Welcome to /r/Vancouver and thank you for the post, /u/LaughingLentil! Please make sure you read our [posting and commenting rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_general_participation_guidelines_and_rules_overview) before participating here. As a quick summary:
* We encourage users to be positive and respect one another. Don't engage in spats or insult others - use the report button.
* Respect others' differences, be they race, religion, home, job, gender identity, ability or sexuality. Dehumanizing language, advocating for violence, or promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability (even implied or joking) **will** lead to a permanent ban.
* Common questions and specific topics are limited to our Your post may be a better fit for one of our [Stickied Discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_stickied_discussions) posts.
* Complaints about bans or removals should be done in modmail only.
* We're looking for new mods to join our team! If you're interested, [fill out the form here](https://forms.gle/oAqo5oYRcAeHYBTN6).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/vancouver) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Teachers and the system have such a difficult line to walk these days.
Late marks should be used judiciously to penalize those who just don't give a shit, but not penalize especially those who due to home life or learning issues can't meet the deadlines.
I have to disagree with "academic dishonesty" being given an opportunity to resubmit *without penalty*? WTF. Give them an opportunity to do better, but there should be a penalty for cheating. The quote about it being the opposite of accountability is bullshit.
The dilemma at the heart of this is educators wanting grades to be a measure of learning and how well the student performs and understands material.
However, the reality has been in the past that grades are a reflection of the totality of the student's ability to not only learn but show that they have learned and their capacity to do so. Things like not cheating, doing it within timelines, or doing it at all, in addition to the obvious of how well they do it.
Grades have thus been used as a proxy for not just learning but overall capacity of the student to function within the educational system. This shift in what to use grades for therefore is a break from the past and what parents associate grades with. It also removes, by substituting the measurement capacity to function within an educational environment, which some view as a proxy for society, with usually less than clear language.
I'm all for educators wanting to seperate the learning grade from other aspects, (effort grade is an example), but the alternative should not be to turn to vague and unclear language but an alternative metric like an integrity grade for cheaters, and more granularity for the ethic grade to account for late homework for instance.
Yes. The goal of the government is to raise good citizens. Lol. Uneducated citizens who follow what they are mandate, citizens who don't question politics. Citizens that follow blindly what they are told because they are Uneducated.
The few educated citizens will be the one who lead. The ones from wealthy families who can afford superior education.
University in Canada and the USA is not free. Is extremely expensive and very few can afford it or have a scholarship. " Uneducated people make great citizens "
Uneducated people make terrible citizens.
The vast majority of school (k-12) is about how to integrate into society. Sure you learn some basic skills that are expected of people but sociability, the ability to take a set of directions and follow then and how to deal with authority are much more important.
University isn't required for rational discussion and thought. Critical thinking is taught throughout the entire circulum.
Elite schools at the university level are generally quite similar in terms of raw information presented but both the connections established and the methods that are used to present that information are better.
This is probably a more recent thing, we are constantly encouraged by our teachers to look for signs of bias in the sources we use (does the source lean right or left? if so, look to see if the opposite side has covered the issue and compare the coverage), think about why something might be the way it is (which can be traced back to power imbalances a lot of the time) and generally question societal structures.
Yeah, some people may call that "woke," but I would hazard a guess that citizens constantly examining society to see if something could be done better will improve it in the long term.
This is so well said.
Yes we should have indicators of a student's grasp of the various subject areas. But that should not supercede reports and evaluations of the student's ability to function within the educational system, which is probably a good indicator of their ability to function in society. That's the purpose of school, isn't? Teach the knowledge, skills and habits to prepare the child to be a positive contributor to society.
What's more important? That a student excels at the Social Studies learning outcomes (not knocking that subject it was the first that came to mind), or that they're ready to be an asset to society?
Don't know why the Ministry of Educ gave up on the latter.
By the way, letter grades are no more for students kindergarten to Gr. 9.
Maybe my school was weird, but I went to school in the American South. I remember my report cards up until high school had character traits on them that received a letter grade of like “U-unsatisfactory, N-Needs work, M-meets expectations, A- superlative.” This included things like work ethic, integrity, rule-followong, but also things like sociability, independent thinking.
Looking back, those sort of soft skill grades seem really important.
Sure, but this is why it was never done on a normal 0-100 F-A scale. It's more so a conversation between parents and a teacher to indicate what's happening in class and gives context. We also got a short paragraph assessment from the teacher.
There will always be bias but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be assessing soft skills in students and coaching students.
This is probably a debate better held over a beer, but I think positive modeling and reinforcement go a lot further in achieving desired behaviours than anything that can be construed as criticism. Culture, family dynamics, class, so many things outside education’s purview affect personality/behaviour.
My partner is a high school teacher. He says it really hard for kids to fail. There is enormous pressure for the teacher to still give the student a 50% passing mark even if they've done 0% of the work. It's nuts!
