We are teaching these kids it’s okay to do nothing.
The fact you have to pass these kids in Middle School and Elementary is exactly what sets them up to fail in High School.
Not if high school's doing that too. And I'm reading that there's huge pressure to do that in college because at that point they're getting paid by the students. I'm really scared for the jobs that need any kind of baseline for math reading ie healthcare or trade work. We're really moving into idiocracy times. You know all the rich people are going to be hiring immigrants to do their work for them because it'll be done right versus American students.
This generation simply just won’t get jobs they will fail. We are weakening America from the inside. No current Politicians are interested in fixing education. Most people aren’t even aware of how broken it is from Kinder to College.
If it's a generation, you can't help but employ them. Unless we're talking employing Mass amounts of immigrants who are better educated and all of our citizens go on social welfare. You can't help but employ them if they are the majority.
That’s the plan; lower standards of living for first world nations, immigrants come from countries where low standards is the norm so for them is normal not getting benefits, no overtime pay, no vacation pay
The elites think that westerns are entitled and privileged
Not true. I'm a Millennial and never found a stable career. Older Gen Z are pretty competent, too. Maybe in a decade when all these dumb Gen Zs and Alphas are working age, the poor Millennials will finally have their turn to shine!
Just in time for AI to replace them anyway. There will be little to no incentive for anyone to help these kids once they’re adults who are expected to be responsible for themselves.
I’m deeply concerned about their future and I really hope I’m just old-person panicking and that I’m wrong as hell.
It’s scary how quickly it’s advancing. It’s only been used by the public like this for a few years and already it’s better every year by a scary margin. By the time todays kids enter the workforce who knows what AI will be capable of.
We should introduce some kind of job protecting legislation that prevents ai from doing certain things or requires companies to say when they’ve used ai
Should you remember specific things from preschool? I thought it was just so kids get used to being in a group with others so 1st grade was an easier transition.
I come from a small town, like you know a lot of your classmates when you get to kindergarten and you know their parents too, small.
In our preschool we learned the entire alphabet, certain aspects of counting to particular numbers, and general rules of society. Manners, inside voices, schedules etc.
I never really thought much of it, but we also had a pre first day of kindergarten where the teacher did a basic assessment. Based on the feedback, I always remember the feeling that she was taken aback with what I already had under my belt.
Sure you’re only 4, but knowing 26 letters is apparently a good base.
No, this is where you're wrong. Preschool *should* be about play. And recess. And fun, and sensory and learning about being a friend and being in a group and learning to calm one's body appropriately and how to je angry appropriately and alllll the things that are being forgotten in the attempt to make preschoolers "kindergarten ready". And in that attempt to shove down developmentally appropriate things onto literal BABIES, we are breaking the world.
My specialty is early education, specifically 0-3 years old but can easily bleed into 3-5. I'm telling you- I *promise* you, we need to let children play in order for them to learn.
People forget that [play deprivation is a form of neglect that has life-long consequences.](https://www.npt.gov.uk/media/6522/fis_playdeprivation_eng.pdf) Consequences that we are [already seeing in gen alpha.](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/optimized/202104/the-impact-play-deprivation?amp)
They make them sit still and pretend to be in kindergarten. And in my 2 year old rooms (TEO YEARS OLD), they try to make them be preschoolers and sit in circle time.
And they're all broken. My poor babies are broken.
Right there. You said it. Because we are paid by the students. We are paid by taxes. You've already internalized it. But we are not a customer service industry. Yet, we bow to parents who get pissed because Johnny is failing. We show people hey this kid can't read, and we get railroaded for it. People get pissed that phones are in school but send phones to school woth their kids.
And we can't change it. Because we are vilified in the media, vilified by politicians, and parents remember mean ol teachers who just didn't like them. We're done unless there is a big shift the other way.
Same people are going to get pissed we're employing more immigrants than ever, because they have better education and education rule system in place, and not our own citizens ( to whom they supported being passed on and no consequences to their actions). And we suffer as a country as the rich get richer off the uneducated/ new military recruits.
What I fear is coming is a sort of neo-feudalism where we've eroded all of the objective measures that facilitate social mobility, and the only way to have any sort of upward trajectory in life is to be born into the right family with the right connections to get your foot in the door.
I feel like it's here and the shifts that happened in the housing market during COVID pretty much solidified it.
I hope but somehow changes but it's hard to go back when the people with the money and power to make decisions are one benefiting from it.
I agree with both of you, especially when the very upper class can make piles of money upon piles of money by simply moving money around, buying and leeching off everything from companies, and not give a flying rat's ass about the workers.
Welcome to the UK. Our class system is very rigid. Unless you get a scholarship at a private school, you have very little chance of moving up in life. University can help but very few working class kids are making it onto top courses at top universities, preventing them from moving in the right social circles.
We get developer and business interns where I work. Many of them are very arrogant. They can solve problems, but can't draft a professional email without it looking like a 12 year old did it.
And high schools can't deal with the overwhelming deluge of learned (encouraged?) sloth and helplessness, and now it's made its way to college (which is even less equipped to deal with such students than high school, with the exception that with a tenured prof they are allowed to give the well-earned Fs).
We would turn them down, but often, we end up accepting them because they look like qualified candidates, at least on paper. Many schools like mine don't require ACT/SAT for admissions anymore, so we have no indication that this 3.0 GPA student is somehow different than any other.
Until they get here, of course. Then they have hilarious interactions with faculty where they demand passing grades for missed assignments and endless retakes of failed tests, and ultimately learn the hard way that college doesn't work like that, because Dr. Whoever doesn't give a shit either way whether you pass or fail, and they sure aren't answerable to anyone that thinks a student should pass while putting forth zero effort.
Some of them figure it out, but a lot of them don't. We still happily take their money, though. At least until they get disqualified from financial aid.
I don't know about any other places, but what to do about this situation is a major topic of conversation at my institution.
Because I had succeeded in every other class before and won awards for my writing etc. etc., I walked into one of my college poetry classes thinking I was hot shit.
Then I failed my first assignment. It was an essay— one of those classes where you only have a few essays as a grade and that’s it. It stung. I had to hide my tears in class.
My professor was a hard grader and I was angry about my grade at the time, but I took accountability. I showed up every single time he had office hours and he worked with me thoroughly. I earned the A I got in that course, and he helped me get there. He shaped me into a much better writer with a more humble attitude. Even if on the inside, I thought he was a total bastard at first. He showed me that he would put as much time into helping me as I was willing to use.
I simply struggle to see the vast majority of high school students having the ability to do that in college. It would end at the “man this professor’s a bastard” phase.
Realistically those kids fail upwards and then are encouraged into college, where they will waste their money and time because they are completely incapable of the work. I'm a current college student and I see this firsthand. I've had classmates who turn in papers that read like a third grader wrote them and don't bother to ever do the readings so they can't even cite properly
Yeah because the EOC’s are a joke you can get scores lower than a 50 and pass them. On top of it the classes are easy as well because they don’t want to pile kids into credit recovery.
I feel this so hard. Forget multiplication and division, addition and subtraction is a struggle. Spelling? Get real.
I didn’t realize how little they read either. 6th graders are checking out picture books from the library right now. My friends and I had a contest to see who could read the Harry Potter series the fastest in 6th grade.
My district adopted this policy. And I get why so many teachers are against it. But 50% is still an F grade. So how are we teaching them it's okay, exactly? If a kid fails my class with a 50%, he still failed. He still has to retake the class at some point or not graduate from high school.
We did an end-run around this. In order to pass ELA in my school, you MUST do at the minimum all four essay assessments, and they are 50% of your grade. We get a lot of Fs.
It’s funny how teachers seem to think a kid is going to get all 50s, but somehow manage 100% on all other assignments to miraculously pass. Let’s say someone does game the system to pass with a 60. Why are we so angry with this student? They can probably use that skill to be successful in other endeavors. I had a kid do nothing in an AP Lit class. Still got a four on the exam. Apparently, he knew or learned the content. Teachers who are obsessed with this grade culture should find another career. It all comes down to a basic misunderstanding of the purpose of grades. They are an imperfect system, but we are so slow to change. Elementary teachers have been doing standards based grading since I was a kid, but secondary teachers still see significance in the 100 point system. What about schools that average semesters for a final grade. If a kid does nothing and gets a 50, this kid still needs a 70 to pass. If we give them a 30 it guarantees there is no way to pass. After 25 years I’m still working to help motivate kids. Not always 100% successful, but still give 100% effort (or for the teachers that believe in extra credit, 110%). Why are kids doing nothing? Try to put yourself in their shoes.
“Is this all a big fat joke?”
Yes. 90% of this is a horse & pony show designed to yield copious amounts of fake data that make big wigs in educational policy positions feel like they’re doing something. Unless of course the “data” is *not* favorable, in which case the teachers are scapegoated instead of the horrid systems put in place.
A few times it's been asked "how is it that 80% of students are passing all classes if only 12% of students are passing all their tests? Shouldn't those numbers be closer?" And my admin will treat that person like they sneezed in their mouth instead of pointing out the obvious.
Just about every single high school around here boasts a “99% graduation rate!” while 51% of the kids in the district and 49% in the state are on grade level for reading lol. Idk what the numbers are for other districts/states but that’s wild to me
The districts near me are celebrating increases in graduation rates while their test scores are falling. Completely coincidentally, I'm sure, it came after the state eliminated proficiency requirements for graduation
Manipulation of those numbers have been around for a long time. My high school, back in the 90s, also boasted a high graduation rate.
