Higher Education May Not Be a Requirement for Business Success, but Basic Education Is

(www.bizchicksrule.com) — In April, I suggested that higher education is not mandatory for business success because once you complete high school or its equivalent, you should have everything you need. Unfortunately, thanks to the Dallas Independent School District, I think I may have to take that back.

You see, the Dallas Independent School District has decided that the purpose of school is NOT to learn; it’s to get a diploma and get out. And to facilitate the process of graduation, not education, they have made some very important changes to their grading policies. The Dallas Morning News discusses some of the revisions:

For example, the new rules require teachers to accept late work and prevent them from penalizing students for missed deadlines. Homework grades that would drag down a student’s overall average will be thrown out.

School officials said the new guidelines are needed to ensure that all district teachers operate under the same rules and to create a "fair system" for grading students.

"The purpose behind it is to ensure fair and credible evaluation of learning – from grade to grade and school to school," said Denise Collier, the district’s chief academic officer.

So to recap, kids can turn in homework or not at their discretion because it doesn’t matter anyway. Here’s what I’m wondering (you know, other than "What were these people smoking when they decided this was a good idea?"): How is a student’s "overall average" calculated if they’re throwing out the numbers that make up the average? Isn’t an average the total value divided by the number of items it comprises? Isn’t the concept that the higher numbers balance out the lower numbers and vice versa to give an overall picture of performance?

Here’s a comparable alternative, since we don’t care about the actual numbers anymore: Put a roulette wheel in every classroom and use it to determine student grades.

Last school year, Dallas’ board of trustees reaffirmed a policy that prevented teachers from giving students a grade lower than a 50 in any one grading period. The reason given was that students who fall below 50 have no hope or motivation to bring up their grades and just give up. (source)

Oh, that gives me a better idea: Let’s just give everyone an A at the beginning of the year. Since nothing lower than an A counts anyway, everyone will be honors students! They’ll all be brilliant! And boy oh boy, will they feel good about themselves for all of the hard work they did to earn that A!

Oh, wait…

Teachers, thank goodness, are not pleased about this policy change.

Teachers have derided the new rules as being too lenient on lazy students by requiring teachers to accept late work, give retests to students who fail and force teachers to drop homework grades that would drag down a student’s class average. (source)

"It’s like we’re sending the message to kids that deadlines don’t matter, studying is optional, and no matter how little you do, you’re still [going to] pass all your classes anyway," said Ray Cox, who teaches world languages at Franklin Middle School. (source)

No, Mr. Cox, it’s not like that at all. It is that. It is that exactly. And this is a problem that goes from elementary school to high school:

[Dallas school superintendent Michael Hinojosa] said the new rules are aimed, in part, at helping curb the district’s alarming ninth-grade failure rate. Each year, roughly 20 percent of the district’s high school freshmen fail to advance to the 10th grade. Many eventually drop out.

Dr. Hinojosa cited new research that determined ninth-graders who are flunking two or more classes in their first six weeks of high school are almost doomed to become dropouts.

"Our mission is not to fail kids," he said. "Our mission is to make sure they get it, and we believe that effort creates ability."

Teachers, though, argue that the high school failure rate has less to do with the first six weeks of ninth grade than it does with most DISD freshmen struggling to read. In 2007, 80 percent of them scored below the 40th percentile in reading on the Iowa Test of Educational Development. Yet the promotion rate out of eighth grade for that class was 98 percent. (source)

If you can’t read at age 14 or 15, this is not a recent problem, and not something that’s going to be fixed by hand-holding. It’s a fundamental failure of a school system that is already passing kids that have no business moving forward. The solution is not simply to dumb down by accepting subpar performance. The solution is to pull these barely literate children into remedial, intensive reading courses and give them the skills they need to move forward because that is the job of the public school system. Is it possible that some kids will lose a year? I’d say it’s downright likely. But what’s worse: Graduating a year late with the ability to read, reason, and succeed on at least a basic level, or graduating on time without critical life skills?

The Dallas Independent school district may very well have the best of intentions, but they are not helping these children, any of them. And that brings us back to my initial point: So-called higher education may not be optional anymore because students clearly aren’t receiving a full basic education through the school system, and they’ll have to go to college to get what should be delivered in K-12. But even then, there will be holes.

Candid Prof, over at Leadership Turn, said it best:

This policy teaches students that they don’t need to work or study. It teaches them that there is no penalty for not doing what you are assigned or for not doing it in an acceptable manner. It teaches them that deadlines are optional. It teaches them that learning is optional. It teaches them that they have to take no responsibility at all for their learning. So, what are they learning that will help them when they get a job or go to college? Basically, it is ingraining in them habits that doom them to failure.

There is so much wrong with this that I don’t know what to say. It is defeating as an educator to see this sort of thing coming along. Of course, some of these students may take my classes. I maintain standards, so they will try to just show up and expect to pass the class. They will fail. It will make me look like a bad instructor to administrators and people outside the college who don’t know what is going on.

I can not teach an entire K – 12 curriculum and still cover college level material. But if I lower my standards, then I am doing a disservice to those students who do want to learn.

If too many of us in college lower our standards, and I see college faculty all over the country lowering standards because that is the easy thing to do, then that will ultimately make a college degree as worthless as a high school diploma from one of these school districts that adopt these policies that are so counterproductive to learning.

It’s absurd, the whole thing. Kids may feel good for a minute when they get their report card, eventually they will understand that it’s hollow. They’ll know it’s a false success. And they will spend the rest of their lives feeling inferior to the few students who actually GOT it, who really did learn the skills that they never acquired because school districts refuse to fail students when they haven’t learned something. They’re doing to be working for those “smart kids,” and it will be a thorn in their sides for the rest of their lives.

Shame on you, Dallas Independent School District, and shame on the parents who have pressured schools into holding their little darlings’ hands instead of actually educating them. Shame on the parents and administrators who force out teachers who try to hold students to a standard of basic achievement. And shame on us as a nation for not only allowing it, but encouraging it.

Recommended Reading

• School sans learning, by Candid Prof at Leadership Turn
• Throwback Thursday: Is Higher Education Mandatory to Be Successful in Life?, by Kristen King at Biz Chicks Rule
• A RANT: Whatever happened to good writing?, by Jean Murray at Small Business Boomers
• "We Don’t Need No Education" Contest Entry, by Jim Gordon at Boss Hatch
• More "We Don’t Need No Education" Contest Entries, by Jim Gordon at Boss Hatch
• Dallas schools plan to ease grading standards angers teachers, by Kent Fischer at The Dallas Morning News
• Dallas ISD defends changes in grading policy, by Kent Fischer at The Dallas Morning News
• How much homework is too much? Amid debate, some districts limit assignments; a few are banning them, by Erica Mellon at The Houston Chronicle
• Dallas Independent School District Letter to Parents, via The Dallas Morning News (.doc file)
• New Dallas Independent School District Grading Policy, via The Dallas Morning News (.pdf file)

Contents © Copyright 2008 Kristen King

(image: SXC.hu)

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