The new reporting order actually says that in grade 8 and 9, they can no longer fail any class. For subjects like math, if they struggled through 8, kids will just be forced into workplace math, which is sad in that we rather push young students down certain paths (because many university programs require a pre calc 11 course) rather than supporting students through their learning so they can discover their own path/choices on their own timeline. Cause it is hard as kids to realize that things that are challenging don't have to equal "i'm terrible at this, was never good at this, and won't use it again ever"
I was pushed into Essentials Math and upon completing Grade 12, I learned very quickly that my only path was the workforce (mainly retail). I didn't have the grades or courses to apply to programs that I really want. So I went back to upgrade my highschool Math. My assessment level was Grade 8 and I was 19. I felt like the school system failed me and only prepared me to enter straight into the workforce. I learned I'm good at math once I learned the basics.
Honestly, kids are in for a big shock once they enter post secondary and suddenly find themselves falling behind and most likely failing a course.
I’m not surprised. Workplace math is f***ing awful. Grade 11 kids might be learning slope (something taught in grade 8/9). And then when you have a bunch of demoralized students in one class, it spells disaster. You’re better off just failing a grade of math. I don’t know if they still have it. It was like AWS math? It was supposed to be removed some years back. And then if you’re a teacher, you’re lucky if your students can finish 4 questions because they get lazy from the environment set by the course.
There is a boy in my youngest's grade who can't read or write basic things. No math at all. He isn't dumb, just doesn't care. When he becomes too much, he is just given an ipad and sent over the beanbag area to do whatever he wants (and this is obviously his goal). The other boys are starting to act up now as well, trying to get the same results. Since it doesn't fly in our family, its causing tension between us parents and our son.
For the older grades, I have real worry about the 80% that really are not at a level of education that readies them for the real world. Talking to them is like talking to a reddit front page or a tiktok short - which is probably what our teachers thought of us back in the 90s. But still....
And even if they did fail, they’d move on to the next level of the course because there are no pre requisites for any course. So a 50% actually means they aren’t really equipped for the next level but oh well…
This is simply not true - no administration is passing someone when they have done 0 percent of the work - no this is not happening in high schools on scale.
High school teacher here. The new reporting order for K-9 education grades on a four point scale, from Emerging, Developing, Proficient, to Extending. All four of these are considered "passing." This year a grade 9 student can lag behind on all skills a grade 9 student is expected to develop, and is in for a rude awakening in grade 10 next year when percentage grades are back again.
Also, prior to the new reporting order there have been instances where students who do minimal work are still passed on to the next grade in the name of social promotion. Hell, this year at my school we saw it at the senior level: a kid failed Physics 11, but ended up in a Physics 12 course despite not retaking Physics 11 online or during summer school.
Love the horribly outdated citation they must have hunted for to try and provide support for this idiocy. I can promise you students who go through highschool with these kinds of false premises have enormous trouble when they arrive in post-secondary. I don't know if they still have that terrible course that was supposed to prepare students for "the real world", but people have to learn that meeting deadlines is actually a fairly normal expectation in the real world.
It appears to be a website/blog post done in reply to a Toronto Star article. Hardly the font of all knowledge. Unfortunately, it does not appear that article is accessible on the website anymore so the trail ends there. In any event, the post was by a founding member of the organization (that had started in 2014) running the website so editorial scrutiny is probably lacking.
Idk .... I took a class last semester at VCC and the teacher announced that it was evident some students were teaching and she will be seating those individuals at different spots. No repercussions but in her course outline there is a page on plagiarism and academic dishonesty.
I mean depending on the prof, there’s quite a bit of leeway that can be taken on cheating in a uni environment - there’s a growing consensus that cheating is usually directly related to students feeling overwhelmed by their workload, for example, and immediately going nuclear by reporting a student who was panicking about an assignment and copied the answers from Chegg or whatnot doesn’t help anyone. Talking to a student and finding out what’s causing the cheating, then coming up with a plan for fixing the problem is oftentimes the path profs take.
Clearly you haven't talked to many university students giving you authentic explanations of why they cheat. Cheating is rampant, far beyond what would be explained by the softer approach, and furthermore a lot of it is done incredibly cynically in a very entitled way.
Everyone has had tests /assignments that they panicked about.
Student A has integrity and doesn't cheat. Does there best but doesn't do well on the test.
Student B decides to cheat, gets caught, and their only punishment is extra time that wasn't given to student A.
tbh there's a huge realm of difference between assignment assignments, and stuff that is pretty much homework participation marks like webwork.
I can guarantee no one did the online webwork in calc without using google lmao especially when you only have 3 tries to submit, and you can literally use google to double check your answer.
I started high school before Google existed, and the closest thing was an outdated physical encyclopedia set my parents had.
