Letter Grades Look Simple
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/education/16cards.html?_r=1&ref=education
Letter Grades Look Simple, but Realities Are Complex is the article that i picked. It explains how the “A-through-F grading system for New York City schools is billed as a public information tool, helping people sort out which schools are teaching children and which schools are just moving them along. Instead of inscrutable education jargon and endless score charts, the letter grades act like billboards broadcasting achievements and failures.”
When parents shop for schools for thier children, they run into the dilema that they are determined largely by how much progress students make year to year rather than how well their skills stand up against objective standards.
“While the question of how effective teachers are at moving students forward is a critical one for their bosses, many parents are equally interested in which schools are most likely to, say, have students reading at grade level or ensure that sophomores are mastering algebra”.
One such man in the article explains that the problem “is that the public rarely looks beyond the letter grade even though the reports contain a variety of other guideposts. It is possible, for instance, to see what percentage of the weakest students improved by at least one grade level, and what percentage of higher-performing students improved on state tests from one year to the next”.
“The number of schools that received A’s increased significantly across the board this year, to 38 percent from 23 percent last year, but such progress masked the fact that many of these schools were filled with students who were struggling to do the basics”.
What this article shows is that beyond the letter grade, other factors are as important that the grade itself. It doesn’t matter that a child has an A, for all we know the child could have mastered cheating or may have gotten help from others. What matters the most is how a child improves throughout the years and is learning. People have forgotten why children go to school and the simple fact is, to learn.
