The San Francisco school board resolved the question of how to grade students for a school year cut short by giving everyone an A.
The city’s school board settled on the idea during a meeting Tuesday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The grades will be given to every middle school and high school student. Elementary schoolers don’t receive letter grades.
“Why not just give students As,” school board member Alison Collins told the Chronicle. “Let’s just consider this a wash and just give all students As.”
“This is an unprecedented situation,” another board member, Rachel Norton, told the Mercury News. “To continue to have grades as an accountability system doesn’t really seem to meet this moment very well.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My son’s public school is doing P/F but I don’t think it matters that much. Kid’s know it’s a unique situation. Let’s all give them a little credit and not assume they’re all going to go completely off the rails in a month. They’re pretty adaptable.
A’s, P/F, whatever. The objective is to keep them engaged and learning something. We can all go back to being completely obsessed with competitive grading and testing next year.
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“To continue to have grades as an accountability system doesn’t really seem to meet this moment very well.”
NB: Please insert “nor any moment” after “moment” in that sentence. Thank you.
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The hidden curriculum of grading is this lesson: “This stuff is so onerous to learn that we have to give you rewards and punishments to get you to do it. It’s of no value in and of itself.”
That’s what we teach. Kids come into school eager to learn. Then we teach them that.
This is so even though if it’s not learned for the love of it, it isn’t learned. This is so even though, for cognitive tasks, external rewards and punishments are actually disincentives.
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Um,no,it is called accountability. Do you have a job? Do your employers expect you to be there at certain time and do a certain amount of work? That is called responsibility, and if you can’t demonstrate it – guess what? – you’re fired!
Same goes for education like it or not. Kids “eager to learn” are in the distinct majority (in case you haven’t been teaching lately). That’s Ok, it’s what it is. These kids can’t be educated, but for certain they can be trained. I agree with you that kids that can’t be educated should not be graded -but those who DO CARE and want to learn should not be held back by those who don’t. Or do you think they should?
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People do their jobs well for intrinsic reasons. They want to do their jobs well. People take enormous pride in being capable and place a very, very high value on autonomy. Watch the video I posted. Unlearning is the most difficult and rewarding kind of learning there is. You have some unlearning to do about the effects of extrinsic punishment and reward systems on performance. I just recently retired from teaching, btw.
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We should be placing a very, very high value on personal responsibility–one each person being responsible for his or her own growth–responsible to everyone else and to themselves. We undermine this very notion via the hidden curriculum of working for gold stars, not for personal growth, for improving ourselves and thus our value to the society as a whole.
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“We should be placing a very, very high value on personal responsibility”
I dunno, how high that value should be. So called responsible people are full guilt, too.
I am sure, you are not suggesting, it’s a teacher’ job to teach responsibility:
Teacher, why should I learn this stuff?
Because you are responsible for it, and being responsible is important.
The correct (imo) conversation is
Teacher, why should I learn this stuff?
Because, as you will see, it’s beautiful, exiting, cool. It makes you feel warm, romantic, intrigued. It makes you thoughtful and your imagination will run wild
Authoritative teachers give up on kids: they do not believe that beauty, excitement intrigue can have any effect of their students, and they certainly don’t want kids’ imagination run wild—hence they make them perform for rewards like grades, as if they were training animals for a circus. Sad.
I don’t want my kids to be taught by a teacher who appears like a dragon but supposedly,somewhere deep down, she cares about the students. No, I want the teacher’s caring to be in plain sight.
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Yes, Máté. Yes, yes, yes. Beautifully said. But I do believe that part of the answer to “Why should I learn this stuff?” is “Go ahead. Don’t if you don’t want to. It’s up to you to decide if you want to be ignorant or educated.” LOL.
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Bob, I don’t want to say that to a kid. Unlike many other things, we do have to work all possible magic to get kids educated. For all our sakes. We see now played out what happens when uneducated people decide to control the world. But I know you know that. 🙂
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People who fall into these predetermined categories (e.g., progressive, conservative educators) are ones who never learned to think for themselves but, instead, imbibed by osmosis a lot of unexamined notions. Learning is a cure for that. But often real learning requires a lot of unlearning.