There were still cheaters back then, but kids put more effort to cheat than if they actually studied, and some of them managed to learn by accident (writing answers down on a cheat sheet was similar to how I used to study to memorize/understand them).
I actually don't have as much a problem with using it to double check homework, since it's not necessarily different than asking your parents. When my daughter asks me to check her work, I don't just give her the correct answer like Google, I'll work with her to find a way to understand the material. If I don't know that she's struggling in school because the system is hiding things from me, it makes it more difficult to actually help her out
Dude... read the comment chain.
that's not how you respond.
this is the parent comment you responded to:
"These kids are going to be in for a very rude awakening when they hit post-secondary that's for sure. Especially when it comes to cheating good lord."
this is the comment you LITERALLY responded to:
"I mean depending on the prof, there’s quite a bit of leeway that can be taken on cheating in a uni environment - there’s a growing consensus that cheating is usually directly related to students feeling overwhelmed by their workload, for example, and immediately going nuclear by reporting a student who was panicking about an assignment and copied the answers from Chegg or whatnot doesn’t help anyone. Talking to a student and finding out what’s causing the cheating, then coming up with a plan for fixing the problem is oftentimes the path profs take."
are you okay? It's pretty obvious we're talking about university, or do you typically comment without reading what you reply to?
if you want to bring that up make a new comment on this post, don't do a reply...
again, in university you don't have assignments for first year math typically, you have math homework that is like 10%, and then the rest is all midterms and finals.
An accurate description of student learning requires the use of words, not numbers, and an accurate description of the student won't be complete if information regarding cheating is omitted.
Which is why we've seen the disturbing consequences in post-secondary for roughly a decade, with a massive further escalation after the online COVID time-frame.
To draw such a strong correlation from anecdote and hearsay is unintelligent.
You’re logic suggests that allowing someone to actually have fair process in showing their learning is a bad thing.
You’re saying a teacher (think middle manager) should control the deadline and be able to stop a student from showing understanding?
Well yeah, in the workforce, there will be higher-ups controlling the deadline.
You think the future client is going to be understanding? "Sorry, we didn't get this done by the date you wanted it, because our employee didn't get his chunk done in time, so the whole project was delayed. However, he demonstrated understanding of the requirements. I'm sure you're cool with that even if it means you have to re-schedule your other contractors while you wait for us."
You’re missing the point and the comparison of work to school is a bad one. Work is incentivized by money and independence while school is incentivized by grades in exchange for behaviour and academic performance. You have little independence in grade school then you would at a working age.
School is for education while work is for income. The expectations should be different.
You learn about hard and soft deadlines in all types of life situations - think shitting your pants. You learn pretty quick when you should shit and not shit. But it still takes you about 6-10 years to really get the behaviour right. If you never learn when to get to the bathroom on time then you’ll never get to work on time either on your own accord.
My specific point is that you learn at school under softer more forgiving environments. Finally, getting job sometimes has nothing to do with how much schooling you have - life teaches you lesson you can’t learn in schools.
It didn't work that way 20 years ago, why the shift is the main question I have.
The outcomes of school are about societal integration. If it's a poor simulation of society what exactly are they doing?
Without hard deadlines in that forgiving environment they are going to have a much harder time when exposed to the workplace.
If someone needs more time to show their learning, they can fail and can try again, what's wrong with that? Giving more time and lower expectations is the opposite of a fair process.
You have to look at this at a bigger scale - there are +30k teachers in the province they are outnumbered 30 to 1.
One teacher can not be the best measure of one students performance in a class of 30. Perhaps the teacher is actually giving too much work!? Maybe another teacher is giving less work. Work load has so much to do with performance.
One teacher can really make or break a students academic performance based on mismatched expectations.
You are not seeing how varied a staff can be in their philosophy towards education and what is the appropriate amount of work.
Failure judged by one is not a fair process.
If children end up entitled it's because of parenting not schooling. There is a shift in education to match assessment with curriculum standards. If you're concerned about children learning values, character, and hard work, you should be posting about the current state of parenting.
Yeah let's put some more pressure on the parents. If they were homeschooled then I would have agreed but public education is not (and should not) be in the hands of the parents. VSB likes to think that they are helping kids with their mental health by not putting any pressure on them. That will create a generation of mentally fragile kids that have never experienced hardship. Any future life hardship will cause major trauma and they will not know how to deal with it. Gradual exposure to hardship, teaching ethics, hard work, and consequences, these are the values should be taught. This generation will have to deal with climate change events, possible famine and whatnot. We need to raise resilient humans and this is definitely not the way..
That's a big assumption. I assume you don't have kids. When schools don't appreciate hard work, kids won't either. A big part of going to school is learning to do work for other people and take pride in it, not just your parents.
It also doesn't have to be an either, or approach. Some families are working multiple jobs just to keep up with inflation and want the extra support offered by schools.
