High school students and their families might be surprised to learn that computers at the Ministry of Education take every final grade of 48 and 49 per cent and bump it up to a passing grade of 50.
Furthermore, explains Darryl Hunter, executive director of accountability, assessment and records with the ministry, when a student obtains a grade of between 44 and 49 per cent in a class, and that one mark stands in the way of graduation, the ministry will also nudge it up to 50 per cent.
The point, Hunter says, is to give students who are extremely close to passing the benefit of the doubt.
It’s odd that nobody asks why knowing only 50% of the required material should get you a passing grade in the first place.
Via John Gormley Live
Nice try Oz, I’ll be just about the last guy laid-off, besides, my perseverance has served me well in the real world. Of my friends I graduated with I obviously had the worst marks, today, ten years later, I’m doing just as well if not better than the ones with better marks.
So I take it you aren’t going to introduce your boss to this thread then, eh Keith?
I agree with OZ.
I tutor math from time to time and in almost every situation the kids and adults I’ve helped don’t have the basic prerequisite skills for the work their currently doing. More often than not, it’s a problem with fractions. My approach once I’ve identified why the student is struggling is to go to the root of the problem, and then get them caught up over the long run. Their (just kidding Osumashi) is no shortcut to remedy this, or none that I’m aware of.
btw, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of 50% math students. They seem to be the same students year after year after year; yet with only 48-50% grasp of the curriculum these students miraculously just learn enough to just learn enough the next year. Stimulus for tutors.
I’ll post one conservative’s dissent from the general sentiment here.
Teacher-made tests are just not valid (in the statistical sense) within one or two percentage points, e.g. 50% = Pass, 49% = Fail. The B.C. Ministry of Education suggests that teachers convert their grades to percentages for the purpose of reporting student achievement to the Ministry.
Unfortunately, many teachers do it exactly the opposite, i.e. they make up the test, they administer it, they derive a percentage when they grade it, and they never reflect on whether it might have been their teaching or perhaps the test itself that was inadequate if, say, 40% of the class fails the test. “Oh, Johnny got 68%. That’s a – let’s check the chart – C+.”
Nobody has ever pointed out any significance to the B.C. percentages that are attached to grades from A to F; it’s just the way it’s always been. 50% could actually represent an incredibly high standard, depending on how the material is presented and assessed, and I agree it sends out a poor message and, even worse, promotes vagueness and lack of focus. The 60% common in many US jurisdictions isn’t much better.
I could go on, as a retired school administrator of more than two decades including my final 15 years as a secondary school principal, but let’s just say I’m not as trusting of teacher infallibility as some.
Their union, the BCTF, declares themselves to be a “union of professionals” and took exception whenever I pointed out they were not “self-employed” professionals and therefore subject to supervision. If their more militant members would concentrate on the art of teaching rather than on furthering their own economic interests, students would be better served. Ironically, it was generally the most militant unionists who proclaimed their “high standards.” Odd that they wouldn’t support such high standards imposed by supervisors on them, eh?
In closing, I award myself 87% for this post. Let’s see – oh, that’s an A in BC!
At the University of Saskatchewan, we second year computer science nerds were given an exam that, “we should not be able to finish…as a finish line limits the the full breadth of knowledge that can be displayed”.
The idea was that the test wasn’t designed to be completed. The top students would complete the largest portion of material with the most correct answers, and the entire class was then graded based on our collective achievement. There was some fancy math included to keep people from trying to shotgun the test (just race through and grab all the low hanging fruit). For example, if a question was out of 6 marks, and a student got all of those 6 marks, they would be worth more than if he answered 6 questions worth 6 marks but only got 1 mark for each.
Thank god it didn’t work that way when I was in school, 23 years ago. I recieved a 49% in grade 10 math. After whining to my teacher about bumpimg up my mark, he said, “50% is a pass, 49% is a fail. Take the class over next semester.” Thankfully I did take it over, passed with flying colors and now I make most of my living from using math skills.
I feel that the three R’s should require better than 50% to pass. More like 70% to 80%.
Extra classes like social studies, biology, Chemistry and physics are probably okay at 50%
However, if you can Read Rite and Rithmatic at a high level, I don’t see you getting below 70% on any other classes either.
As touched on previously, what is the use of teaching a kid how to do a math problem if they can’t tell you 7×6, or the sqare root of 144 right off the top of their head.
In this day and age of email and blogs, I feel it is more important for children to use proper grammar. Mistakes when using their/they’re/there, for example, can add or detract from the authority of the author.
How long do we have to deal with lose standards before we risk loosing the ability to correct ourselves?
