When I was at school in Australia, 50% was passing, and 70% was pretty good. Anything above 85% and you probably cheated.

/Drank my way to straight 65's
//VB!

"I'd like a small popcorn, please."
"We don't have small."
"What do you have?"
"Large, Extra Large, and Super Chubby."
"Wouldn't that make a large a small?"
"I'll have to ask my manager."

Considering this to be in Kentucky I'll sense a great Bottlenecking in grades.

Imagine next year the 8th grade will have 80 students while the 7th grade will have 360 students.

Those who get left back will bottleneck the system and later become HS dropouts.

So... their grades go to 11 now?

Tennessee mocks your progressiveness

But actually, I knew a guy that was basically a turd in HS (he once 'lost' his test during class) but the most skilled musician ever. Even in college he didn't take the academic route. Instead, he opted for artistic. He even made mass prints for bands such as The White Stripes (he did tour posters for De Stijl). Really. Multiple instruments and complex lyrics. He even made an electronic sitar and Shankar's daughter liked it. But his g/f split ad is now married. Haven't heard from him.

see i think there shouldn't be grades at all, nobody in the real world gives grades

rather you should be given a task, and you either complete or you don't, just like the real world

and just like the real world if you fail to complete a certain number of projects, then they "fire" you, aka kick you out of the class

the class being mandatory (like having a job), but also like getting jobs, if you really do qualify beyond the class, then you can take an exit test, if you complete it you get to skip the class

/C student

At my high school, D wasn't passing, but it wasn't failing either. If you failed a class, you had to take it over again, but the new grade wouldn't count towards your GPA. If you got a D, you could take the class over again if you want. If you do, the new grade would show up on your transcript.

It's a question of money. Kentucky can't afford more than three letters, especially since A is a vowel. Besides, the rapture will come soon.

Many K-12 and college teachers who keep a hard copy of their students' attendance and exam grades use the classic spiral-bound "Class Record Book" manufactured for decades by The Riegle Press, Inc. of Flint, MI.

The first pages contain "Instructions To Teacher" that likely haven't changed in 50 years; they provide a nice index of grading standards/philosophy at mid-century.

Here are a few excerpts, not taken unfairly out of context:

"The teacher should always be able to justify and defend her markings against criticism. A 'Frequency Distribution Table' is helpful to teacher, pupil, and supervisor, in considering teachers' markings. When the teacher has made the Frequency Distribution Table in the record it would be a good plan to put it on the blackboard of the class room, so that pupils could rank themselves as to the rest of the class.....For the teacher's information a printed standard graph showing the normal frequency distribution of teachers' markes is here given. It is not presented as an absolute standard, but as one quite generally accepted by investigators of teachers' marks as representing a normal frequency distribution...Figures in the graph represent percentages on the basis of 100%. That is, in the standard normal distribution there should be 7% of A's, 24% of B's, 38% of C's, 24% of D's and 7% of F's.

*******************

A Suggested Five Point Division of Marking and a Word Statement of What the Letters Stand for and What the Teacher Should Have in Mind in Using Them

Grade A--Superior....[I won't bother listing these attributes.]


Grade B--Good--Above Average
1. Scholarship: Accurate and complete, meeting all requirements of instructor.
2. Initiative: Good when stimulated by some desirable achievement.
3. Attitude: Proper and beneficial to group.
4. Cooperation: Good in group work.
5. Individual Improvement: Showing marks of progress and responding to stimulation.

Grade C--Average
1. Scholarship: Barely meetings assignments and showing evidence of need of encouragement.
2. Initiative: Uncertain and apparent only at times
3. Attitude: Generally neutral but not objectionable
4. Cooperation: Not positive nor very effective and irregular.
5. Individual Improvement: Very ordinary, definite marks lacking.

Grade D--Below Average, Yet Passing
1. Scholarship: Not meeting all assignments and requirements of instructor.
2. Initiative: Lacking.
3. Attitude: Indifferent.
4. Cooperation: Just fair at times and lacking at other times.
5. Individual Improvement: Not noticeable.

Grade F--Failing

Work unsatisfactory and is a failing grade and hence not defined.



***********************


Ah, imagine the hell to pay if one were to grade K-12 or college/university students by these standards today.........

Ox: Why not unlink funding and test scores.. less funding when you do worse makes about as much sense as well.. screw it I don't even need an analogy to make my point.. if someone thinks that is a good system well they are probably too far gone..

So...no matter how crappy your school is, you get the same funding? Why bother to even try to teach? You're getting the same money anyways.

Aevum: Totally disagree. Linking test scores to funding just encourages locals to find the quickest and easiest way to get higher test scores.

And unlinking it removes any incentive to do a better job of teaching.
If YOUR pay were unlinked from how well you actually worked, why bother to do anything more than the bare minimum?
"Hey...I was here...pay me, biatch!"