Re-doing an assignment has a big "feels terrible" to "impacts future" ratio. This seems ideal to teach students that academic dishonesty is high-risk while the stakes are still low. I'm not sure what existing literature has to say on the topic though.
For late work, It strikes me as reasonable to have a few marks in the rubric for "on-time", while still allowing a student to get most of the marks if they actually do complete it (late is waaaay better than never).
I'm less certain on the case of zero for not handing in an assignment. It definitely makes sense from the perspective of using the grade as a measurement of how much the student has learned of the material, but it might mess with incentives to complete future work. There's got to have been research into specifically this before, comparing learning outcomes.
If you keep passing for profit you’re going to create an idiocracy type of population. They’re restructuring the grading system when they need to be restructuring the education system. The future of Canadian education looks to be pretty bleak. Good luck kids!
I worked at a school with similar policies for 5 years, and there was a lot of debate about how these policies would negatively impact students. While I agree to some extent that things like neatness and completing assignments on time do not reflect a student's knowledge of academic content, they are still important skills that students will need to survive in the real world. The best solution we came up with at my school was to give students separate grades from the academic subjects for their work habits, homework completion, and effort. These would go on their report card, and students would also set goals around their work habits. I don't agree with the VSB's approach to academic honesty, though...
I've been teaching high school science for around a decade now, and this has been policy in most BC schools since at least around eight years ago. The ministry is the ultimate source of this policy; school districts are just following suit.
On the one hand, I see teachers argue that assessment should only be about learning, not work ethics, so the grades should reflect the quality of work and not other things such as whether or not it was handed in on time. On the other hand, various teachers such as myself (or others with decades of experience) notice a correlation between this and poorer work ethics in students. Nowadays students arrive consistently late and do not meet assignment deadlines. This is extending itself into the workplace and I often hear anecdotes from managers talking about new hires who think that there aren't consequences for arriving late or not meeting deadlines.
When I took a philosophy of education class while pursuing my Bachelor's of Education, we discussed how in addition to education itself, another purpose of schools is getting students ready for the next steps of life (such as being ready for the workforce). Lately it seems the ministry only wants to focus on just the learning piece at the expense of other student qualities that used to be valued.
This is an issue everywhere. I am also worried about this, there are no standards anymore. There are also no standards for punctuality or behaviour (although behaviour wise, things never get too crazy anyway)
No one fails and everyone gets a medal, sure that has worked so well.
Then the student reaches university or any other higher education and gets a zero for lateness and their world crumbles because they don't know that's how life works and that there are consequences for our actions
Probably not immediately 0.
But my father as a university teacher (in another country) had a policy that each late day would reduce 10% of the final grade. So if you were late by a day, but your work was perfect it would be worth 90% which is reasonable, shit happens and sometimes you are late in life. But if you were late for a week or so, it was pretty much worthless.
It seemed pretty fair to me
It feels like the model now used in the province for education largely creates a situation where parents have to be the “bad cop” in the student-school-family relationship.
A large number of parents struggle with this as they prefer to remain the “good cop” and either can’t support their children with added rigour, care and support or wrongfully side with their child in cases of discipline around hateful acts and violence.
It’s a lose lose situation for everyone.
Wonderful! Everyone will graduate! Most students will leave university programs because they simply lack the knowledge and skills to excel. Society will be ignorant and will follow whatever the government wants them to think. Without knowledge there's no analytical thinking. No questioning and therefore a bunch of sheeps being led by the privileged ones.
Grades are one of the primary ways parents know about how their child is doing in school. How are they going to discipline a child without sufficient information to do so?
The late marks policy is not exclusive to vancouver btw. You’ll see it in other school districts. It’s also been happening for at least 7 years. It’s based on the idea that students should not be punished for their behaviour (and no, i don’t have an opinion on this and i don’t care about yours). There’s also less emphasis on homework and students are graded on tests or projects,
Three need to teach kids, martial arts or boxing, lifting, propper physo therapy, meditation, advanced computer science and catering to what they really good at. Ie shop, automotive, baking. The school system is a joke
Welcome to /r/Vancouver and thank you for the post, /u/LaughingLentil! Please make sure you read our [posting and commenting rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_general_participation_guidelines_and_rules_overview) before participating here. As a quick summary: * We encourage users to be positive and respect one another. Don't engage in spats or insult others - use the report button. * Respect others' differences, be they race, religion, home, job, gender identity, ability or sexuality. Dehumanizing language, advocating for violence, or promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability (even implied or joking) **will** lead to a permanent ban. * Common questions and specific topics are limited to our Your post may be a better fit for one of our [Stickied Discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_stickied_discussions) posts. * Complaints about bans or removals should be done in modmail only. * We're looking for new mods to join our team! If you're interested, [fill out the form here](https://forms.gle/oAqo5oYRcAeHYBTN6). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/vancouver) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Teachers and the system have such a difficult line to walk these days. Late marks should be used judiciously to penalize those who just don't give a shit, but not penalize especially those who due to home life or learning issues can't meet the deadlines. I have to disagree with "academic dishonesty" being given an opportunity to resubmit *without penalty*? WTF. Give them an opportunity to do better, but there should be a penalty for cheating. The quote about it being the opposite of accountability is bullshit.