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One more note about this. Social sanction, positive and negative, is an extremely powerful intrinsic motivator. People care how others perceive them. Yes, she’s extremely capable. Turn her loose on this and see what happens. THAT’S what we need to be teaching and valuing. Not being a good little do-bee who does whatever inane, alienating task is shoveled out in order to win the gold star. Such people have lost much of what it is to be human. They have allowed themselves to become cogs. They were taught to be.
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All this is a matter of fundamental SOCIAL values. The bedrock values of a community. If a community values intrinsic motivation, it will teach it on a quotidian basis, in thousands of ways. There will be, for example, proverbs. He’s a dog. Show him a stick. LOL.
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Abby “Um,no,it is called accountability. Do you have a job? Do your employers expect you to be there at certain time and do a certain amount of work? ”
What does going to school and learning have to do with a job? If there is a relationship, then kids should be paid for going to school. How many people would quit their jobs if they wouldn’t get paid? How many people would work if they’d get grades instead of $?
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Thank you for replying. Most people who are not at advanced levels would not. You have hope – you are just stuck at Level 4 (Wilber – Kegan), Some people (very few) do their jobs for intrinsic meaning.Truly, you do not have to tell me about intrinsic meaning. I have taught for over 25 years, and unlike you, I did not give up on students! I am still in the game.
That said, I respect your opinion. I know that there is every reason to think that my opinion is wrong. However, having been raised classically, I always refer to the greats: Socrates, Plato, Terence, Parmenides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Lucretius, Horace, What does not match with human experience over the extreme long term, probably will not happen.
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Give up on students! LOL. I retired.
And please note that I am obviously not talking about what would be possible with students who have been microconditioned to our absurd system over many years. What I am suggesting needs to start from the beginning. You seem to have a very low opinion of the possibilities for most people. But here’s a news flash: ALL people, except ones who are very, very sick, typically ones who have been terribly beaten down and abused, prize autonomy and their own capacities for accomplishment. These things are built into us. They are part of the package with which we are born. Everyday human experience confirms what I am saying. Watch the video I posted. Think about it. Socrates wasn’t about to jump through hoops for gold stars. Sit up, roll over. Stay. Good boy, Socrates. LOL.
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Imagine this scenario. You hire a housekeeper because you have become elderly and unable to do many routine tasks. But you follow this housekeeper around with your walker and say, “No, start at that end of the table and move the cloth in circles. No, use 1 part cleaner and 3 parts water.” Everything has to be done precisely your way. I guarantee you, that “lowly” housekeeper will detest you. Why? Because people take pride in what they are doing and in their personal autonomy, even when this has been beaten out of them by years and years of schooling. Our prime directive as teachers must be to build intrinsic motivation to be a lifelong learner. This has to be a fundamental value. We can not SYSTEMICALLY undercut this and think that we are going to produce the best people. We won’t.
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In The Soul of the Indian (1913), the great Ohíye S’a, aka Charles Eastman, wrote to explain the religion of his people to whites. He said, “he worship of the “Great Mystery” was silent, solitary, free from all
self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble
and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in
wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is
nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come
between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way
meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men were
created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity. Our
faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were
unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselyting, nor
persecution, neither were there any scoffers or atheists.”
We teach kids not to stand upright in their own divinity, not to take personal responsibility for their own self-creation. We rob them of their pride and autonomy. We teach them that learning is something imposed upon them, something to which they are to submit. We teach them to trade the noble pursuit of the creation of the self, that most supreme artwork, for gold stars dispensed by their masters. It’s a deeply sick thing we do, there, and, as I said, systemic. It’s something we need to unlearn.
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Marx got a lot wrong, but when he argues in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 that under Capitalism, alienation arises from the way in which workers are taught to regard their own labor, he nails it. And what we see in high-school kids so very often–their contempt for their official schooling–is a product of this, it is precisely such alienation, born of not having been taught to value their own self-creation and intrinsic motivation toward self-improvement but rather, to do the alienating, trivial task to achieve the gold star. And now, after having labeled me, like a species of Lepidoptera, as a “progressive educator” and having accused me of giving up on kids, I suppose you will conclude that I am a Marxist. LOL. Have at it.
