In the NBA, the bench players get rotated in so that the best players do not get overused (which leads to fatigue and being worse, or injuries).
Even among the starters on sports teams, there may be better players and worse players.
Not when the game is close, or the results matter. Then only the top performers are put in for as long as they can manage. No one pretends the star center should give playing time to his back up in the championship game in the name of teamwork and peer mentoring.
Have you asked if other types of assessments will be used to determine the student’s grade in the class for each report card? Most likely the teacher is using several different types of assessments throughout each marking period.
Teachers use assessments for many different things other than a grade. A good teacher uses assessments as information to drive instruction.
It doesn’t help everyone learn if teams split the work so students tackle the aspects of the project they are good at. Someone noted that their son contributed design but he still needs to learn the content and the group projects masks whether he has mastered important content.
For group projects, our high school has students score each others’s contribution.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2170841-sticky-situation-what-would-you-do.html is an example of a team effort (college and scholarship applications) where part of the team (the student’s counselor) failed to do her part, which may cost the student a significant amount of money in scholarships.
That is why it isn’t a team. The team didn’t suffer the consequences, the student did.
Do you realize that this happens in community leagues all the time?
Yes, I do. In clubs where the result won’t really have any impact, it is not uncommon. In teams where the results matter to the school, or to the player’s futures? Not so much.
My kids have had paired assessments in science and foreign language with randomly assigned pairs. Works OK if it is done multiple times and is only a part of the grade. Sometimes kid gets weaker partner and sometimes a stronger one. SMH at poster who said OP should complain and then contact the newspaper.
I teach in a masters program where projects regularly have randomly assigned partners because everyone knows who the bad partners are.
“I would guess that nobody in that group will forget what the right answer is for a long time.”
You don’t need a paired assessment for that, I got a C in Spanish because of one test where I didn’t know one word. I still today know what that word means.
“Many of the problem sets (our affectionate term for homework) at MIT are designed to be worked on in groups”
Right but MIT goes on to further say:
“In some cases, the entire course is weighted towards exams so that psets are seen as a learning tool. In other courses, psets are a substantial portion of the final grade.”
So in some courses the psets are given no weight, and the grade is determined, guess what, by individual exams.
I don’t think colleges do paired or group exams right? And even if they do, high school seems a little early to start paired assignments on an actual exam where you have wide differences in skills even in an AP class.
I was all set to give my why I hate group projects speech, but I have to admit I remember that I thanked my lucky stars every day in my college physics class that I got paired with someone who was much better than me the semester all the lab assignments were electric circuits. I was used to being the smartest person in the room, but she was way better than me.
I think you need to find out the “why” behind this pilot. And after you educate yourself, give informed feedback to your school administrators concerning the ripple effects of this practice.
I believe that paired assessments are only good for formative assignments such as presentations or posters. Tests or other assessments should not be done with someone else unless there are special circumstances.
Group work is an excellent, real life experience… especially for engineering. I think as long as the random pairings are cycled around, it would be fair.