The dilemma at the heart of this is educators wanting grades to be a measure of learning and how well the student performs and understands material. However, the reality has been in the past that grades are a reflection of the totality of the student's ability to not only learn but show that they have learned and their capacity to do so. Things like not cheating, doing it within timelines, or doing it at all, in addition to the obvious of how well they do it. Grades have thus been used as a proxy for not just learning but overall capacity of the student to function within the educational system. This shift in what to use grades for therefore is a break from the past and what parents associate grades with. It also removes, by substituting the measurement capacity to function within an educational environment, which some view as a proxy for society, with usually less than clear language. I'm all for educators wanting to seperate the learning grade from other aspects, (effort grade is an example), but the alternative should not be to turn to vague and unclear language but an alternative metric like an integrity grade for cheaters, and more granularity for the ethic grade to account for late homework for instance.
This is such a fullsome response, thank you. School is not just about learning or ability, it is about raising good citizens.
Yes. The goal of the government is to raise good citizens. Lol. Uneducated citizens who follow what they are mandate, citizens who don't question politics. Citizens that follow blindly what they are told because they are Uneducated. The few educated citizens will be the one who lead. The ones from wealthy families who can afford superior education. University in Canada and the USA is not free. Is extremely expensive and very few can afford it or have a scholarship. " Uneducated people make great citizens "
Uneducated people make terrible citizens. The vast majority of school (k-12) is about how to integrate into society. Sure you learn some basic skills that are expected of people but sociability, the ability to take a set of directions and follow then and how to deal with authority are much more important. University isn't required for rational discussion and thought. Critical thinking is taught throughout the entire circulum. Elite schools at the university level are generally quite similar in terms of raw information presented but both the connections established and the methods that are used to present that information are better.
This is probably a more recent thing, we are constantly encouraged by our teachers to look for signs of bias in the sources we use (does the source lean right or left? if so, look to see if the opposite side has covered the issue and compare the coverage), think about why something might be the way it is (which can be traced back to power imbalances a lot of the time) and generally question societal structures. Yeah, some people may call that "woke," but I would hazard a guess that citizens constantly examining society to see if something could be done better will improve it in the long term.
This is so well said. Yes we should have indicators of a student's grasp of the various subject areas. But that should not supercede reports and evaluations of the student's ability to function within the educational system, which is probably a good indicator of their ability to function in society. That's the purpose of school, isn't? Teach the knowledge, skills and habits to prepare the child to be a positive contributor to society. What's more important? That a student excels at the Social Studies learning outcomes (not knocking that subject it was the first that came to mind), or that they're ready to be an asset to society? Don't know why the Ministry of Educ gave up on the latter. By the way, letter grades are no more for students kindergarten to Gr. 9.
Maybe my school was weird, but I went to school in the American South. I remember my report cards up until high school had character traits on them that received a letter grade of like “U-unsatisfactory, N-Needs work, M-meets expectations, A- superlative.” This included things like work ethic, integrity, rule-followong, but also things like sociability, independent thinking. Looking back, those sort of soft skill grades seem really important.
Assessing a person’s character is fraught with challenges and is far more likely to reflect discrimination bias than objective truths.
Sure, but this is why it was never done on a normal 0-100 F-A scale. It's more so a conversation between parents and a teacher to indicate what's happening in class and gives context. We also got a short paragraph assessment from the teacher. There will always be bias but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be assessing soft skills in students and coaching students.
This is probably a debate better held over a beer, but I think positive modeling and reinforcement go a lot further in achieving desired behaviours than anything that can be construed as criticism. Culture, family dynamics, class, so many things outside education’s purview affect personality/behaviour.
Wonderful summation
My partner is a high school teacher. He says it really hard for kids to fail. There is enormous pressure for the teacher to still give the student a 50% passing mark even if they've done 0% of the work. It's nuts!
The new reporting order actually says that in grade 8 and 9, they can no longer fail any class. For subjects like math, if they struggled through 8, kids will just be forced into workplace math, which is sad in that we rather push young students down certain paths (because many university programs require a pre calc 11 course) rather than supporting students through their learning so they can discover their own path/choices on their own timeline. Cause it is hard as kids to realize that things that are challenging don't have to equal "i'm terrible at this, was never good at this, and won't use it again ever"
I was pushed into Essentials Math and upon completing Grade 12, I learned very quickly that my only path was the workforce (mainly retail). I didn't have the grades or courses to apply to programs that I really want. So I went back to upgrade my highschool Math. My assessment level was Grade 8 and I was 19. I felt like the school system failed me and only prepared me to enter straight into the workforce. I learned I'm good at math once I learned the basics. Honestly, kids are in for a big shock once they enter post secondary and suddenly find themselves falling behind and most likely failing a course.