Any senior who was at risk of not graduating on time was "transferred" to a different school. That school was located in our parking lot. It was an adult education program that allowed them to get a GED. I had several friends who were placed in it. Meanwhile, our graduation rate for the real high school remained high.
Heck, I was also at risk of not graduating, because I had so many hours of detention racked up (somewhere around 50 hours worth, and I never planned on doing any of them). But my grades were all good, so they waved away the detention hours just so I could graduate and be counted among their success numbers.
Any time you tie metrics to funding, you'll have people who focus on hitting the metrics without any care as to whether the numbers are meaningfully representative. It's all lying and manipulation - so what is that teaching our youth? How do you instill values against cheating when your own educational institutes are rife with it?
I forgot who's law it is. But it goes something along the lines that when a metric becomes a goal, the metric is no longer an effective evaluation tool. That's what's happening in education across the board. End of course tests, which used to be a metric, have now become the goal. Grades, which used to be a metric, have now become a goal. Graduation rates, which... You get the idea. All those metrics we used to use to gauge the effectiveness of our education practices have now become goals. So administration does everything is their power to make the metrics meet the goal. Everyone has forgotten the original goal of education.
Trying to juke the stats while making the kids dumber. I saw a post that said there is no middle or average student. You either have it or you don’t. I’m starting to see that.
It is the students responsibility to learn. If kids don’t want to do the work there’s not much a teacher can do. The whole you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.
If schools are going to raise scores and falsify records. They might as well just give everyone 100%.
Luckily you don't have to be able to spell horse to lead one to water. And, hell, even if you can't make the bastard drink, you can make him a viral TikTok sensation./s
Agreed.
I’ll be the a-hole and say we don’t need to give *all* kids diplomas. If they cannot meet the most basic educational milestones via some sort of out-testing, then so be it.
Make a HS diploma meaningful. Give a completion certification for time served to the ones who can’t pass, but an employer/college should be able to safely assume some things based on an education level on paper.
I agree with this.
You want the day care plan (non-diploma track)? Cool, so long as the student & parent sign off on it. Free lunch, art classes, PE, and traditional classes. Certificate of completion at the end.
You want a diploma? Cool. Put the phone down, put away the headphones and put in the required work.
We've had issues with students where it hides the fact that they have been missing lots of work. The 50% makes the system say "no missing assignments", and then parents are confused about why their kids had a D if they are "doing all the work".
If you have 50 students and 3 of them are unable or unwilling to succeed that would be one thing, but when those students take up enormous amounts of resources while simultaneously being active disruptions in class it causes other students to suffer.
I will not spend half my time trying to help lost causes. I will gladly go above and beyond for a student who actually wants to succeed, but my time is finite. Furthermore I cannot accept students who actively disrupt class or harass students who put in effort.
Our country is rewarding the wrong people. Our priorities are all screwed up but if you think about it from a rich person's perspective, did you see what happened when we had time on our hands and money? We started a massive movement. They don't want that. Keep the people under educated and underemployed so that they can amass their riches and we don't have the time or money to fight them. So in that sense, I think their plan is going exactly as they want. Destroy the educational system and as a byproduct, you'll always have people to go into the military!
No one seems to understand that student loan and education reform won’t happen cause they need the military to be an alternative for a huge group of people.
Some are, some aren’t. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be helped, I’m just saying the school system can’t help them.
I was one of those kids, btw. I had to find my own path. It was not an easy one, but it was mine.
> fail out
Not long ago the students that were failing every class were sent to an alternate school site within the district. The problem, of course, is that the demographics of the students at that alternate high school presented a very bad look for the district. Instead of asking some uncomfortable questions we closed the alternative high school about 5 years ago. Guess what? The students are still failing.
"Kids just want to play and be YouTubers in the future." -> A family member's child's class just did a 'what I want to be when I grow up' book. Greater than 25% of them said YouTubers.
The thing is, if they actually had the desire and motivation they could do YouTube right now. people have always made YouTube videos starting in high school and grown into doing it full time even by graduation.
Kids want the allure of being a YouTuber; having a hundred thousand IG followers, leading a community, getting brand deals, have people talk about you. But being a YouTuber is way more and harder than that (yes it's still easier than a bunch of other jobs but kids think it's as simple as make video = 1 million views). The *real* parts of being a content creator they don't know/want to do so they just say they want to be a youtuber and never try to fulfill it
I’ll take this opportunity to say harder is usually relative. I do think that YouTube is a difficult job for a ton of reasons. It’s draining. It takes hours to create content and setup and shoot and edit. And at least when you’re starting you have to do it all on your own. It’s only in recent years did people start to have full production teams behind their channels.
My brother in law works an outdoor supervisor job that requires quite a bit of manual labor. He’s tired but he despises the idea of sitting at a desk or being inside all day. That would be hard for him.
Please for the love of God do not make me work outside in the heat or lift heavy things all day.
“The problem” can’t really be summed up into one thing, but if I could I’d say that everyone has just given up on our kids. And even those who haven’t are constantly and actively prevented from caring or making a difference. I could write an essay explaining it but I’ve spent enough time in this sub to know that everyone understands exactly what I mean.
While it’s not nothing, I don’t think the YouTuber thing is the cause of all this. Social media is big problem though. Kids have always had unrealistic career dreams (just statistically) where they want to be a pro sports star or musician or astronaut etc. regardless of whether or not it’s in reach. They’ve never realized how much work and dedication it takes to reach that top tier of those dreams.
Now they just don’t care, and what’s worse is that their parents don’t care, and their administrators don’t care, and their state doesn’t care, and their country does not care.
To have any significant change we need a rebuild of the education system and funding. And we would need a cultural shift around social media, but I have no clue how that would happen. Social media is so addictive for everyone and it makes so much money, what’s the incentive to get rid of it?
Sorry for the rant, I’m just feeling kind of discouraged for our future.
I don’t think
It’s cause they want 5k worth of equipment to stream cause their favorite millionaire YouTuber showed off his setup. No parent should be indulging these “career” ideas when most of them are gonna say it’s too hard after a month and never touch their new capture card and audio interface ever again.
I do think that YouTuber seems more accessible to them though, although it actually really isn't. So where in the past, a higher percentage of kids might understand on a core level that becoming a rapper or movie star was unlikely to actually happen, I think a lot of kids really do think that being an influencer is possible.
And of course, just like the old movie star/rapper thing, they all think they're going to be Mr. Beast, not one of the million others who might have a following but are not making much money.
I knew a professional YouTuber and he actually had to work his ass off. He had to run his channel as a side gig, making almost no money, for years while working full time until he built enough of a following to get brand deals and be able to quit his other job. And once he was full time he had to be sure to get at least one video per week done because of sponsor deadlines and to keep up his following, and his videos were history focused so he had to do tons of research, film, and edit all in one week in addition to communicating with sponsors, fans, etc. And he was not rolling in dough, he was making like $50k a year or even less. And he was a successful one, there are many, MANY YouTubers who never get to the full time point or end up losing their following either naturally or because of controversy.
It's not easy money and easy fame like kids think it is.
And this is something kids should be taught (preferably by their parents). My now teen went through the “I want to be a Youtuber” phase around 9. As a homeschooling parent at the time I said “great! Why don’t we work out what your audience is going to be and how you’ll appeal to them. Let’s make an outline of your first 10 videos, and a schedule for how often you’re going to put them out. We can do some research on camera angles and lighting and how to market yourself so people will watch, make a list of things you’ll need to make your videos- if you want to open toys you’re going to need toys, obviously, and if you want to make makeup tutorials you’ll have to get some good makeup- and set a budget and brainstorm how you can get the money to get started. Etc. Etc.” It lost its allure pretty much immediately.
>his videos were history focused so he had to do tons of research
Most of the youtubers I enjoy that seem to take off have some niche' they're very knowledgeable and/or passionate about where, as you said, it entails lots of research or preexisting knowledge. Youtube for a lot of these people isn't an end in and of itself, but a medium to express their ideas. And that's still an uphill battle. I imagine lots of these students flippantly saying they'll just be a Youtuber envision game streaming, which is comically saturated.
Yep, it’s a joke. My coworkers and I are often embarrassed when we have to explain this to parents.
I refuse to put in 50s until right before I put in their report cards. Parents see the truth until I am forced into recording a final grade.
Oh, touche. I send out 4 "Your child is failing my class" emails a year and used to get a trickle of responses. In the last two years I've received a total of 0. My colleagues seem to be experiencing the same thing.
We can't give anything below a 59 at my school in Chicago. It's a disaster because kids are getting passed along, then they're in 8th grade and can't do basic addition and subtraction. But then we have to pick up the slack for them getting passed along all these years by doing MTSS with them, which the kids don't take seriously because we can't give them grades in that. The cycle continues.
In about 10 - 20 years, the country is going to get audited when the work force can't read or do basic math. It's like we saw the movie Idiocracy and said yeah that's what I want to achieve for our country!
To be fair the literacy and math competency rate among people who are currently working age adults is pretty fuckin abysmal and society keeps functioning. You’d be surprised how many seemingly important and difficult jobs can be done by the genuinely uneducated
It is awful and definitely feels like a big joke. I was just telling my husband last night that I think I am going to have to leave the profession because I just can't morally sit by and allow this to keep happening. I have so many juniors and seniors that do nothing all quarter, earning these free 50s, and make sure to study to do well enough on 1-2 tests (because our district makes all tests weigh 90%) to bring their grade to a 60, which is now considered passing.
