pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2024/03/30/equity-based-algebra-is-as-bad-as-you-imagine-it-to-be-n4927784
'Equity-Based Algebra' Is as Bad as You Imagine It to Be
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Also, "letter grades will be discouraged in favor of 'standards-based assessments.'" It's not very clear what "standards-based assessments" are, but it sure sounds academic and harmless, right?
Standards based assessment is actually good.
It basically boils down to "Can you consistently do X skill".
I use it as a Special Ed teacher and at the end of the day it gives a far more comprehensive idea what a student can do and what they need to work on.
For example. I basically have a sheet for each students that breaks down a given class into various skills.
When they can demonstrate with 80% accuracy that the can do a skill, I mark the day of attainment. We go over them periodically.
Its also an ideal way to hone in on lagging skills.
When they can demonstrate with 80% accuracy that the can do a skill
This was once called a 'B-'. This seems like an attempt to avoid writing a 'B-' on a sheet of paper and actually calling it a letter grade, but it's the same thing - you've assigned a score based on a measured outcome.
But now you've got the same problem as any pass/fail scheme. No one down the road will have any idea based on just "not attained" and "attained" which children are especially adept at certain subjects like math. And of the cohort that were designated "attained", no one can tell based on that which children struggled and had difficulty finally getting the pass. Every kid comes out with the same designation, so equity achieved I guess.
Maybe that is the best we can do for special ed kids as an edge case but we need more accurate assessments of ability for the broader population where the range of talent and therefore the differences between the least and most talented can be very large.
I mean you can easily extrapolate a letter grade from mastered skills. "Little Timmy showed mastery in 90 of the 100 skills in Algebra so he gets an A"
Letter grades are fairly pointless as they treat learning as an end result and not a process.
For example, lets say you got an average kid. He bombs a test. There are a dozen reasons why that might be, maybe the material just hasn't clicked and he's still in the processing of figuring out, maybe he wasn't feeling great , maybe he lost the house he lives in and now his family lives in a camper. All reasons a kid may fail a test.
In a traditional letter grade system, that F will drag him down. He can improve obviously by doing well but its always going to be a mark on his record.
Standards based, would look at, well in November you failed. In December you did much better. In Feb, you knocked out. It shows growth over time. Which is kind of the point of education. And yes, at the end of the year you can assign a letter grade. It also presents a more naunced view of effort and attainment.
You can arrive at the same destination "Timmy got an A" but with less arbitrary grading system.
Also, letter grades can vary widely these days and an A in one school may be a C in another. The consumer model of education practically begs for grade inflation. Standards based grading basically ends that problem.
Can you do "solve an equation for a variable" You either can or can't. Thats the idea in a nut shell.
Letter grades are fairly pointless as they treat learning as an end result and not a process.
Isn't marking a kid as having "attainment" treating learning as an end result too?
The problem is with pass/fail you get one score at the end. It's better to sample performance over a time series that gives you real data on performance and change in performance. As far as I can see that's what you describe anyway "well in November you failed. In December you did much better" but for whatever reason you're reluctant to just call it scoring/letter grades. Whether it's A-F or 0-100 or whatever you have to actually measure, score, and track. A system that tracks and measures performance over time using periodic scoring seems more focused on the learning process than a one result pass/fail system, doesn't it?
Also, letter grades can vary widely these days and an A in one school may be a C in another. The consumer model of education practically begs for grade inflation. Standards based grading basically ends that problem.
The same argument holds for the pass/fail style of grading. A teacher's arbitrary determination of whether the student passes or fails can vary wildly. When you have the whole "equity" thing being promoted now you've got another layer of teachers pressured to pass students who would have otherwise scored low or outright failed. Schools adopting that are going to wildly misrepresent true student capability versus schools that keep using measures like standardized tests.
Can you do "solve an equation for a variable" You either can or can't. Thats the idea in a nut shell.
I guess kids can either spell or they can't. Spell "cat" and "dog". Congratulations, you're equally as good at spelling as that kid who spelled "insouciant" and "maneuver"! Here's your ribbon of attainment.