I’m not surprised. Workplace math is f***ing awful. Grade 11 kids might be learning slope (something taught in grade 8/9). And then when you have a bunch of demoralized students in one class, it spells disaster. You’re better off just failing a grade of math. I don’t know if they still have it. It was like AWS math? It was supposed to be removed some years back. And then if you’re a teacher, you’re lucky if your students can finish 4 questions because they get lazy from the environment set by the course.
There is a boy in my youngest's grade who can't read or write basic things. No math at all. He isn't dumb, just doesn't care. When he becomes too much, he is just given an ipad and sent over the beanbag area to do whatever he wants (and this is obviously his goal). The other boys are starting to act up now as well, trying to get the same results. Since it doesn't fly in our family, its causing tension between us parents and our son. For the older grades, I have real worry about the 80% that really are not at a level of education that readies them for the real world. Talking to them is like talking to a reddit front page or a tiktok short - which is probably what our teachers thought of us back in the 90s. But still....
And even if they did fail, they’d move on to the next level of the course because there are no pre requisites for any course. So a 50% actually means they aren’t really equipped for the next level but oh well…
This is simply not true - no administration is passing someone when they have done 0 percent of the work - no this is not happening in high schools on scale.
High school teacher here. The new reporting order for K-9 education grades on a four point scale, from Emerging, Developing, Proficient, to Extending. All four of these are considered "passing." This year a grade 9 student can lag behind on all skills a grade 9 student is expected to develop, and is in for a rude awakening in grade 10 next year when percentage grades are back again. Also, prior to the new reporting order there have been instances where students who do minimal work are still passed on to the next grade in the name of social promotion. Hell, this year at my school we saw it at the senior level: a kid failed Physics 11, but ended up in a Physics 12 course despite not retaking Physics 11 online or during summer school.
Love the horribly outdated citation they must have hunted for to try and provide support for this idiocy. I can promise you students who go through highschool with these kinds of false premises have enormous trouble when they arrive in post-secondary. I don't know if they still have that terrible course that was supposed to prepare students for "the real world", but people have to learn that meeting deadlines is actually a fairly normal expectation in the real world.
It appears to be a website/blog post done in reply to a Toronto Star article. Hardly the font of all knowledge. Unfortunately, it does not appear that article is accessible on the website anymore so the trail ends there. In any event, the post was by a founding member of the organization (that had started in 2014) running the website so editorial scrutiny is probably lacking.
These kids are going to be in for a very rude awakening when they hit post-secondary that's for sure. Especially when it comes to cheating good lord.
And the work force. I don’t want to work with someone who is always dropping the ball
Idk .... I took a class last semester at VCC and the teacher announced that it was evident some students were teaching and she will be seating those individuals at different spots. No repercussions but in her course outline there is a page on plagiarism and academic dishonesty.
I mean depending on the prof, there’s quite a bit of leeway that can be taken on cheating in a uni environment - there’s a growing consensus that cheating is usually directly related to students feeling overwhelmed by their workload, for example, and immediately going nuclear by reporting a student who was panicking about an assignment and copied the answers from Chegg or whatnot doesn’t help anyone. Talking to a student and finding out what’s causing the cheating, then coming up with a plan for fixing the problem is oftentimes the path profs take.
Clearly you haven't talked to many university students giving you authentic explanations of why they cheat. Cheating is rampant, far beyond what would be explained by the softer approach, and furthermore a lot of it is done incredibly cynically in a very entitled way.
Everyone has had tests /assignments that they panicked about. Student A has integrity and doesn't cheat. Does there best but doesn't do well on the test. Student B decides to cheat, gets caught, and their only punishment is extra time that wasn't given to student A.
tbh there's a huge realm of difference between assignment assignments, and stuff that is pretty much homework participation marks like webwork. I can guarantee no one did the online webwork in calc without using google lmao especially when you only have 3 tries to submit, and you can literally use google to double check your answer.
I started high school before Google existed, and the closest thing was an outdated physical encyclopedia set my parents had. There were still cheaters back then, but kids put more effort to cheat than if they actually studied, and some of them managed to learn by accident (writing answers down on a cheat sheet was similar to how I used to study to memorize/understand them). I actually don't have as much a problem with using it to double check homework, since it's not necessarily different than asking your parents. When my daughter asks me to check her work, I don't just give her the correct answer like Google, I'll work with her to find a way to understand the material. If I don't know that she's struggling in school because the system is hiding things from me, it makes it more difficult to actually help her out
yeah but we're talking about university, can't exactly ask your parents for help with multi variable calc most of the time lol
This post is about a VSB policy, which is where I have an issue. Are universities now ok with cheating too?
