to solve problems and complete research and create new things. My emphasis is almost totally on making creative, compelling challenges that require academic work to complete, not on making sure that kids pass end-of-grade tests; and my results show up in very high engagement with the lessons.
I moved to a practical curriculum. My financial algebra was about saving money (linear vs exponential functions), paying loans (how changing values for variables effect the formula; non-linear equations), insurance (probability) and taxes (percentages). The work was 100% activity-based The level of participation was through the roof.
Excellent! I think in general, learning is a pleasurable experience for humans. A lot of how we structure education removes that pleasure, but it’s not necessary to do so.
I didn’t realize teachers had the option not to give out grades in US public schools. I assumed in private or charter schools teachers can do whatever they want, but I thought grades were mandatory in all public schools. Do I have that wrong?
My local district doesn’t do traditional grades for elementary school, it’s more of a skill based metric. Does the kid know how to ____ with the “grades” of Developing, At Grade Level, Above Grade Level.
I loved it because in the report card I could actually see what my kid knew and what he had trouble with.
In high school I just wish kids could get their tests back.
I’m a gifted education specialist that works with kids 45 minutes a week to provide acceleration and extension activities. I don’t show up on report cards, so any grades I give would be passed along to classroom teachers to use at their discretion.
When I gave grades, I found that kids focused more on those than on the learning. Being able to give them up allows me to design lessons that focus more heavily on the learning.
My grandson in G&T program charts his own grades.
It’s a teaching moment this teacher has taken advantage of.
However, he gets official grades associated with G&T on his progress reports.
As a G&T student he gets some special privileges. They do extracurricular things and go on several field trips at the end of year.
It’s not a bribe, it’s a reward for hard work that has paid off. My son received a merit based scholarship for high school. I told him ahead of time that I would pay him half of the scholarship amount in cash if he got it. It provided motivation for him and it still benefited me by saving half the scholarship amount off of tuition.
Not necessarily, but I think I know what you mean and agree with it.
I remember as a kid being a little disappointed when I got a perfect score on something, because it meant it wasn’t challenging enough and there was no opportunity to learn from my mistakes or improve.
We have a deep systemic challenge to motivate kids at various levels for things they necessarily can’t quite appreciate the importance of.
The youngster upthread provided a great example. With no criticism of them intended, they were applying ~13yo logic to life-changing decisions. The adults need to help the kids reach the right decisions about what to do and how hard to do it. Across quite a spectrum of individual/family circumstances and individual personalities and abilities.
Compared to other posters here I’m utterly unqualified to offer an opinion on how to do this, but I think I’ve correctly identified the problem to be solved.
That doesn’t make sense: it’s easy enough to record a grade before handing tests back.
If tests aren’t returned, I assume it’s so those same tests can be used again next year, without the teacher worried that some students will already have access to them.
But I don’t know whether or not that’s what @Cheesesteak was talking about.
Not necessarily but yes you under: if consistently very likely so. It’s a standard lesson to give parents of truly gifted kids. The not A is a great thing. The work ideally is challenging enough that they can’t be perfect. They also need the practice of not being perfect, not being the highest scoring student, and being fine with that.
I’d assume that @Thudlow_Boink is right and that it has to do with reusing test questions in future semesters.
Sometimes it really is just that school is their job right now. You don’t need to understand why learning about the Calvin cycle matters. But you need to put in the time and effort anyway and learn how to learn things if nothing else.