When Esteem Education Trumps Commons Sense

The result is this:

Common sense — not an immediate recollection of the plot of Lord of the Flies — is all one needs to possess in order to know that rudderless kids just might come up with a system that puts immediate gratification before, say, scholarship. It’s not unlikely, for example, that 20 5th graders could put aside their feuds to agree on the following:

Homework grades should be given only when the grades will “raise a student’s average, not lower it.”
Students who flunk tests can retake the exam and keep the higher grade.
Teachers cannot give a zero on an assignment unless they call parents and make “efforts to assist students in completing the work.”
Teachers must accept overdue assignments.
High school teachers who fail more than 20 percent of their students will need to develop a professional improvement plan and will be monitored by their principals.

Thank goodness grownups are in charge of our schools, right? Before you breathe a sigh of relief, I should point out that these five commandments weren’t written by angry 10-year-olds during detention. They come to us courtesy of the Dallas Independent School District (DISD), the twelfth largest school district in the country.

The Dallas Morning News reports that the rules are the latest step by DISD to standardize instruction across the district. Slacker kids in Dallas already had it pretty good thanks to a policy that prevents students from getting a grade lower than a 50 for any one grading period. Trustees reaffirmed that rule last year for this reason: students who fall below 50 have no motivation to bring up their grades.(link in original)

Most of these are pretty stupid, but the last one really snapped my head back. "High school teachers who fail more than 20 percent of their students will need to develop a professional improvement plan and will be monitored by their principals." Okay, I would see that if a 20 percent of a second grade class failed, the fault could very well be with teh teacher's skills. But when kids get to high school, they are adjudged, or should be adjudged to have the necessary responsibility to manage their grades, this policy simply says that they student's have no responsibility.

Any teacher that establishes the level of expectation and clear standards of performance, any student who doesn't live up to it should fail and the administration should back them up. But of course, that is not politically correct for students should not be held accountable for the consequences of their actions or inactions. Pretty stupid.