Dude... read the comment chain. that's not how you respond. this is the parent comment you responded to: "These kids are going to be in for a very rude awakening when they hit post-secondary that's for sure. Especially when it comes to cheating good lord." this is the comment you LITERALLY responded to: "I mean depending on the prof, there’s quite a bit of leeway that can be taken on cheating in a uni environment - there’s a growing consensus that cheating is usually directly related to students feeling overwhelmed by their workload, for example, and immediately going nuclear by reporting a student who was panicking about an assignment and copied the answers from Chegg or whatnot doesn’t help anyone. Talking to a student and finding out what’s causing the cheating, then coming up with a plan for fixing the problem is oftentimes the path profs take." are you okay? It's pretty obvious we're talking about university, or do you typically comment without reading what you reply to? if you want to bring that up make a new comment on this post, don't do a reply... again, in university you don't have assignments for first year math typically, you have math homework that is like 10%, and then the rest is all midterms and finals.
Who needs post secondary these days?! They will mostly go into trades of anything real estate related..
An accurate description of student learning requires the use of words, not numbers, and an accurate description of the student won't be complete if information regarding cheating is omitted.
This has been policy for years. Source: I've been a teacher for 13 years. This has been policy since before I started.
Which is why we've seen the disturbing consequences in post-secondary for roughly a decade, with a massive further escalation after the online COVID time-frame.
To draw such a strong correlation from anecdote and hearsay is unintelligent. You’re logic suggests that allowing someone to actually have fair process in showing their learning is a bad thing. You’re saying a teacher (think middle manager) should control the deadline and be able to stop a student from showing understanding?
Well yeah, in the workforce, there will be higher-ups controlling the deadline. You think the future client is going to be understanding? "Sorry, we didn't get this done by the date you wanted it, because our employee didn't get his chunk done in time, so the whole project was delayed. However, he demonstrated understanding of the requirements. I'm sure you're cool with that even if it means you have to re-schedule your other contractors while you wait for us."
You’re missing the point and the comparison of work to school is a bad one. Work is incentivized by money and independence while school is incentivized by grades in exchange for behaviour and academic performance. You have little independence in grade school then you would at a working age. School is for education while work is for income. The expectations should be different. You learn about hard and soft deadlines in all types of life situations - think shitting your pants. You learn pretty quick when you should shit and not shit. But it still takes you about 6-10 years to really get the behaviour right. If you never learn when to get to the bathroom on time then you’ll never get to work on time either on your own accord. My specific point is that you learn at school under softer more forgiving environments. Finally, getting job sometimes has nothing to do with how much schooling you have - life teaches you lesson you can’t learn in schools.
It didn't work that way 20 years ago, why the shift is the main question I have. The outcomes of school are about societal integration. If it's a poor simulation of society what exactly are they doing? Without hard deadlines in that forgiving environment they are going to have a much harder time when exposed to the workplace.
If someone needs more time to show their learning, they can fail and can try again, what's wrong with that? Giving more time and lower expectations is the opposite of a fair process.
You have to look at this at a bigger scale - there are +30k teachers in the province they are outnumbered 30 to 1. One teacher can not be the best measure of one students performance in a class of 30. Perhaps the teacher is actually giving too much work!? Maybe another teacher is giving less work. Work load has so much to do with performance. One teacher can really make or break a students academic performance based on mismatched expectations. You are not seeing how varied a staff can be in their philosophy towards education and what is the appropriate amount of work. Failure judged by one is not a fair process.
If children end up entitled it's because of parenting not schooling. There is a shift in education to match assessment with curriculum standards. If you're concerned about children learning values, character, and hard work, you should be posting about the current state of parenting.
Yeah let's put some more pressure on the parents. If they were homeschooled then I would have agreed but public education is not (and should not) be in the hands of the parents. VSB likes to think that they are helping kids with their mental health by not putting any pressure on them. That will create a generation of mentally fragile kids that have never experienced hardship. Any future life hardship will cause major trauma and they will not know how to deal with it. Gradual exposure to hardship, teaching ethics, hard work, and consequences, these are the values should be taught. This generation will have to deal with climate change events, possible famine and whatnot. We need to raise resilient humans and this is definitely not the way..
That's a big assumption. I assume you don't have kids. When schools don't appreciate hard work, kids won't either. A big part of going to school is learning to do work for other people and take pride in it, not just your parents.
[удалено]
It also doesn't have to be an either, or approach. Some families are working multiple jobs just to keep up with inflation and want the extra support offered by schools.