Just one more point to add a little more perspective, in BC there is (or at least used to be – I’m happily retired) a Board of Examiners that reviews the provincial examinations annually. Ensuring that tests are both reliable and valid is a highly technical task. I was told one year by a member that, due to deficiencies revealed in the Physics 12 exam (if I’m recalling correctly), a raw score of 35% was scaled and converted to a passing grade.
No, even tests prepared by full-time experts are not always bullet-proof, let alone those prepared by individual teachers, even with the best of intent.
If you fellow conservatives would like to read more on this , check out John Taylor Gatto
-Dumbing Us Down.
-The Underground History of American Education.
-Weapons of Mass Instruction.
Weapons of Mass Instruction is a gem.
This story is apropos: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/05/11/buffalo-plane-crash-training.html
Failing a student by one or two percent is just dumb, to go back and have to take high school geo-trig or english over is just a waste of time.
Posted by: Keith at May 11, 2009 2:40 PM
So, where do you draw the line? 46%? what’s the difference between 46 and 45%? 1%, so, might as well pass the 45%’ers too! And what’s the diff between 45 and 44%? Get the point? If your pass/fail line is 50%, it needs to be 50% with absolutely no exceptions. 49.8% should still be a fail, since it is not 50%.
There must be a reason why their skills are so poor, Indiana Homez (tee!).
Tests don’t always point out the student’s overall skills but there should be a baseline of knowledge at a certain age.
Kate, if you have to ask ‘why’, you don’t understand that it’s KGB working to turn Canada into a gun at the USA’s temple. Sad.
So the art of teaching only involves a mark moving up to 50% from 44 – 49%, but never down to 49% from 50 – 55%. Where’s the art? Sounds like rote.
ron in kelowna at May 11, 2009 12:27 PM:
Hey, the Teach doesn’t keep score anymore – zero is the limit. Keeping score is just for the basketball court.
Except that keeping score on the basketball court will destroy the little darling’s self esteem. Everyone must be a winner, don’t ya’ know.
You’d think with all of the failing grades these kids just finished taking the Kobayashi Maroo. (BONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!)
So the art of teaching only involves a mark moving up to 50% from 44 – 49%, but never down to 49% from 50 – 55%. Where’s the art? Sounds like rote.
No, the art of teaching involves actually teaching, and as part of teaching using a variety of evaluation instruments to measure the student’s progress, and also to assist the teacher in measuring his or her success in guiding the student to the learning objectives.
Anybody who thinks that a teacher distinguishing between 49% and 50% is engaging in some sophisticated professional activity obviously has no idea either of the limitations of teacher-made tests or of the modest introduction the vast majority of us have gotten to statistics and measurement in our course work.
I always said I wanted all teachers to have high expectations. If they have those of all students, the standards pretty well look after themselves. A student had to try pretty hard to fail one of my classes, because I demanded a lot. Paradoxical? Only to some.
Since I’m starting to remind even myself of the education-speak jargon of my former job, I’ll sign off this topic. I hope I haven’t damaged the self-esteem of any teachers happening to read it. For that reason, I’ll steer completely clear of the topics of private school vs. union-dominated public schools, vouchers, et al.
Cheers,
Drained Brain
Sorry to be stating the obvious, but this is dumbing down at its very best — or, rather, at its very worst.
Things have got so bad — but, hey, we didn’t mean our mamby-pamby, no-one’s-to-blame meme to result in such absolute destitution — that to admit it might mean that the conservative-redneck-naysayers win and we lib-left progressives have to admit defeat.
No way! We’ll just make sure that the know-nothing, do-nothing guys pass the test because, poor babies, life’s been really tough for them. We’ll just wrap the ne’er do wells in cotton batten and ensure more government funding for us all. That’s the “l/Liberal way.”
I agree, batb.
It makes me wonder, when someone says their public schooled child is an “honour” student or was valedictorian, if it bears any relationship to what it meant back in my day or if their kid is just the smartest of a dull lot.
with the real spellin’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru
I can’t understand why more people don’t homeschool. With all the resources available, why would anyone imprison their kid for 13 years in a socialist system.
My husband died when our kids were 4, 7 and 9 and we managed to homeschool K-12. The older two are graduating from uni this month, my son with a double honours degree in math and computer science, my daughter with her second degree, having attained the first one at home by age 18.
I really only taught them to read and then did not stand in the way of their own ambition. I had to work to keep food on the table, so they were largely self-taught. If our family can do this, EVERYONE can do it.
Oz: “It makes me wonder, when someone says their public schooled child is an “honour” student or was valedictorian, if it bears any relationship to what it meant back in my day or if their kid is just the smartest of a dull lot.”
Yeah, me too.
How to create more welfare-collecting socialist-voting losers.
Tantamount to child abuse.
ACADEMIA, its not all that, Whats it worth?
I have a PHD but i cant change a light bulb.