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Abby “unlike you, I did not give up on students!”
Here we go, personal attack in no time. Is this a style students need to learn from their caring teacher?
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It’s interesting that you bring up Socrates who seems to have eliminated the distinction between teaching and learning, teacher and student and then you post a video about a headmistress who is all for teacher authorianism.
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When I spoke, Máté, of personal responsibility, I was talking about a fundamental societal value, not about what some authoritarian scold promulgates but, rather, about a value that is built into the way people put the world together. The most important thing I can teach someone else, I think, is that he or she is an artist of himself or herself, that the ego self is a creation, like a painting or a symphony. This is the fundamental Existentialist notion.
The Ego Self is frumsceaft, a creation, or it is simply accretion, like the stuff in a hoarder’s trailer. If this is true, and I think it is, then what is authenticity? Traditionally, authenticity was defined as “being true to one’s Self,” but the Existentialist argues that there is no pre-existing Ego Self to be true to. Here’s a definition of authenticity consistent with the view of the Self as creation: Authenticity is taking responsibility for one’s Ego self (one cannot, for example, blame one’s parents for this) AND remaining true to that creation. We are artists of ourselves, and authenticity is artistic integrity. No, we say, I cannot do that. It would compromise the Self that I have, that I am, that I will be creating, as a cliche compromises a poem, as a stylistically inconsistent motif compromises any work of art–a sculpture, dance, painting, film, or piece of music.
The word “person” comes from the Latin “persona,” originally, the mask worn by an actor in a play.
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“The Ego Self is frumsceaft, a creation, or it is simply accretion, like the stuff in a hoarder’s trailer. ”
And now I reaching for the dictionary, Bob. But I got the main idea. 🙂
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Sorry. The word frumsceaft, which means creation, literally “making of the beginning” of something, comes from the oldest recorded poem in English that is not simply a fragment written in runes on a stone. The poem is Caedmon’s hymn.
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In the story, as told in a history by a monk named Bede, an illiterate fellow who looked after animals longed to be able to sing like the bards the in Great Hall. An angel appeared to him and said, “Sing me me something, Caedmon.” Caedmon answered, “What should I sing?” And the angel said, “Sing me frumsceaft!”
The result was this poem:
Nu sculon herigean / heofonrices Weard
[Now must we praise / Heaven-Kingdom’s Guardian,]
Meotodes meahte / and his modgeþanc
[the Measurer’s might / and His mind-plans,]
weorc Wuldor-Fæder / swa he wundra gehwæs
[the work of the Glory-Father, / when He of wonders of every one,]
ece Drihten / or onstealde
[Eternal Lord, / the beginning established.]
He ærest sceop / ielda bearnum
[He first created / for men’s sons]
heofon to hrofe / halig Scyppend
[heaven as a roof, / Holy Creator;
ða middangeard / moncynnes Weard
[then middle-earth / Mankind’s Guardian,]
ece Drihten / æfter teode
[Eternal Lord / afterwards made –]
firum foldan / Frea ælmihtig.
[for men earth, / Master Almighty.]
I should have said, the word is found in the story of the first English poem:
Caedmon: “Hwæt sceal ic singan?” Angel: “Sing me frumsceaft.”
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This is all Shakespearean to me. 🙂 Very intriguing, though. The oldest written Hungarian piece is from the 11th century. 4 hundred years earlier, when Cædmon’s Hymn was written, we were busy riding horses, terrorizing peaceful people.
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In my lifetime, I’ve met quite a few Hungarians. They were all breathtakingly smart. What the heck do you put in your toddler food?
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My understanding is that it’s not the food: Hungarian food is fantastic, especially the street food, but it’s as good for your health and brain as hamburger with undiet Dr Pepper. .
The ultimate authority on the question, as on every topic, is wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)
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“They are among us, but they call themselves Hungarians.”
This explains it. Thank you.
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You picked out the sentence I had just copied to comment on. My question being: Who died and went to heaven (or is that hell?)and declared that grades were/are a part of an “accountability system”?
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Wait, what?
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Wait,what?
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How many people do listen to a headmistress with such mannerism and lack of ability to speak properly?