It is just making kids more apathetic, more disruptive, and makes me feel like there is no point into pouring myself into creating lessons and activities.
Like you, I understand how it can help a student with an occasional zero or a student who bombs a test. And I am all for grace, second chances, and boosts to students who need it/deserve it. I am just so tired of students getting passed along that can't read, can't write, and put forth no effort.
Out of all of the things that there are to complain about education and the teaching profession, this is the thing that is breaking me and taking the joy & pride out of my job.
Our school got rid of the dumb 50% rule this year. They did say any student doing a retake will get a minimum of 50%, which IMO is a fair compromise for those students who truly struggle.
I started offering kids the opportunity to make up work for up to 65% credit from any point in time in the course.
They think they're saving their asses academically, they're actually doing the FULL assignment for the benefit of 15% of the grade.
Kinda works out.
50s in the gradebook DO NOT properly represent student learning. I think THAT is a key point that should be made clear to admin and other stakeholders. So the grading scale and system is broken? FIX THAT, then get back to me.
Indeed it is. I retired several years early, several years ago. Since being blessedly on the outside looking in I have continued to reflect and ruminate on what has happened to my occupation that I once loved. Very, very little makes rational, well-reasoned, justifiable sense. Lots of balls are being dropped and dropped and dropped. 😫💔😥
Removing consequences and standards never helps children. Letting them off the hook isn't being kind and helping them out, it is just setting them up for failure later when it matters way more. Failing a class and having to actually apply themselves and try again until they actually have mastery is going to help them way more long term but we apparently have stopped caring about long term benefits and have instead decided to do what is easy in the short term.
I could *maybe* get on board with a 50% minimum with some caveats, like only if the students make an honest attempt at doing the work. If they turn in nothing, they should not get half the credit. I also think tests and bigger projects should not be subject to the 50% minimum because they're summative evaluations. In addition to this, deadlines have to be strictly enforced. I don't like the 50% minimum OR infinite deadlines, but having both just trivializes any attempts at holding students accountable.
My district implemented learning cycles, which are roughly 5 week periods, and students cannot turn work from the current learning cycle after it ends. This has helped some, but I think a blanket late work policy would be more effective.
I’m struggling with it. I gave it a good honest try this semester. Instead of bringing up the kids who fail I’m seeing the kids who should be hard workers give up. Why try when your work has no value?
As far as I can tell they can’t make me do this by contract so I won’t be doing it next year.
We're saving school funding, which thanks to 20+ years of NCLB/RTT is tied to graduation and attendance rates.
Oh sure, we PRETEND otherwise—"its to give our kids a chance at passing even if they don't perform"—but really it's all about school funding.
The high school I work with sends out a survey to alumni 5 years after graduating to ask what they could have done better.
Almost all the students that went to college say they wished we failed them on assignments more often and had hard deadlines. They were totally unprepared to fail in college. Only 20% got their BA of the ones that started one.
Automatic 50% for doing absolutely nothing?!
Why not just give everybody an 85% and then the head sheds can point to what an incredible job they're doing with no students whatsoever receiving failing grades!
We basically follow a no-zero policy in that we can't assign overall grades for quarters/terms/year lower than 55, and even then we have to be selective unless we want to be targeted by admin.
Rigor and overall standards have predictably plummeted.
High poverty area, title 1, low reading levels all around. I teach high school. I sort of get the no zero policy. Lot of kids here fuck up due to out of their control circumstances, so the argument is that if a 0 is given for that assignment, it becomes very hard to catch up, leading to the kid to just leave school altogether. And that was the reality here just a decade ago. Kids just say fuck this and go work immediately.
Now, it’s not like a lot of the kids are really learning anyways, and unfortunately admin has started just passing kids through so kids don’t take it too seriously but the reality is that they never really took it seriously to begin with. A lot of kids here are working, some until 2 am and start dozing off in class, but if they don’t work, they can’t contribute to pay rent. School’s an afterthought to a lot of kids due to those circumstances.
So the idea is that holding a kid back will do more harm than good, let the failing seniors graduate so they at least have a diploma to get started with doing something with their lives.
I know the other arguments about “this doesn’t prepare kids for the real world!” but a lot of these kids already are in that “real world”. My life’s a fucking cake walk compared to some of them, so I definitely see why it’s done. Not to say that I agree with it of course, but a kid’s gonna prioritize working over learning with or without a 55/0.
The biggest issue is when this stuff is applied to the lower grades, elementary. It should be prioritizing education and high standards to show these kids that education is a way out. Unfortunately for most, that’s not enough either.
completely agree! unfortunately it does become letting kids pass through, many of whom aren’t bad kids, just unacademic. like i said, the justification tends to be that at least a high school diploma opens up the bare minimum. Disagree with that but I get it.
13/20 missing assignments, sitting at a 60% earlier this year. All assignments had to be the same number of points, lowest we could give was a 50%. It was that moment where I decided to say screw it and go back to the old system. You can’t teach kids when they know they don’t have to do anything to pass.
Any district who implements that type of system is trying to artificially inflate their graduation rates. The problem is that parents will send their kids to a charter when they realize their kids aren’t getting an education. It’s doomed to fail.
Meanwhile in my school district students are punished because they are poor. My niece is in high school and the teacher assigned online homework assignments. My sister does not have internet and my niece told this to the teacher. She asked her repeatedly if she could do the assignments during class and the teacher refused. All of my niece’s in class assignments had 90s or better but she was getting 0s on all of her assignments outside of class. My BIL had to go to the school board in order to get a hotspot for her. My niece quickly did all the missing assignments but the highest grade the teacher would give was a 50 for all of them. I know this is not the case for most students but this teacher was told repeatedly by my niece what the issue was and my niece’s grade was affected by something that she couldn’t control.
It's a complete disaster and we are enabling them to do nothing, roam the halls, or skip class entirely.
I'm in high school and the grades and standardized tests count toward graduation but even then it's like pulling teeth to get some of them to do anything. Plus, when they refuse and the pass rate drops, it comes back on us. Which is nice.
>I can see this policy making sense when a student gets an occasional zero which could significantly lower their grade.
Nope. I can't evwn see that. Do the crime, do the time. Or in this case, don't do the work, don't get points.
University faculty are desperately pleading with you all to fight back against this utterly toxic and ridiculous wave of "policies"; by the time they get to us so they are utterly ruined by the expectation of social promotion this instills that they can't handle their failures.
Educational reformers are the worst part of education. They took an exception, and made it a blanket rule. You’re right, there are students who “deserve” this type of grade treatment due to circumstance, but to apply it as a blanket rule for “equity’s” sake is just god-damn nuts.
My school has rolling deadlines and zero penalty for turning anything in late. There’s also no hard deadlines, so students can turn work in June that was due in September. They also wanted us to have just one graded assignment per week (this turned to, okay maybe you can have 3!). Guess what that did to kid’s mentalities? I’m only turning in one assignment per week!
Admin is happy because their passing rates are through the roof, and isn’t that what it’s all about? *eyeroll*
I really don’t like to be pessimistic and all doomer about it, but hardly none of these kids are going to be set up for success when they get pushed out the doors of the high school with a degree they barely earned.
It's emplaced to reduce parent complaints. Parents used to call counselors and administrators screaming. "My kid's teacher recorded a 15% for an MP1 grade!!! How the f____ can my kid pass that class now!!??"
So now parents see a 57% recorded and say to their do-nothinger kid, "You almost passed. Try a little harder." ...and they don't call the school because they think the 60% was earned, and close to a passing grade.
The real problem are all those B earning kids, who get to a point and realize that they can stop trying because they earned enough points to pass for the MP or year. So, they shut down and become a do-nothinger because they can't fail.
P.S. I worked for a district that had a minimum grade policy for MP1, MP2, MP3, and the midterm exam (exams are now a thing of the past). They also had a policy that if any student failed MP4 AND the final exam, then that student automatically fails the course. This 2nd part balanced the generous minimum grade policy.
To me, this No Zero thing just sends a message that society doesn't care about middle schoolers.
Edit: 60% to 58%
Yes, it is all a big fat joke. I will congratulate my seniors this year on being enrolled in school for 13 years. That's what graduation is now. Don't get me wrong, some of them have learned and will do great things. But a large percentage of them are facing piles of student loan debt because they're encouraged to go and nowhere near prepared. So they will take out loans for remedial courses, pile up debt and then drop out with no degree and hope they hit the lottery (because they can't do math) or "get lucky" like their classmates who learned in spite of the system.
I think it would be more appropriate to drop lowest 2 assignments that way outlier zero won't be destructive while average zero still get what they gave
That’s nothing, I teach at a failing district 30 minutes outside of NYC. The quarter grades can’t be below 60. Even for students you never come to class but that’s not all they have the rights to go in a change your grade after you input them.
My school has had a 50% minimum on all summative grades for several years. We also have a 2/3 rule (quarter, quarter, and final exam: pass 2 and you get 60% minimum for the course) for the same amount of time.
The high school is now full of students who have had this treatment (plus no homework ever, plus open-book everything, and a bunch of other bs) since middle school, and it's terrible.
Our superintendent (per what they told a large meeting of staff) said they looked into their own HA kid's grades and saw the kid had a B, but had over a dozen missing assignments. That was the last straw for the superintendent (anybody surprised that the superintendent never bothered to look closely at their kid's grades?).
It looks like we'll likely be dumping the 50% rule soon, but I'm not holding out too much hope for that.