Some of the dumbest people i know are highly educated and put them in the real world and they cant change a flat tire. What good are they? Not much.
I got through University this way, twice I was on the verge of failing out. Both times I convinced serval profs to increase my mark by one or two percent, spread across serval classes was enough to get through. I have been working sucsessfully for ten years in the real world.
Failing a student by one or two percent is just dumb, to go back and have to take high school geo-trig or english over is just a waste of time.
Posted by: Keith at May 11, 2009 2:40 PM
keith
thanx for the laff
with 2 spellin missteaks, 1 repeeted , ewe clame a younivercity edukation
BTW, just claim you’re a dyslexic, and that is why you kan’t spell, that’s wot I doo!!!!
“We need parents to get off their butts and care about what their kids are learning.”
Bingo!
The goverments last thought is to have an education system that actually creates an independant thinkers or even logic. It wants an emotional idiot with no logic or other skills.
Thats why they send their kids to REAL schools with NO modern stupidities. Where lucky in Alberta that under Ralph we got a multi educational charter with home schooling encouraged, charter & private schools. Even the school system has set up there own Charter scholls as well. 23 Higher learning institutiions in Edmonton alone, with just over a million Metro in Pop.
Homeschooling one of two. He’s a different person, was a complete failure at school and now he’s an over achiever. The toughest part was to find out how bad the things were, the school/board went out of their way to shove any signs of trouble under the rug.
This is why the really smart kids start taking IB or AP courses – its a real course with real marks.
not stirred enough: “It’s better to put them through so they get on to the real education at the University of Hard Knocks.”
I have to agree with this. To my way of thinking most of the learning that happens in high school is not that meaningful. It probably does not accomplish much to have some of these people repeating over and over again. Real success or failure will be determined at a later point.
Revenant dream: “The goverments last thought is to have an education system that actually creates an independant thinkers.”
The independent thinkers are the ones who are dropping out.
kdl – well done.
This will help students in real-life situations when they get a job after school! “But, boss, teacher said I could pass when I failed.” You’re fired.
Being “present” most of the time, or close to most of the the time, should be enough to pass.
I’m not sure, but I suspect that Hamburger University, requires more than 50% for a pass … and it’s a hard pass mark … even MacDonalds doesn’t hire everyone.
So if grades are a definitive marker of one’s intelligence then I guess we can all agree that Obama is much smarter than Bush, right!? Glad we got that settled. 😉
stan,
Please post the marks that you are basing this on.
I think many people do not understand the point of school lessons and exams. There is an element of leaning history, math or English because these subjects may come in handy in life. An overlooked element is teaching someone how to learn and how to produce under pressure i.e. examinations and tests.
When Ontario eliminated final exams for most high schoolers with “recommendations” not to write the final exam because they had done so well during the school year, an entire generation lost the ability to produce under pressure. I saw them in the hospitality business; front desk clerks who would panic if more then three guests tried to check in at the same time. Cooks and waiters who became paralyzed when a dinner rush fell on the restaurant. They had simply never learned how to handle a situation when you must get it done in a set time frame. Sad really.
It fell on management to teach these “graduates” what the high schools did not. Work under deadlines, write a clear letter, speak clearly without ums, ohs and you knows. Don’t get me started on basic math need for cash outs! Many were salvageable. Others you knew would be overpaid for the rest of their lives due to minimum wage laws.
At the apprenticeship school I attended many years ago our passing mark was 70%. This amused a classmate’s sister-in-law, an M.D.
She pointed out that the pass mark where she went to medical school was 50%.
Then some of these grads get into college programs that DO require a high bar for a passing grade and cannot figure out why they can’t keep up(example, some paramedicine programs only graduate students that get 80% or above). I don’t want to knock alternative programs either, but I know a girl who graduated high school a few years ago with some sort of special diploma from an alternative learning program but she could not even pass the general writing entrance exam for our community college – standard grammar and writing principles. She wanted to get into the same program as me for Early Childhood Education even though she knew that some of the psych courses were making pull my hair out, and I graduated high school with an ‘advanced matriculation’ diploma. She thought with her diploma she could do anything and was very upset when the college did not accept her. I have no idea why so many schools are literally setting kids up for failure while claiming that they are setting them up to succeed.
Obama is much smarter than Bush, right!? Glad we got that settled. 😉
~stan at May 11, 2009 10:58 PM
In what universe did Obama run against Bush?
I’ll tell you what, though, if Obama had run against Bush instead of Gore or Kerry, Obama’d have gotten his ass kicked ’cause that hope and change tap dance Bambi just did would have been laughed out of town in those races.
Bush would have played hardball, Obama’s relationship with the terrorist Bill Ayers would have been front and center, instead of the patty-cakes that brands McCain as the honorable loser he so desperately desires to be.