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Birbalsingh talks about a single idea for one hour, and she is obviously very proud to call herself the dragon lady. She sounds like the British version of Moskowitz of Success Academy. She is just echoing the usual school reformer mantra.
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It’s interesting to me that you posted this piece in response to my comments about grading systems. Why do people automatically assume that the entire world is divided into two camps–those on our side and those who are not? I happen to believe that the person at the head of the classroom should often be at the head of the classroom, that it should be quite clear that he or she is the expert on the subject, that he or she should indeed be an expert on the subject, that teaching should involve a great deal of imparting of information. But I also know, because common sense and some strong research in cognitive psychology shows that external punishments and rewards undermine motivation for cognitive tasks, that they are, in fact, disincentives. Our job as teachers should be to create people who will be lifelong learners because they want to be and because they have the knowledge base, both descriptive and procedural, to build upon. And the way you get lifelong learners is not to train stimulus-response machines to chase gold stars. You get them by building intrinsic motivation to learn (which, btw, almost all kids, excepting only the ones who have severely abused, come into school with). Right now, I am relearning a transcription of the Moonlight Sonata for classical guitar. And I’m teaching myself Spanish. Why? Not because someone has the presumption to grade me. Not because I want to be told what a Gold Star Boy I am. I’m learning these things because they are worth doing. They are valuable in and of themselves. Grading teaching that this stuff is not valuable in and of itself. You do it to get the gold stars. What a stupid thing to teach.
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Me too! I’m teaching myself to play Satie’s Gymnopedies, translating j.j. Bachofen’s “Das Mutterrecht” because there is no existing English translation and my German sucks to be kind! But somebody has to do it! Along with translating Antonio Gramsci’s prison writings.
As Rilke said:
du musst dein Leben ändern
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Wait, what?
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Fantastic video, Bob! Can be used to argue against merit pay, and in all other situations where people try push for “obvious” incentives which”should work”. Who is the talker?
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The fellow in that video, Mate, is Daniel Pink, the author of Drive, A Whole New Mind, To Sell Is Human, and other books dealing with motivation and success. I agree with you. A most interesting fellow.
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“Section 18002(b) of the CARES Act requires the Department to allocate 60 percent of funds reserved for
the GEER Fund based on each State’s relative population of individuals aged 5 through 24 and 40
percent based on each State’s relative number of children counted under section 1124(c) of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (i.e., children counted for the purposes of making Title
I, Part A formula grants to local educational agencies, or the Title I, Part A formula count).”
I’m pleased Congress made strict regulations to govern the awards of emergency funding for schools- I’m concerned this aid will become a political slush fund with funding going to exclusively to schools and states Donald Trump decides he “likes”.
Corruption guard rails are really essential.
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And, increasingly, nonexistent.
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Progressive gradation.
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The all students get an A is not a final one. The next board meeting for SFUSD is April 28th.
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My school district, in N.J., is giving middle and high school students A’s or Incompletes. This time in history will always have an asterisk next to it.
I wholeheartedly agree with this decision.
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Why anyone gives a damn about spurious grades is beyond my ken.
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Exactly!
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“The children have order and structure”.
Can’t disagree with that and that order and structure is there in public schools also. The question that should be asked, prior to that order and structure is “What kind of order and structure?” Does it necessarily have to be that grades be part of the order and structure? And the obvious answer, at least to me, is NO!
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The degree of order and structure we need is what’s conducive for learning; not more and not less. As far as I can tell, a controlled chaos in a classroom is better than a silent one.
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Gee, I don’t know Duane – because maybe they are cognizant of Rilke’s exhortion :
Su musst dein Leben ändern!
How to do that without feedback from those at an advanced level (unless, of course you don’t believe that anyone can know more than another, in which case there can be no hierarchy of knowlege, but also no holarchy of growth) You really should read some Ken Wilber – especially his Trump and a No-Truth World. He truly deconstructs that postmodernist idiocy. That whole edifice, which is rapidly crumbling, is built on a massive performative contradiction (with apologies to your idol Wilson!)