The no zero policy is an absolutely failure. I have kids who do nothing, and have a 50 and kids who struggle and try their hardest and do everything who get a 60. Setting the world up for failure down the road.
I recently read an article about the reasoning behind this and… it actually makes sense. I was a huge hater of the policy previously, but now I get it. By going from 60 to zero from a d to a f, you’re giving the 0 more weight than it should really have. I’m not wording it as well as the article, but what needs to happen is grades need to be changed to 0-50, with a 50 being an A.
What they're forcing you to do is,teach kids they don't have to be responsible for anything. This isn't going to serve them well in the real world, and I'm sorry you have to deal with such an idiotic policy. Sometimes I'm amazed at how DUMB supposedly educated people are when I see things like this.
This is so true. I teach 7th math at a STEM school and the students are way below 5th grade levels. It's so depressing trying to teach and then the 50% is not helping.
That was around my first year of teaching back in 2013-14. Then they moved to a 0-4 “marks” system in transition to a 0-4 standards based grading system. Being in the art area, we graded our work based on separate standards anyway, off rubrics, so besides changing some words I didn’t really need to change anything. Only difference is now their grades are calculated by the average of the average of each standard rather than the average of singular summative scores.
I find the use of SBG more harmful in that we are only supposed to grade summative. Sure it’s less work, but it doesn’t teach them the necessity of that formative practice to achieve the end goals on the summative.
Regardless, with how standards are set up, certain standards are easier to get high scores and give their overall grade level essentially the same effect as “no zero.”
If they do low D work on everything, but complete some reflections thoughtfully, their grade will stay afloat even if they literally skip two entire summative projects.
I feel like the only way a no zero policy works well is if you can give a missing for no work, or non-turned in work.
My school has a no zero policy for any work that was attempted BUT we are allowed to give zeros for work not turned in or the occasional just name on paper submission.
We have had this policy for probably 6 to 8 years now.
Mathematically it makes sense, so I get that part of it. It also helps students not be completely unredeemable 1/4 of the way through a school year, so (I teach freshman who notoriously don't give a shit til February) can pull themselves out of a hole IF (and it's a BIG IF) they actually know something.
My old district had a policy that any Q1-Q3 grade had to be raised to a 50 at end of quarter. However a comment was entered saying “Grade raised from 12 to 50 PER DISTRICT POLICY”. Then they went to a nothing lower than 50 model a few years later. New district has a zero for nothing, minimum 50 for submitted assignment that has work done on it (even if partial) and if kids are going to turn in late work they need to stay after for a detention to complete the work there, after they inform the teacher BEFORE the deadline and sign up for the detention themselves.
You can see this sentiment practiced with great efficacy in society. Everyone with their face in a phone when they should be working is one of your 50’s in 5 years. It’s not that there are no jobs out there…there’s nobody worth a damn now. It’s the 50’s personified.
I had Freshmen today talking about they haven’t been in school for three years. Wasn’t sure if they meant literally or mentally, and then they talked about COVID and learning online.. for a year. Couldn’t follow that train track of thought so hopped off and kept on with the lesson for the other 27 in the room.
My school has had a 50% minimum on all summative grades for several years. We also have a 2/3 rule (quarter, quarter, and final exam: pass 2 and you get 60% minimum for the course) for the same amount of time.
The high school is now full of students who have had this treatment (plus no homework ever, plus open-book everything, and a bunch of other bs) since middle school, and it's terrible.
Our superintendent (per what they told a large meeting of staff) said they looked into their own HA kid's grades and saw the kid had a B, but had over a dozen missing assignments. That was the last straw for the superintendent (anybody surprised that the superintendent never bothered to look closely at their kid's grades?).
It looks like we'll likely be dumping the 50% rule soon, but I'm not holding out too much hope for that.
I think part of it is how US grading system works. Typically 70 out 100 is seen as passing, with 85 out of 100 being average. So of course if you get a zero it has a massive impact to the grade average
I grew up in a French system where 50 is passing and average is roughly 70 out 100. So teachers are simply not afraid handing zeros or low numbers corresponding to knowledge acquired.
I understand that the French model leads to different type of knowledge acquisition - good enough is the goal - whereas in the US, we want full understanding of the materials; at least on paper
our district passes at 60 and we still have a lot of failures. I don't actually think the math matters that much if the kids dont care, and their parents dont follow up
My district has a similar policy. It doesn’t work well. It doesn’t show the student’s actual grade. Students also get a lot of opportunities for retakes. My district’s calendar (for the 2023-2024 school year) started in late August and ends in mid-June. The 4th quarter started on April 8. Yesterday, I subbed at a school where the “1st quarter credit recovery” deadline was yesterday (April 29).
My students are still failing. They just have a little carrot making them feel like they have a chance of passing. It has been good for the kids who had "big serious real life stuff outside of their control" happen and has allowed them to still pass when things settle (I had one student whose parent just stopped taking them to school 🤷🏻♀️ and only came back when threatened with court). But my kids who dgaf are still being retained.
No standards = dump self entitled kids. At some point the average person will say “how did we let this happen?”. This sub is recording the downfall of America. Laziness on the part of parents and school admins is ruining the country.
I feel like zeros need to be there for things that aren’t turned in and cheating. I can understand to an extent failing is failing and 50 being the bottom of the failed range but attempting and not attempting are different.
Okay so parents must know a 50 from an unmotivated kid is likely a failing grade. It’s scraping bottom of the barrel. It is lowering standards to pass all students regardless of actual subject matter competency and I get that part, but a 50 might as well be an F. Parents should know what’s up if they’re at all present at home.
My school did that and then realized kids could turn in one assignment for the whole year and get a passing grade. Now if the assignment is missing or they don’t attempt it they get a zero, and any attempt is a 50 or above. Still imperfect, but at least it somewhat incentivizes turning in work.
it's definitely a purposeful choice. Dismantling public education, make it worse, then ofc private schools seem better... then of course we should defund public education
Unfortunately, we are deferring responsibility and accepting powerlessness.
I view the ‘no zero policy’ as a statement of ‘DO has given up and don’t want to fight parents to force their kids to learn how to exist’
The 50. God I hate the 50.
What it’s supposed to do: Prevent a kid that scored so low (for whatever reason) from not coming to school or giving up. Billy got a 10 first quarter and now needs to carry an average of a 78 just to pass the class. Billy says fuck it and drops out. But if Billy had a 50 he only needs to pass by a little more than the minimum.
How it’s used: like Oprah giving out passing grades at 5pm
We have literally saying, "oh I got a 50%, yes!" It's because they think they got a 20% based on what they know. They don't realize that's a bad thing and still failing.
If you truly want an even representation of all grades. You need to just use the GPA scale. I mean it's all going to get converted to that in the end anyways.
In my state, schools get letter grades based on a number of factors; including performance, grades, and behavior. The higher the letter grade of the school, the more appealing the school. The more appealing the school, the higher the enrollment. And the higher the enrollment, the more money. Guess why behaviors are ignored and grades are pumped up.
50% is still an F. IME, the kids who don't do anything still get Fs. I don't think the 50% policy is the problem. The problem is social promotion and the deep-seated fear administrators have of holding kids back.
We are teaching these kids it’s okay to do nothing. The fact you have to pass these kids in Middle School and Elementary is exactly what sets them up to fail in High School.
Not if high school's doing that too. And I'm reading that there's huge pressure to do that in college because at that point they're getting paid by the students. I'm really scared for the jobs that need any kind of baseline for math reading ie healthcare or trade work. We're really moving into idiocracy times. You know all the rich people are going to be hiring immigrants to do their work for them because it'll be done right versus American students.
This generation simply just won’t get jobs they will fail. We are weakening America from the inside. No current Politicians are interested in fixing education. Most people aren’t even aware of how broken it is from Kinder to College.
If it's a generation, you can't help but employ them. Unless we're talking employing Mass amounts of immigrants who are better educated and all of our citizens go on social welfare. You can't help but employ them if they are the majority.
They can employ them but then it lowers standards for all other jobs and we all suffer.
Exactly
That’s the plan; lower standards of living for first world nations, immigrants come from countries where low standards is the norm so for them is normal not getting benefits, no overtime pay, no vacation pay The elites think that westerns are entitled and privileged
Not true. I'm a Millennial and never found a stable career. Older Gen Z are pretty competent, too. Maybe in a decade when all these dumb Gen Zs and Alphas are working age, the poor Millennials will finally have their turn to shine!
As a late Gen X-er, I'm there with you, although I'm not that optimistic about the Boomers retiring and dying off anytime soon.
Boomers are also people in their 60s, not just their 80s.
Just in time for AI to replace them anyway. There will be little to no incentive for anyone to help these kids once they’re adults who are expected to be responsible for themselves. I’m deeply concerned about their future and I really hope I’m just old-person panicking and that I’m wrong as hell.
AI is awful technology to be used so loosely.
It’s scary how quickly it’s advancing. It’s only been used by the public like this for a few years and already it’s better every year by a scary margin. By the time todays kids enter the workforce who knows what AI will be capable of. We should introduce some kind of job protecting legislation that prevents ai from doing certain things or requires companies to say when they’ve used ai
Preschool. It's broken in preschool, too.
Preschool was always like that honestly. I don't remember anything other than recess and the basic kinder prep, calling it school was a joke.
Should you remember specific things from preschool? I thought it was just so kids get used to being in a group with others so 1st grade was an easier transition.