The average GPA at the last grad school I went to was 3.97/4.0. I know people who had hissy fits because they got one B and thus did not get a 4.0. If you did not pull a perfect 4.0 in grad school you had the "sign of an L on your forehead". It was the most selfish, spoiled, and retarded thing I had ever seen.

Its all about pushing people through the system so the profs can get ther $$$ and the school can boast about its graduation rate. The real way to measure a school is not by its GPA but by how many people fail. When 1/2 the freshman class at Harvard and Yale fail, I'll think they are good schools again.

The educational system is a rationing and sorting system. If it cannot do this and do it well it FAILS. The biggest problem with higher education, in particular, is that we have dumped the rationing and sorting on the admissions office so that the professors don't have to be bother with that icky issue. K-12 does not have that advantage so there the solution is just a complete mess.

NCLB? Yes child left behind, that is the point.

America needs stupid people too.
Someone has to work at McDonalds and Wal-Mart.
When we get rid of all the illegal aliens who is going to fill the jobs of picking vegetables, mowing lawns, doing dishes, unskilled construction labor, etc.? We are going to need vast numbers of uneducated Americans to pick up the slack.

The whole point of school is that everyone gets A's. But in real life if too many kids get A's people complain that the curriculum is too easy and needs to be made more difficult. I have never understood that.

So then B becomes the new C, and everyone gets As because the teachers don't want to give out Bs, which used to be Bs, but are now Cs. And this is supposed to help?

Well, Cs and Ds have *never* really been "passing" anyway, at the college level. I mean, yeah, technically you pass if you get a C or a D. But if you get a D in a course, you can't count that toward your graduation requirements. And the minimum GPA for graduation is usually higher than 2.0, which means that if you get too many Cs then you won't graduate at all, regardless of what grades you got. (The minimum GPA is usually set by individual departments. Mine required a minimum cumulative 3.0 to graduate. More than 2-3 Cs and you might as well change your major, unless you think you can get enough As to offset the Cs.)

But, but, I thought C's and D's were good for you...

/who can get the reference?

This is retarded... most people aren't above average. Testing scores generally fit the bell where the mean, median, and mode are relatively similar. If C is average, and we really do make it a failing grade, no matter how well kids do, unless they are beating the curve, they fail. Frankly, that seems like a rather retarded way of doing things. In real life, you don't get asked questions from 10 different fields all day long with timed tests and no access to resources to look up answers. If you know 75 percent of everything you learned in school, and 85-90 percent of the information presented to you in your field, you're doing fine, kiddo... and if you fall behind that... apparently you can still do well as a school administrator.

This just in....half of all students below average!

Kentucky wants to eliminate C, as a passing grade ??? Kentucky ????
See what i'm saying here ?

There should never be any percentage of "d" or "f" students. If I were a teacher, I would ensure those students got extra attention. I would even call them at home and visit them at home to see their study environment and talk to their parents. My chemistry teacher in high school went this extra mile for me. I won't forget him.

At my job, I ensure that every. Single. Customer. is satisfied. In seven years at my location, I have never had a single complaint. I have redone the work several times before in resonse to the customers' needs. I routinely stay late, sometimes for hours.

What makes that difference? I am self-employed and my earnings depend on my performance. Imagine a public school teacher with this level of commitment.

There will always be average and below average students, regardless of what letters you assign to them. Call them what you will, but you can't make them all above average.

There will always be a minimum amount required to pass. Therefore, there will always be people who do the bare minimum, regardless of what that minimum is or what letter you assign to them.

I think the people behind this idea have the bare minimum intelligence required to be school administrators. Perhaps that's the bar we need to raise instead.

I don't understand rumblings about a "failing public school system" at all. Our public school system is here to educate all people, regardless of their social class, disabilities, or if their parents give a crap. It is NOT meant to be the education system of the upper echelon of society.

Our system has created a base from which all of US businesses can pull. Sure, there are some immigrants who come in with better training in math and science, but notice that they come HERE and not vice versa. We still lead the world in technical innovation, financial muscle, and every other metric you can think of.

The reason jobs are going to India, China, or elsewhere has nothing to do with a low educational standard here and everything to do with the lower cost of labor there. Notice that we send plenty of jobs to Mexico, too.

There are certainly more rigorous schools in other parts of the world, but we have them here, too. You just need to pay for them out of your pocket.

Kentucky: Where all the kids are above average

Wait a second. Isn't a D still a passing grade. And also wouldn't D be mediocre, since C is supposed to be Average?

They should pass this, but then make sure the teacher's don't know, so that when they grade the students they won't artificially inflate their grades to prevent them from failing.

That way as many dumbasses as possible would fail and be left to enter their natural environment and sound the mating call of their species: "Would you like fries with that."