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Feedback takes many forms. Again, please watch the video I posted, Abby. External punishments and rewards are actually disincentives for cognitive tasks, as the studies described in the video show, and I have explained, above, why that is so: because even the youngest among us know when we think that they have to be bribed to do something because it isn’t in itself worth doing. What a thing to be teaching, constantly, about our subjects!!!! This is really alienating and onerous and useless, but if you’ll just do it, I’ll put a star next to your name on the Good Boy board. Aie yie yie. Wrong from the start.
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That “order and structure” doesn’t have to have grades as part of the feedback process. It’s not an either/or situation as assessment, i.e., feedback is a multifaceted process.
Please tell us what constitutes “that postmodernist idiocy” (other than it being a form of ad hominem attack). What is that “performative contradiction?
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You keep on railing against supposed post modern thought. What is that post modern thought. And it certainly does nothing to further your very weak arguments against Wilson. Do you have an analysis of what he says? If so show it to us.
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👌👌👌🎉🎉🎉👊🏽👊🏽👊🏽
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It is heartening to see school boards like the one in San Francisco maintaining their democratically elected responsibility (without giving the responsibility away to mayors or superintendents) to keep students from harm during this crisis. Hold students harmless because distance learning is a techie fantasy, not a working reality. Rewards and punishments aren’t good motivators in the first place.
The all ‘A’s idea reminds me just how wrongheaded were the ideas behind the NCLB. Bush said, just a couple months after 9/11 when he signed it into law, “There’s no greater challenge than to make sure that every child — and all of us on this stage mean every child, not just a few children — every single child, regardless of where they live, how they’re raised, the income level of their family, every child receive a first-class education in America. And as you know, we’ve got another challenge, and that’s to protect America from evil ones… to rout out terror wherever it exists.” Wrongheaded.
It is time to start supporting instead of sorting students; time to stop constantly threatening and punishing students and teachers; time to learn lessons about America’s children — where they live, how they’re raised, the income level of their families; time to help each other rather than making others our enemies.
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Well said.
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I just have two questions…Did the teacher unions have a say in this and who allowed the authority of educators to be usurped by darn fool bureaucrats?
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I taught at the beginning of my career, work in publishing, and then returned to teaching. Between the two periods in which I taught, enormous changes occurred. These almost all involved the theft of teacher autonomy by bureaucrats. It was breathtaking to me, when I came back to teaching, how much of that had occurred, how they were routinely micromanaged, how much decision making had been wrested from them. Breathtaking, heartbreaking, infuriating, and sad.
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What were the exact times, Bob? Whts year did you stop teaching and which year did you go bacK
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I left teaching in 1983 and entered educational publishing. I worked in publishing for many years and went back to teaching in 2014. However, during the time that I spent in publishing, I taught occasionally, here and there, and I spent a lot of time with teachers and students, doing research.
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So in 20 years, the scenes have changed dramatically. I wonder how gradual was the change during those 20 years. Did it start going downhill with NCLB or CC or earlier than those, simply because of Reagan.
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In the 1970s, there was a huge debate raging in U.S. education about whether control should be at the building level, exercised by teachers and principals, or at the district level. Well, then came the “standards” movement and accountability measures, and control shifted to the districts and the states. Then came the federal controls. This all needs to be undone. Teaching now is like trying to operate a business under an occupying power. It’s like running Rick’s Cafe.
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When you are facing behaviors which can lead to life or death, grades don’t seem to matter very much.
Did they grade the children in the Concentration Camps? Or those in hiding from the Nazis? In fact, what is the relevance of grades in wartime countries where a bomb could take you down at a moment’s notice. Survival is the focus.
All things considered, earning an A or getting an F seems totally irrelevant.
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Exactly, flos. Hear ye, hear ye! Bring out your dead. And make sure your gerunds worksheet is turned in by Thursday!
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Fine decision. Now that they got this far, they may want to expand this thought
“To continue to have grades as an accountability system doesn’t really seem to meet this moment very well.”
and enter Duane Swacker’s favorite territory about how to abolish grading while keeping students motivated to study.
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In this–the abolishing of grading–Señor Swacker, Hidalgo, and I are brothers from a different mother.
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cx: brothers from different mothers
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“This is an unpresidented situation,” another board member, Rachel Norton, told the Mercury News”
She can say that again.
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This is a situation we’ll see again and again unless we learn some lessons.
I don’t see that happening.
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