Some schools have “minimum grade” at 50

USA Today reports:

In most math problems, zero would never be confused with 50, but a handful of schools nationwide have set off an emotional academic debate by giving minimum scores of 50 for students who fail.
(…)
Their argument: Other letter grades — A, B, C and D — are broken down in increments of 10 from 60 to 100, but there is a 59-point spread between D and F, a gap that can often make it mathematically impossible for some failing students to ever catch up.
(…)
“It’s a classic mathematical dilemma: that the students have a six times greater chance of getting an F,” says Douglas Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center, a Colorado-based educational think tank who has written on the topic

Basically, this continues with the increasingly common practice of artificially inflating the grades of students so that everything looks better on paper. There isn’t much of this at my school (at least, not as far as I know), but I’ve heard of it. My AP English teacher tells us of other schools where they just make every senior English class an AP class, without adding the additional depth and rigor that is supposed to go along with it, simply because it makes their school look better than it really is.

I can imagine this is motivated largely by complaints from parents. They’re all so upset that their little genius can’t pass English 12 because he or she blew off all the work in the first semester of the class. Well, if they have below a 20% they’re fucked, since even a perfect score on everything from then on isn’t going to get them above a 60% average. But, if it were set at 50% instead, a 70% the second semester would average out to a passing grade. By avoiding the immediate problem of the annoying parents, these schools are lowering standards and giving kids a sub-par education.

Also, note the “six times greater chance of getting an F” part — this statement is based on the obviously flawed assumption that students’ grades are evenly spread between 0 and 100. The grading system isn’t designed like that. Strange that someone from an education think tank would make such an obvious error.

But opponents say the larger gap between D and F exists because passing requires a minimum competency of understanding at least 60% of the material. Handing out more credit than a student has earned is grade inflation, says Ed Fields, founder of HotChalk.com, a site for teachers and parents: “I certainly don’t want to teach my children that no effort is going to get them half the way there.”

As far as I’m concerned, if you refuse to do any homework, sleep during class, and spend test time trying to spell words on the scantron sheet, you don’t deserve a 50. A 50 may still be a failing grade, but you shouldn’t get a 50 for doing nothing. There is a difference between a high and a low F, and the article discusses it: a high F on a test means the chance of passing the class as a whole is higher.

It’s absurd to say that because it a student may be in a situation where it is difficult to raise his or her grade, that student’s grade should be arbitrarily raised to increase the chance of passing. We shouldn’t be trying to help kids pass classes by manipulating what their grade is on paper. It doesn’t get anyone anywhere. The focus of our education system should be to give out knowledge, not to give out diplomas and letter grades.

Posted by probabilityZero on May 23, 2008 | Filed under: Opinion