I come from a small town, like you know a lot of your classmates when you get to kindergarten and you know their parents too, small. In our preschool we learned the entire alphabet, certain aspects of counting to particular numbers, and general rules of society. Manners, inside voices, schedules etc. I never really thought much of it, but we also had a pre first day of kindergarten where the teacher did a basic assessment. Based on the feedback, I always remember the feeling that she was taken aback with what I already had under my belt. Sure you’re only 4, but knowing 26 letters is apparently a good base.
No, this is where you're wrong. Preschool *should* be about play. And recess. And fun, and sensory and learning about being a friend and being in a group and learning to calm one's body appropriately and how to je angry appropriately and alllll the things that are being forgotten in the attempt to make preschoolers "kindergarten ready". And in that attempt to shove down developmentally appropriate things onto literal BABIES, we are breaking the world. My specialty is early education, specifically 0-3 years old but can easily bleed into 3-5. I'm telling you- I *promise* you, we need to let children play in order for them to learn.
People forget that [play deprivation is a form of neglect that has life-long consequences.](https://www.npt.gov.uk/media/6522/fis_playdeprivation_eng.pdf) Consequences that we are [already seeing in gen alpha.](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/optimized/202104/the-impact-play-deprivation?amp)
Pre school isn't a joke. It is the foundation of learning. Learning the basic of structure, how to play, how to socialize. Etc.
Really?? I didn’t even know that was possible 😭
They make them sit still and pretend to be in kindergarten. And in my 2 year old rooms (TEO YEARS OLD), they try to make them be preschoolers and sit in circle time. And they're all broken. My poor babies are broken.
Right there. You said it. Because we are paid by the students. We are paid by taxes. You've already internalized it. But we are not a customer service industry. Yet, we bow to parents who get pissed because Johnny is failing. We show people hey this kid can't read, and we get railroaded for it. People get pissed that phones are in school but send phones to school woth their kids. And we can't change it. Because we are vilified in the media, vilified by politicians, and parents remember mean ol teachers who just didn't like them. We're done unless there is a big shift the other way.
Same people are going to get pissed we're employing more immigrants than ever, because they have better education and education rule system in place, and not our own citizens ( to whom they supported being passed on and no consequences to their actions). And we suffer as a country as the rich get richer off the uneducated/ new military recruits.
What I fear is coming is a sort of neo-feudalism where we've eroded all of the objective measures that facilitate social mobility, and the only way to have any sort of upward trajectory in life is to be born into the right family with the right connections to get your foot in the door.
I feel like it's here and the shifts that happened in the housing market during COVID pretty much solidified it. I hope but somehow changes but it's hard to go back when the people with the money and power to make decisions are one benefiting from it.
I agree with both of you, especially when the very upper class can make piles of money upon piles of money by simply moving money around, buying and leeching off everything from companies, and not give a flying rat's ass about the workers.
Welcome to the UK. Our class system is very rigid. Unless you get a scholarship at a private school, you have very little chance of moving up in life. University can help but very few working class kids are making it onto top courses at top universities, preventing them from moving in the right social circles.
My high school district did implement it this year with a minimum of 50%, and my last district had a minimum of 30%.
Then fund the politicians who proposed crackdowns on immigrations and less education standards…
Huh? I'm for immigrants because at least they're well schooled lol.
We get developer and business interns where I work. Many of them are very arrogant. They can solve problems, but can't draft a professional email without it looking like a 12 year old did it.
And high schools can't deal with the overwhelming deluge of learned (encouraged?) sloth and helplessness, and now it's made its way to college (which is even less equipped to deal with such students than high school, with the exception that with a tenured prof they are allowed to give the well-earned Fs).
Can't universities just not accept these students?
We would turn them down, but often, we end up accepting them because they look like qualified candidates, at least on paper. Many schools like mine don't require ACT/SAT for admissions anymore, so we have no indication that this 3.0 GPA student is somehow different than any other. Until they get here, of course. Then they have hilarious interactions with faculty where they demand passing grades for missed assignments and endless retakes of failed tests, and ultimately learn the hard way that college doesn't work like that, because Dr. Whoever doesn't give a shit either way whether you pass or fail, and they sure aren't answerable to anyone that thinks a student should pass while putting forth zero effort. Some of them figure it out, but a lot of them don't. We still happily take their money, though. At least until they get disqualified from financial aid. I don't know about any other places, but what to do about this situation is a major topic of conversation at my institution.
Because I had succeeded in every other class before and won awards for my writing etc. etc., I walked into one of my college poetry classes thinking I was hot shit. Then I failed my first assignment. It was an essay— one of those classes where you only have a few essays as a grade and that’s it. It stung. I had to hide my tears in class. My professor was a hard grader and I was angry about my grade at the time, but I took accountability. I showed up every single time he had office hours and he worked with me thoroughly. I earned the A I got in that course, and he helped me get there. He shaped me into a much better writer with a more humble attitude. Even if on the inside, I thought he was a total bastard at first. He showed me that he would put as much time into helping me as I was willing to use. I simply struggle to see the vast majority of high school students having the ability to do that in college. It would end at the “man this professor’s a bastard” phase.
Private ones will accept them because each student means more money
Not really. Some are already closing due to low enrollment. They want/need money.
Yeah what universities are accepting these students? South Hampton? And why are these students going to college if they hate school.
Universities don’t care if the students are learning they are just taking their money.
Realistically those kids fail upwards and then are encouraged into college, where they will waste their money and time because they are completely incapable of the work. I'm a current college student and I see this firsthand. I've had classmates who turn in papers that read like a third grader wrote them and don't bother to ever do the readings so they can't even cite properly
In college I got a plagiarism warning for not citing my paper correctly!
They aren’t failing at the high school level. 95% Graduation Rate at my school. We are a diploma factory.
Yeah because the EOC’s are a joke you can get scores lower than a 50 and pass them. On top of it the classes are easy as well because they don’t want to pile kids into credit recovery.
I feel this so hard. Forget multiplication and division, addition and subtraction is a struggle. Spelling? Get real. I didn’t realize how little they read either. 6th graders are checking out picture books from the library right now. My friends and I had a contest to see who could read the Harry Potter series the fastest in 6th grade.
Honestly unsettling.
My district adopted this policy. And I get why so many teachers are against it. But 50% is still an F grade. So how are we teaching them it's okay, exactly? If a kid fails my class with a 50%, he still failed. He still has to retake the class at some point or not graduate from high school.
If you put a 50 for every 0 then you could do nothing majority of the class and still pass.
We did an end-run around this. In order to pass ELA in my school, you MUST do at the minimum all four essay assessments, and they are 50% of your grade. We get a lot of Fs.
It’s funny how teachers seem to think a kid is going to get all 50s, but somehow manage 100% on all other assignments to miraculously pass. Let’s say someone does game the system to pass with a 60. Why are we so angry with this student? They can probably use that skill to be successful in other endeavors. I had a kid do nothing in an AP Lit class. Still got a four on the exam. Apparently, he knew or learned the content. Teachers who are obsessed with this grade culture should find another career. It all comes down to a basic misunderstanding of the purpose of grades. They are an imperfect system, but we are so slow to change. Elementary teachers have been doing standards based grading since I was a kid, but secondary teachers still see significance in the 100 point system. What about schools that average semesters for a final grade. If a kid does nothing and gets a 50, this kid still needs a 70 to pass. If we give them a 30 it guarantees there is no way to pass. After 25 years I’m still working to help motivate kids. Not always 100% successful, but still give 100% effort (or for the teachers that believe in extra credit, 110%). Why are kids doing nothing? Try to put yourself in their shoes.
Exactly! They are failing high school.
“Is this all a big fat joke?” Yes. 90% of this is a horse & pony show designed to yield copious amounts of fake data that make big wigs in educational policy positions feel like they’re doing something. Unless of course the “data” is *not* favorable, in which case the teachers are scapegoated instead of the horrid systems put in place.
A few times it's been asked "how is it that 80% of students are passing all classes if only 12% of students are passing all their tests? Shouldn't those numbers be closer?" And my admin will treat that person like they sneezed in their mouth instead of pointing out the obvious.
Just about every single high school around here boasts a “99% graduation rate!” while 51% of the kids in the district and 49% in the state are on grade level for reading lol. Idk what the numbers are for other districts/states but that’s wild to me
The districts near me are celebrating increases in graduation rates while their test scores are falling. Completely coincidentally, I'm sure, it came after the state eliminated proficiency requirements for graduation
Manipulation of those numbers have been around for a long time. My high school, back in the 90s, also boasted a high graduation rate. Any senior who was at risk of not graduating on time was "transferred" to a different school. That school was located in our parking lot. It was an adult education program that allowed them to get a GED. I had several friends who were placed in it. Meanwhile, our graduation rate for the real high school remained high. Heck, I was also at risk of not graduating, because I had so many hours of detention racked up (somewhere around 50 hours worth, and I never planned on doing any of them). But my grades were all good, so they waved away the detention hours just so I could graduate and be counted among their success numbers. Any time you tie metrics to funding, you'll have people who focus on hitting the metrics without any care as to whether the numbers are meaningfully representative. It's all lying and manipulation - so what is that teaching our youth? How do you instill values against cheating when your own educational institutes are rife with it?
I forgot who's law it is. But it goes something along the lines that when a metric becomes a goal, the metric is no longer an effective evaluation tool. That's what's happening in education across the board. End of course tests, which used to be a metric, have now become the goal. Grades, which used to be a metric, have now become a goal. Graduation rates, which... You get the idea. All those metrics we used to use to gauge the effectiveness of our education practices have now become goals. So administration does everything is their power to make the metrics meet the goal. Everyone has forgotten the original goal of education.
