Dallas Schools Extend Homework Due Dates Indefinitely

New classroom grading rules in Dallas are drawing fire from teachers and parents as being too lenient on lazy students. The new rules would require teachers to accept late work, give retests to students who fail and force teachers to drop homework grades that would drag down a student's class average. Nancy Bingham, a former teacher, said that she didn't think the rules would help really lazy students adding, "If the kid is hell-bent on failing, they're going to fail anyway." Dallas school superintendent Michael Hinojosa disagrees, saying, "Our mission is not to fail kids. Our mission is to make sure they get it, and we believe that effort creates ability." It's a lot easier to reach for the stars if you lower the sky.

Confucius say

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Confucius say "Student too lazy to do homework often seen working late at night perfecting ignorance."

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

Confucius say, Evan Sayet [youtube.com] right.

Awesome

[moose_hp]

This will teach children that is ok to be lazy, that if you have a deadline you can extend that indefinitly and no bad consecuences will happen, just like the real world. /sarcasm

The problem with the alarming rates of failing is that education is supposed to be two sided, one part is done by the teachers in the school grounds, while the other part is done by the parents at home, and both sides are very important.

NCLB

[jadedoto]

Well, having just graduated from public school and experiencing the detrimental side of No Child Left Behind in all of my AP and Academy classes...

I must say that this wasn't a long shot off of the NCLB in terms of effectiveness. At least now the teachers can stop worrying about losing funding for not performing!

What's the use of averages anymore, then?

[keithius]

Because, if you're "dropping grades that would drag down a student's class average", what the heck is the point of having an average anyway? It's just going to artificially inflate the average. (Or, put another way, artificially prevent the average from being deflated.)

This sounds suspiciously like a plan to keep the school-at-large looking "good" to outsiders, by being able to cherry-pick which grades will be included in the average, rather than actually trying to "help" students who aren't doing as wel

Whats the point?

[AequitasVeritas]

Why don't we just do away with grades totally. If grades that bring down their average get dropped anyway, whats the point of having them at all? We might as well just rename all the schools to "regonal daycares", because essentially, thats what they will turn into.

Re:

[Verble]

Seriously. IMO pass/fail is far superior to any kind of scaled system which changes or gets curved so that the kids who failed can feel better about it.

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

Grades haven't mattered much since Vietnam came, and accurate grading might have meant someone getting drafted.
As with the rest of life, you get from education what you will.
Once I figured that out, and concentrated on learning because ignorance is a bore, not because the school system was much help, life improved.