A Plan to Kill High School Transcripts … and Transform College Admissions

momofsmartdancer
Wed, 14 Jun 2017 15:29:57 +0000

"This “reformed” system would require teachers to know their students at a far deeper level in order to provide that level of feedback. While it’s fine for private day/boarding schools with small class/school sizes, this isn’t realistic for larger private schools or moreso…public schools in which teachers may be assigned to teach hundreds of students.

There’s much more increased level of subjectivity involved due to the nature of needing to know students well…or at least giving the appearance of such which could unfairly advantage students from “desirable”* backgrounds, people pleasers, rule followers, and otherwise those who don’t rock the boat and disadvantage those who aren’t from “desirable” backgrounds or worse, those who march to the beat of their own drum or worse…rock the boat by disagreeing with a teacher on a debatable point."

My d would probably not do well with that grading system. She is highly gifted and spends most of class time doing other things while listening to the teacher. She complains of teachers repeating things endlessly; she gets it the first time around but has to wait for the teacher to keep explaining things again to other students until they understand also. I don’t think the teachers appreciate her lack of attention to them. She spends most of class texting, watching videos, etc. and then gets 98% or better in her classes. She continues to do this in college as well. I think teachers would penalize her from a subjective point of view for not being more enthusiastic and listening to them with rapt attention- i.e. in their terminology, she is not “engaged” in the learning process. In her viewpoint, she is engaged the first time around and then tunes out.