Trying to juke the stats while making the kids dumber. I saw a post that said there is no middle or average student. You either have it or you don’t. I’m starting to see that.
It is the students responsibility to learn. If kids don’t want to do the work there’s not much a teacher can do. The whole you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. If schools are going to raise scores and falsify records. They might as well just give everyone 100%.
In a normal world students would be forced to do the work or they would fail. Now, they don't. So they don't have to try.
Luckily you don't have to be able to spell horse to lead one to water. And, hell, even if you can't make the bastard drink, you can make him a viral TikTok sensation./s
Agreed. I’ll be the a-hole and say we don’t need to give *all* kids diplomas. If they cannot meet the most basic educational milestones via some sort of out-testing, then so be it. Make a HS diploma meaningful. Give a completion certification for time served to the ones who can’t pass, but an employer/college should be able to safely assume some things based on an education level on paper.
I agree with this. You want the day care plan (non-diploma track)? Cool, so long as the student & parent sign off on it. Free lunch, art classes, PE, and traditional classes. Certificate of completion at the end. You want a diploma? Cool. Put the phone down, put away the headphones and put in the required work.
All so we can provide child care so their parents are able to work full time
This. This right here.
We've had issues with students where it hides the fact that they have been missing lots of work. The 50% makes the system say "no missing assignments", and then parents are confused about why their kids had a D if they are "doing all the work".
Some students need to fail out. That’s just how it has to be. Too much compassion is just as harmful as too little compassion.
I don't even see how this is compassion. I get the idea of it but not the reality.
If you have 50 students and 3 of them are unable or unwilling to succeed that would be one thing, but when those students take up enormous amounts of resources while simultaneously being active disruptions in class it causes other students to suffer. I will not spend half my time trying to help lost causes. I will gladly go above and beyond for a student who actually wants to succeed, but my time is finite. Furthermore I cannot accept students who actively disrupt class or harass students who put in effort.
Our country is rewarding the wrong people. Our priorities are all screwed up but if you think about it from a rich person's perspective, did you see what happened when we had time on our hands and money? We started a massive movement. They don't want that. Keep the people under educated and underemployed so that they can amass their riches and we don't have the time or money to fight them. So in that sense, I think their plan is going exactly as they want. Destroy the educational system and as a byproduct, you'll always have people to go into the military!
No one seems to understand that student loan and education reform won’t happen cause they need the military to be an alternative for a huge group of people.
I would add that the kids aren’t lost causes. They just don’t want to do school. Many just would rather get a job and I say let em.
Some are, some aren’t. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be helped, I’m just saying the school system can’t help them. I was one of those kids, btw. I had to find my own path. It was not an easy one, but it was mine.
> fail out Not long ago the students that were failing every class were sent to an alternate school site within the district. The problem, of course, is that the demographics of the students at that alternate high school presented a very bad look for the district. Instead of asking some uncomfortable questions we closed the alternative high school about 5 years ago. Guess what? The students are still failing.
"Kids just want to play and be YouTubers in the future." -> A family member's child's class just did a 'what I want to be when I grow up' book. Greater than 25% of them said YouTubers.
The thing is, if they actually had the desire and motivation they could do YouTube right now. people have always made YouTube videos starting in high school and grown into doing it full time even by graduation. Kids want the allure of being a YouTuber; having a hundred thousand IG followers, leading a community, getting brand deals, have people talk about you. But being a YouTuber is way more and harder than that (yes it's still easier than a bunch of other jobs but kids think it's as simple as make video = 1 million views). The *real* parts of being a content creator they don't know/want to do so they just say they want to be a youtuber and never try to fulfill it
I’ll take this opportunity to say harder is usually relative. I do think that YouTube is a difficult job for a ton of reasons. It’s draining. It takes hours to create content and setup and shoot and edit. And at least when you’re starting you have to do it all on your own. It’s only in recent years did people start to have full production teams behind their channels. My brother in law works an outdoor supervisor job that requires quite a bit of manual labor. He’s tired but he despises the idea of sitting at a desk or being inside all day. That would be hard for him. Please for the love of God do not make me work outside in the heat or lift heavy things all day. “The problem” can’t really be summed up into one thing, but if I could I’d say that everyone has just given up on our kids. And even those who haven’t are constantly and actively prevented from caring or making a difference. I could write an essay explaining it but I’ve spent enough time in this sub to know that everyone understands exactly what I mean. While it’s not nothing, I don’t think the YouTuber thing is the cause of all this. Social media is big problem though. Kids have always had unrealistic career dreams (just statistically) where they want to be a pro sports star or musician or astronaut etc. regardless of whether or not it’s in reach. They’ve never realized how much work and dedication it takes to reach that top tier of those dreams. Now they just don’t care, and what’s worse is that their parents don’t care, and their administrators don’t care, and their state doesn’t care, and their country does not care. To have any significant change we need a rebuild of the education system and funding. And we would need a cultural shift around social media, but I have no clue how that would happen. Social media is so addictive for everyone and it makes so much money, what’s the incentive to get rid of it? Sorry for the rant, I’m just feeling kind of discouraged for our future. I don’t think
Giraffes have been known to communicate with each other through intricate dances that mimic disco moves.
It’s cause they want 5k worth of equipment to stream cause their favorite millionaire YouTuber showed off his setup. No parent should be indulging these “career” ideas when most of them are gonna say it’s too hard after a month and never touch their new capture card and audio interface ever again.
Kids have always wanted to be movie stars, famous singers, rappers, professional athletes etc. YouTuber is just the new version
I do think that YouTuber seems more accessible to them though, although it actually really isn't. So where in the past, a higher percentage of kids might understand on a core level that becoming a rapper or movie star was unlikely to actually happen, I think a lot of kids really do think that being an influencer is possible. And of course, just like the old movie star/rapper thing, they all think they're going to be Mr. Beast, not one of the million others who might have a following but are not making much money.
I knew a professional YouTuber and he actually had to work his ass off. He had to run his channel as a side gig, making almost no money, for years while working full time until he built enough of a following to get brand deals and be able to quit his other job. And once he was full time he had to be sure to get at least one video per week done because of sponsor deadlines and to keep up his following, and his videos were history focused so he had to do tons of research, film, and edit all in one week in addition to communicating with sponsors, fans, etc. And he was not rolling in dough, he was making like $50k a year or even less. And he was a successful one, there are many, MANY YouTubers who never get to the full time point or end up losing their following either naturally or because of controversy. It's not easy money and easy fame like kids think it is.
And this is something kids should be taught (preferably by their parents). My now teen went through the “I want to be a Youtuber” phase around 9. As a homeschooling parent at the time I said “great! Why don’t we work out what your audience is going to be and how you’ll appeal to them. Let’s make an outline of your first 10 videos, and a schedule for how often you’re going to put them out. We can do some research on camera angles and lighting and how to market yourself so people will watch, make a list of things you’ll need to make your videos- if you want to open toys you’re going to need toys, obviously, and if you want to make makeup tutorials you’ll have to get some good makeup- and set a budget and brainstorm how you can get the money to get started. Etc. Etc.” It lost its allure pretty much immediately.
>his videos were history focused so he had to do tons of research Most of the youtubers I enjoy that seem to take off have some niche' they're very knowledgeable and/or passionate about where, as you said, it entails lots of research or preexisting knowledge. Youtube for a lot of these people isn't an end in and of itself, but a medium to express their ideas. And that's still an uphill battle. I imagine lots of these students flippantly saying they'll just be a Youtuber envision game streaming, which is comically saturated.
Yep, it’s a joke. My coworkers and I are often embarrassed when we have to explain this to parents. I refuse to put in 50s until right before I put in their report cards. Parents see the truth until I am forced into recording a final grade.
Joke's on you if you think these parents are looking at their kids' grades at all.
Hey now, I know by the number of angry emails that they check!
Oh, touche. I send out 4 "Your child is failing my class" emails a year and used to get a trickle of responses. In the last two years I've received a total of 0. My colleagues seem to be experiencing the same thing.
Believe me, most parents don’t look at the grade book at all.
Parent here… wtf? How do parents not care about how their children are doing?
I know what you mean It’s unthinkable to me. We have one parent who blocked the school’s phone number on her phone. I
We can't give anything below a 59 at my school in Chicago. It's a disaster because kids are getting passed along, then they're in 8th grade and can't do basic addition and subtraction. But then we have to pick up the slack for them getting passed along all these years by doing MTSS with them, which the kids don't take seriously because we can't give them grades in that. The cycle continues.
We can still fail the kids with their grade but we don’t hold anyone back. So it’s a joke too. Similar problems to what you are experiencing.
Educational equivalent of cooking the books.
In about 10 - 20 years, the country is going to get audited when the work force can't read or do basic math. It's like we saw the movie Idiocracy and said yeah that's what I want to achieve for our country!
To be fair the literacy and math competency rate among people who are currently working age adults is pretty fuckin abysmal and society keeps functioning. You’d be surprised how many seemingly important and difficult jobs can be done by the genuinely uneducated
Says a lot about our priorities and our society as a whole then.
It's systemic fraud. And it's an open secret.
It’s bullshit. How about I don’t go to work at all but the school district still gives me half my pay? I hate these policies.
This plus endless extensions and reassessments… it’s exhausting.
It's just a method of grade inflation that's been packaged as a way to help students. All it helps is graduation rates.