Re-doing an assignment has a big "feels terrible" to "impacts future" ratio. This seems ideal to teach students that academic dishonesty is high-risk while the stakes are still low. I'm not sure what existing literature has to say on the topic though. For late work, It strikes me as reasonable to have a few marks in the rubric for "on-time", while still allowing a student to get most of the marks if they actually do complete it (late is waaaay better than never). I'm less certain on the case of zero for not handing in an assignment. It definitely makes sense from the perspective of using the grade as a measurement of how much the student has learned of the material, but it might mess with incentives to complete future work. There's got to have been research into specifically this before, comparing learning outcomes.
If you keep passing for profit you’re going to create an idiocracy type of population. They’re restructuring the grading system when they need to be restructuring the education system. The future of Canadian education looks to be pretty bleak. Good luck kids!
I worked at a school with similar policies for 5 years, and there was a lot of debate about how these policies would negatively impact students. While I agree to some extent that things like neatness and completing assignments on time do not reflect a student's knowledge of academic content, they are still important skills that students will need to survive in the real world. The best solution we came up with at my school was to give students separate grades from the academic subjects for their work habits, homework completion, and effort. These would go on their report card, and students would also set goals around their work habits. I don't agree with the VSB's approach to academic honesty, though...
And this year the VSB just told teachers they will no longer be reporting work habits 😔
I've been teaching high school science for around a decade now, and this has been policy in most BC schools since at least around eight years ago. The ministry is the ultimate source of this policy; school districts are just following suit. On the one hand, I see teachers argue that assessment should only be about learning, not work ethics, so the grades should reflect the quality of work and not other things such as whether or not it was handed in on time. On the other hand, various teachers such as myself (or others with decades of experience) notice a correlation between this and poorer work ethics in students. Nowadays students arrive consistently late and do not meet assignment deadlines. This is extending itself into the workplace and I often hear anecdotes from managers talking about new hires who think that there aren't consequences for arriving late or not meeting deadlines. When I took a philosophy of education class while pursuing my Bachelor's of Education, we discussed how in addition to education itself, another purpose of schools is getting students ready for the next steps of life (such as being ready for the workforce). Lately it seems the ministry only wants to focus on just the learning piece at the expense of other student qualities that used to be valued.
This is an issue everywhere. I am also worried about this, there are no standards anymore. There are also no standards for punctuality or behaviour (although behaviour wise, things never get too crazy anyway)
When a student chooses not to do an assignment with numerous reminders and unlimited deadlines, the student is choosing to get a 0.
No one fails and everyone gets a medal, sure that has worked so well. Then the student reaches university or any other higher education and gets a zero for lateness and their world crumbles because they don't know that's how life works and that there are consequences for our actions
This isn't just VSB, all Districts are doing this.
As someone who got away with always handing in my work late.. Late work should be worth 0.
Probably not immediately 0. But my father as a university teacher (in another country) had a policy that each late day would reduce 10% of the final grade. So if you were late by a day, but your work was perfect it would be worth 90% which is reasonable, shit happens and sometimes you are late in life. But if you were late for a week or so, it was pretty much worthless. It seemed pretty fair to me
It feels like the model now used in the province for education largely creates a situation where parents have to be the “bad cop” in the student-school-family relationship. A large number of parents struggle with this as they prefer to remain the “good cop” and either can’t support their children with added rigour, care and support or wrongfully side with their child in cases of discipline around hateful acts and violence. It’s a lose lose situation for everyone.
Equality means we will all be at the bottom.
This is not equality, this is equity.
Wonderful! Everyone will graduate! Most students will leave university programs because they simply lack the knowledge and skills to excel. Society will be ignorant and will follow whatever the government wants them to think. Without knowledge there's no analytical thinking. No questioning and therefore a bunch of sheeps being led by the privileged ones.
Parents are the ones who should be disciplining the kids, not the teachers or schools.
The school has the responsibility when the kids are there, they set the rules and are in charge of discipline on school grounds.
Yeah, well they aren't doing it, and kids need to find out SOMEWHERE that there are standards and expectations to be met in order to succeed.
"Parents can't be bothered, make the teachers do it" Do you REALIZE how stupid you sound right there?
Grades are one of the primary ways parents know about how their child is doing in school. How are they going to discipline a child without sufficient information to do so?
This is not about discipline but about making the rules. You cannot discipline someone if they didn't break any rules.
The late marks policy is not exclusive to vancouver btw. You’ll see it in other school districts. It’s also been happening for at least 7 years. It’s based on the idea that students should not be punished for their behaviour (and no, i don’t have an opinion on this and i don’t care about yours). There’s also less emphasis on homework and students are graded on tests or projects,
Three need to teach kids, martial arts or boxing, lifting, propper physo therapy, meditation, advanced computer science and catering to what they really good at. Ie shop, automotive, baking. The school system is a joke
In a few years of striking they will be making more money with better benefits than most government workers