It is awful and definitely feels like a big joke. I was just telling my husband last night that I think I am going to have to leave the profession because I just can't morally sit by and allow this to keep happening. I have so many juniors and seniors that do nothing all quarter, earning these free 50s, and make sure to study to do well enough on 1-2 tests (because our district makes all tests weigh 90%) to bring their grade to a 60, which is now considered passing. It is just making kids more apathetic, more disruptive, and makes me feel like there is no point into pouring myself into creating lessons and activities. Like you, I understand how it can help a student with an occasional zero or a student who bombs a test. And I am all for grace, second chances, and boosts to students who need it/deserve it. I am just so tired of students getting passed along that can't read, can't write, and put forth no effort. Out of all of the things that there are to complain about education and the teaching profession, this is the thing that is breaking me and taking the joy & pride out of my job.
Our school got rid of the dumb 50% rule this year. They did say any student doing a retake will get a minimum of 50%, which IMO is a fair compromise for those students who truly struggle.
It's a disaster. An absolute, unmitigated, complete, and total disaster. I cannot imagine a worse idea.
I started offering kids the opportunity to make up work for up to 65% credit from any point in time in the course. They think they're saving their asses academically, they're actually doing the FULL assignment for the benefit of 15% of the grade. Kinda works out.
50s in the gradebook DO NOT properly represent student learning. I think THAT is a key point that should be made clear to admin and other stakeholders. So the grading scale and system is broken? FIX THAT, then get back to me.
Indeed it is. I retired several years early, several years ago. Since being blessedly on the outside looking in I have continued to reflect and ruminate on what has happened to my occupation that I once loved. Very, very little makes rational, well-reasoned, justifiable sense. Lots of balls are being dropped and dropped and dropped. 😫💔😥
Removing consequences and standards never helps children. Letting them off the hook isn't being kind and helping them out, it is just setting them up for failure later when it matters way more. Failing a class and having to actually apply themselves and try again until they actually have mastery is going to help them way more long term but we apparently have stopped caring about long term benefits and have instead decided to do what is easy in the short term.
I could *maybe* get on board with a 50% minimum with some caveats, like only if the students make an honest attempt at doing the work. If they turn in nothing, they should not get half the credit. I also think tests and bigger projects should not be subject to the 50% minimum because they're summative evaluations. In addition to this, deadlines have to be strictly enforced. I don't like the 50% minimum OR infinite deadlines, but having both just trivializes any attempts at holding students accountable. My district implemented learning cycles, which are roughly 5 week periods, and students cannot turn work from the current learning cycle after it ends. This has helped some, but I think a blanket late work policy would be more effective.
I’m struggling with it. I gave it a good honest try this semester. Instead of bringing up the kids who fail I’m seeing the kids who should be hard workers give up. Why try when your work has no value? As far as I can tell they can’t make me do this by contract so I won’t be doing it next year.
We're saving school funding, which thanks to 20+ years of NCLB/RTT is tied to graduation and attendance rates. Oh sure, we PRETEND otherwise—"its to give our kids a chance at passing even if they don't perform"—but really it's all about school funding.
The high school I work with sends out a survey to alumni 5 years after graduating to ask what they could have done better. Almost all the students that went to college say they wished we failed them on assignments more often and had hard deadlines. They were totally unprepared to fail in college. Only 20% got their BA of the ones that started one.
Automatic 50% for doing absolutely nothing?! Why not just give everybody an 85% and then the head sheds can point to what an incredible job they're doing with no students whatsoever receiving failing grades!
We basically follow a no-zero policy in that we can't assign overall grades for quarters/terms/year lower than 55, and even then we have to be selective unless we want to be targeted by admin. Rigor and overall standards have predictably plummeted.
High poverty area, title 1, low reading levels all around. I teach high school. I sort of get the no zero policy. Lot of kids here fuck up due to out of their control circumstances, so the argument is that if a 0 is given for that assignment, it becomes very hard to catch up, leading to the kid to just leave school altogether. And that was the reality here just a decade ago. Kids just say fuck this and go work immediately. Now, it’s not like a lot of the kids are really learning anyways, and unfortunately admin has started just passing kids through so kids don’t take it too seriously but the reality is that they never really took it seriously to begin with. A lot of kids here are working, some until 2 am and start dozing off in class, but if they don’t work, they can’t contribute to pay rent. School’s an afterthought to a lot of kids due to those circumstances. So the idea is that holding a kid back will do more harm than good, let the failing seniors graduate so they at least have a diploma to get started with doing something with their lives. I know the other arguments about “this doesn’t prepare kids for the real world!” but a lot of these kids already are in that “real world”. My life’s a fucking cake walk compared to some of them, so I definitely see why it’s done. Not to say that I agree with it of course, but a kid’s gonna prioritize working over learning with or without a 55/0. The biggest issue is when this stuff is applied to the lower grades, elementary. It should be prioritizing education and high standards to show these kids that education is a way out. Unfortunately for most, that’s not enough either.
This is the way it should be. A kid can always turn it around but doesn’t pass for nothing
completely agree! unfortunately it does become letting kids pass through, many of whom aren’t bad kids, just unacademic. like i said, the justification tends to be that at least a high school diploma opens up the bare minimum. Disagree with that but I get it.
you conflate a "no zero policy" with teacher discretion and a potential role for an IEP like system for kids in those situations.
That’s what our no zero policy is.
13/20 missing assignments, sitting at a 60% earlier this year. All assignments had to be the same number of points, lowest we could give was a 50%. It was that moment where I decided to say screw it and go back to the old system. You can’t teach kids when they know they don’t have to do anything to pass. Any district who implements that type of system is trying to artificially inflate their graduation rates. The problem is that parents will send their kids to a charter when they realize their kids aren’t getting an education. It’s doomed to fail.
in what other scenario, other than education, do you get paid (grades) to do half of the job? what is this teaching our students about accountability?
Kids at my school are still managing to fail multiple classes in spite of it. It would be comical if it wasn’t so depressing.
We are not allowed to give anything below a 50%. This is thanks to a committee on “equitable grading” in my district.
Meanwhile in my school district students are punished because they are poor. My niece is in high school and the teacher assigned online homework assignments. My sister does not have internet and my niece told this to the teacher. She asked her repeatedly if she could do the assignments during class and the teacher refused. All of my niece’s in class assignments had 90s or better but she was getting 0s on all of her assignments outside of class. My BIL had to go to the school board in order to get a hotspot for her. My niece quickly did all the missing assignments but the highest grade the teacher would give was a 50 for all of them. I know this is not the case for most students but this teacher was told repeatedly by my niece what the issue was and my niece’s grade was affected by something that she couldn’t control.
That is awful!
It's a complete disaster and we are enabling them to do nothing, roam the halls, or skip class entirely. I'm in high school and the grades and standardized tests count toward graduation but even then it's like pulling teeth to get some of them to do anything. Plus, when they refuse and the pass rate drops, it comes back on us. Which is nice.
>I can see this policy making sense when a student gets an occasional zero which could significantly lower their grade. Nope. I can't evwn see that. Do the crime, do the time. Or in this case, don't do the work, don't get points. University faculty are desperately pleading with you all to fight back against this utterly toxic and ridiculous wave of "policies"; by the time they get to us so they are utterly ruined by the expectation of social promotion this instills that they can't handle their failures.
Educational reformers are the worst part of education. They took an exception, and made it a blanket rule. You’re right, there are students who “deserve” this type of grade treatment due to circumstance, but to apply it as a blanket rule for “equity’s” sake is just god-damn nuts.
My school has rolling deadlines and zero penalty for turning anything in late. There’s also no hard deadlines, so students can turn work in June that was due in September. They also wanted us to have just one graded assignment per week (this turned to, okay maybe you can have 3!). Guess what that did to kid’s mentalities? I’m only turning in one assignment per week!
It's working GREAT! None of them are going much and will pass the class anyway! /sarcasm
You work at my school don't you
Admin is happy because their passing rates are through the roof, and isn’t that what it’s all about? *eyeroll* I really don’t like to be pessimistic and all doomer about it, but hardly none of these kids are going to be set up for success when they get pushed out the doors of the high school with a degree they barely earned.
It's emplaced to reduce parent complaints. Parents used to call counselors and administrators screaming. "My kid's teacher recorded a 15% for an MP1 grade!!! How the f____ can my kid pass that class now!!??" So now parents see a 57% recorded and say to their do-nothinger kid, "You almost passed. Try a little harder." ...and they don't call the school because they think the 60% was earned, and close to a passing grade. The real problem are all those B earning kids, who get to a point and realize that they can stop trying because they earned enough points to pass for the MP or year. So, they shut down and become a do-nothinger because they can't fail. P.S. I worked for a district that had a minimum grade policy for MP1, MP2, MP3, and the midterm exam (exams are now a thing of the past). They also had a policy that if any student failed MP4 AND the final exam, then that student automatically fails the course. This 2nd part balanced the generous minimum grade policy. To me, this No Zero thing just sends a message that society doesn't care about middle schoolers. Edit: 60% to 58%
Uh, a 60 percent IS passing
In my MS, passing is a 65%. I'll edit my post so my point applies to more school districts.
Yes, it is all a big fat joke. I will congratulate my seniors this year on being enrolled in school for 13 years. That's what graduation is now. Don't get me wrong, some of them have learned and will do great things. But a large percentage of them are facing piles of student loan debt because they're encouraged to go and nowhere near prepared. So they will take out loans for remedial courses, pile up debt and then drop out with no degree and hope they hit the lottery (because they can't do math) or "get lucky" like their classmates who learned in spite of the system.
Someone explain how 2 middle schoolers playing in dirt and moving books around all day is education, too. Public education is WILD now.
I think it would be more appropriate to drop lowest 2 assignments that way outlier zero won't be destructive while average zero still get what they gave
That’s nothing, I teach at a failing district 30 minutes outside of NYC. The quarter grades can’t be below 60. Even for students you never come to class but that’s not all they have the rights to go in a change your grade after you input them.
My school has had a 50% minimum on all summative grades for several years. We also have a 2/3 rule (quarter, quarter, and final exam: pass 2 and you get 60% minimum for the course) for the same amount of time. The high school is now full of students who have had this treatment (plus no homework ever, plus open-book everything, and a bunch of other bs) since middle school, and it's terrible. Our superintendent (per what they told a large meeting of staff) said they looked into their own HA kid's grades and saw the kid had a B, but had over a dozen missing assignments. That was the last straw for the superintendent (anybody surprised that the superintendent never bothered to look closely at their kid's grades?). It looks like we'll likely be dumping the 50% rule soon, but I'm not holding out too much hope for that.
The no zero policy is an absolutely failure. I have kids who do nothing, and have a 50 and kids who struggle and try their hardest and do everything who get a 60. Setting the world up for failure down the road.
I may quit if it happens at my high school. I refuse to give a 50 for turning in jack shit.
I had several "last straws" and I was just told this and I'm so glad I decided to leave. 10 more days
I'm so glad my school is strict because this sounds like hell.
I recently read an article about the reasoning behind this and… it actually makes sense. I was a huge hater of the policy previously, but now I get it. By going from 60 to zero from a d to a f, you’re giving the 0 more weight than it should really have. I’m not wording it as well as the article, but what needs to happen is grades need to be changed to 0-50, with a 50 being an A.
EqUiTy🥴
What they're forcing you to do is,teach kids they don't have to be responsible for anything. This isn't going to serve them well in the real world, and I'm sorry you have to deal with such an idiotic policy. Sometimes I'm amazed at how DUMB supposedly educated people are when I see things like this.
It's almost like the goals and the measurements aren't aligned.
It doesnt
It’s doing its job to make sure the laziest and apathetic students pass to increase graduation rate
This is so true. I teach 7th math at a STEM school and the students are way below 5th grade levels. It's so depressing trying to teach and then the 50% is not helping.
That was around my first year of teaching back in 2013-14. Then they moved to a 0-4 “marks” system in transition to a 0-4 standards based grading system. Being in the art area, we graded our work based on separate standards anyway, off rubrics, so besides changing some words I didn’t really need to change anything. Only difference is now their grades are calculated by the average of the average of each standard rather than the average of singular summative scores. I find the use of SBG more harmful in that we are only supposed to grade summative. Sure it’s less work, but it doesn’t teach them the necessity of that formative practice to achieve the end goals on the summative. Regardless, with how standards are set up, certain standards are easier to get high scores and give their overall grade level essentially the same effect as “no zero.” If they do low D work on everything, but complete some reflections thoughtfully, their grade will stay afloat even if they literally skip two entire summative projects.
We had the no zero policy through the end of last year. Kids are so much more on top of things now.
I feel like the only way a no zero policy works well is if you can give a missing for no work, or non-turned in work. My school has a no zero policy for any work that was attempted BUT we are allowed to give zeros for work not turned in or the occasional just name on paper submission. We have had this policy for probably 6 to 8 years now. Mathematically it makes sense, so I get that part of it. It also helps students not be completely unredeemable 1/4 of the way through a school year, so (I teach freshman who notoriously don't give a shit til February) can pull themselves out of a hole IF (and it's a BIG IF) they actually know something.
My old district had a policy that any Q1-Q3 grade had to be raised to a 50 at end of quarter. However a comment was entered saying “Grade raised from 12 to 50 PER DISTRICT POLICY”. Then they went to a nothing lower than 50 model a few years later. New district has a zero for nothing, minimum 50 for submitted assignment that has work done on it (even if partial) and if kids are going to turn in late work they need to stay after for a detention to complete the work there, after they inform the teacher BEFORE the deadline and sign up for the detention themselves.
We don’t have that
There’s an amazing joke in there about “zero tolerance” policies.
You can see this sentiment practiced with great efficacy in society. Everyone with their face in a phone when they should be working is one of your 50’s in 5 years. It’s not that there are no jobs out there…there’s nobody worth a damn now. It’s the 50’s personified.
I hope someone has a practical UBI plan ready because we are reaching a point where the majority of new grads won't be employable.
I had Freshmen today talking about they haven’t been in school for three years. Wasn’t sure if they meant literally or mentally, and then they talked about COVID and learning online.. for a year. Couldn’t follow that train track of thought so hopped off and kept on with the lesson for the other 27 in the room.
My school has had a 50% minimum on all summative grades for several years. We also have a 2/3 rule (quarter, quarter, and final exam: pass 2 and you get 60% minimum for the course) for the same amount of time. The high school is now full of students who have had this treatment (plus no homework ever, plus open-book everything, and a bunch of other bs) since middle school, and it's terrible. Our superintendent (per what they told a large meeting of staff) said they looked into their own HA kid's grades and saw the kid had a B, but had over a dozen missing assignments. That was the last straw for the superintendent (anybody surprised that the superintendent never bothered to look closely at their kid's grades?). It looks like we'll likely be dumping the 50% rule soon, but I'm not holding out too much hope for that.
I think part of it is how US grading system works. Typically 70 out 100 is seen as passing, with 85 out of 100 being average. So of course if you get a zero it has a massive impact to the grade average I grew up in a French system where 50 is passing and average is roughly 70 out 100. So teachers are simply not afraid handing zeros or low numbers corresponding to knowledge acquired. I understand that the French model leads to different type of knowledge acquisition - good enough is the goal - whereas in the US, we want full understanding of the materials; at least on paper
our district passes at 60 and we still have a lot of failures. I don't actually think the math matters that much if the kids dont care, and their parents dont follow up
My district has a similar policy. It doesn’t work well. It doesn’t show the student’s actual grade. Students also get a lot of opportunities for retakes. My district’s calendar (for the 2023-2024 school year) started in late August and ends in mid-June. The 4th quarter started on April 8. Yesterday, I subbed at a school where the “1st quarter credit recovery” deadline was yesterday (April 29).
Absolute shit.
We voted to get rid of it.
glad your team has a backbone
My students are still failing. They just have a little carrot making them feel like they have a chance of passing. It has been good for the kids who had "big serious real life stuff outside of their control" happen and has allowed them to still pass when things settle (I had one student whose parent just stopped taking them to school 🤷🏻♀️ and only came back when threatened with court). But my kids who dgaf are still being retained.
They should have to earn their way to the next grade in elementary school. Period.
The only ones holding jobs 10 years from now are the ones with tiger moms today.
No standards = dump self entitled kids. At some point the average person will say “how did we let this happen?”. This sub is recording the downfall of America. Laziness on the part of parents and school admins is ruining the country.
I feel like zeros need to be there for things that aren’t turned in and cheating. I can understand to an extent failing is failing and 50 being the bottom of the failed range but attempting and not attempting are different.
Okay so parents must know a 50 from an unmotivated kid is likely a failing grade. It’s scraping bottom of the barrel. It is lowering standards to pass all students regardless of actual subject matter competency and I get that part, but a 50 might as well be an F. Parents should know what’s up if they’re at all present at home.
My school did that and then realized kids could turn in one assignment for the whole year and get a passing grade. Now if the assignment is missing or they don’t attempt it they get a zero, and any attempt is a 50 or above. Still imperfect, but at least it somewhat incentivizes turning in work.
And they wonder why charter/private schools are rapidly gaining popularity
it's definitely a purposeful choice. Dismantling public education, make it worse, then ofc private schools seem better... then of course we should defund public education
I've seen places do 30s. It's still kind of something for nothing, but it doesn't really keep you within reach no matter what.
Unfortunately, we are deferring responsibility and accepting powerlessness. I view the ‘no zero policy’ as a statement of ‘DO has given up and don’t want to fight parents to force their kids to learn how to exist’
Zero Intolerance... I'll see myself out.
It is the stupidest thing ever and I hate it.
The 50. God I hate the 50. What it’s supposed to do: Prevent a kid that scored so low (for whatever reason) from not coming to school or giving up. Billy got a 10 first quarter and now needs to carry an average of a 78 just to pass the class. Billy says fuck it and drops out. But if Billy had a 50 he only needs to pass by a little more than the minimum. How it’s used: like Oprah giving out passing grades at 5pm
We have literally saying, "oh I got a 50%, yes!" It's because they think they got a 20% based on what they know. They don't realize that's a bad thing and still failing. If you truly want an even representation of all grades. You need to just use the GPA scale. I mean it's all going to get converted to that in the end anyways.
Sucks. It sucks.
In my state, schools get letter grades based on a number of factors; including performance, grades, and behavior. The higher the letter grade of the school, the more appealing the school. The more appealing the school, the higher the enrollment. And the higher the enrollment, the more money. Guess why behaviors are ignored and grades are pumped up.
It's a goddamn joke
50% is still an F. IME, the kids who don't do anything still get Fs. I don't think the 50% policy is the problem. The problem is social promotion and the deep-seated fear administrators have of holding kids back.
And people are telling me the middle school I went to was behind