I say we get rid of middle schools altogether.

Ed just called.

On the train he had a chat with a distinguished academic, a Brit.

Her daughter is in middle school, and is doing badly. As the mom put it, 'my very bright daughter who is getting bad grades.'

The mom just wrote a paper, start to finish, for her daughter.

The grade?

C-

Ed said, "Very few Brits who've become distinguished professors can't write."

update: Ed now says it was a C+, not a C-. He also talked to the professor again, and learned that the only reason she'd written the paper was that her daughter was completely overwhelmed with work that night. There was no way she could finish everything, so the mother wrote the paper and the daughter did everything else.



Ed gets a B-

So Christopher just handed in his first paper to his new English teacher.

Ed worked closely with him on it.

He didn't write it. He read Christopher's rough draft and made comments, as a teacher would do, and as this teacher does.^*

Then Christopher revised.

Ed checked grammar, punctuation, paragraph structure, and topic sentences.

The paper came back yesterday with a grade of 80.

I better try my hand on the next one. See if we can get that baby up to 83 or 84.

[update: ok, bad idea ]



my Secret Plan

This reminds me of my Secret Plan.

Back when Christopher got his two Ds from she-who-shall-be-nameless and was asked, in front of the class, 'Are you trying to do the work at all?' I mentioned that Christopher would not be writing any more papers for this teacher.

What I didn't say was that, henceforth, I would be writing Christopher's papers for this teacher.

Ed and I agreed on that course of action the day he wrote his email to the principal.

My plan was to write all of Christopher's papers, start to finish, collect my Cs and Ds, and then, at the end of the school year, publish the whole lot of them on the internet - or, better yet, publish the whole lot of them on the internet and write an article about my experience.

Bestselling author flunks middle school English.

No!

Make that Bestselling author with glowing reviews flunks middle school English.

That works.

I would have done it, too.



at Princeton

Ed told me a great story from his Princeton days.

He met his first wife there. In one of her history courses, she got stalled; just could not bring herself to write the paper that was due.

Finally a professor friend of theirs, also a historian, wrote it for her. I find that shocking, but there it is. This was a famous professor; I think he's well-known & respected to this day. (Come to think of it, he may have been a Brit, too.)

When Ed read the paper he told his girlfriend, "This is too good, you can't hand this in."

She handed it in anyway.

She got a B+.



grade inflation for children who are struggling, grade deflation for children who aren't

I'll write a serious post about this at some point, but that's for later. Suffice it to say that, from where I sit, the notion that there is massive 'grade inflation' in American schools has it exactly backwards. We're experiencing grade deflation. We have a child who does better work at a younger age than either of us ever did, and he's getting worse grades. Much worse.

Other parents have said the same.

I don't know why this should be. But I have to consider the possibility that Grading Hard is another form of false rigor.

You know the curriculum is rigorous because the kids are getting Bs, not As. Or Cs and Ds, not Bs.

As things stand, the system is filled to overflowing with bad incentives.

A behaviorist would tell you that 'incentives' operate mostly outside conscious awareness. That's certainly what I believe.

There are many, many incentives in our school system - perhaps especially in well-financed school districts like my own - to look like you're offering a rigorous, high-quality curriculum whether you are or not.

It would be a miracle if schools hadn't responded to these incentives - and it would be a miracle if they had any idea that they have responded to these incentives.



alternative hypothesis

OK, this makes more sense (from Ken & Steve) [update: this makes sense, but it isn't what's going on in Irvington]:

Ken:

My theory is that in courses where there is subjective grading (most courses outside of math and science) a student's grades are mostly determined by his academic reputation.

[snip]

I transferred schools often as a kid -- in 5th grade, in 7th, and in 10th. Every time I transferred, my grades would always dip a little (I'd get more Bs than A's) until the teachers got to know me. After a quarter or so, they'd always return back up to where they'd always been. I basically I had to re-prove I was an A student before the teachers handed out A's again.

Then there was the time in senior year of high school where I had to take a lower track class (religion I believe) because it was the only class that I could fit in my schedule and even then I had to go seven periods straight through without a lunch. For the first half of the year, the teacher knew who I was and knew I was in his class and graded me accordingly. But, he left after the first semester and a new teacher taught the course. He was new so he didn't know me. I was just another non-college bound kid to him and he didn't exactly have high expectations of the class. Needless to say, he gave me the lowest grade that semester. This wasn't a class of A students; these were mostly B students and they deserved Bs.

Then there was the time in college when I gave all my psych class papers to my friend who was taking the same class two years after I took it (different teacher though). I got all As in that class, don't know whether they were deserved or not. He got out with Cs using the same papers that got me As. Go figure.

Steve:

This is the competitive ice skating grading philosophy. Some skaters can never win no matter how well they do. It's kind of like a running average grade.

wicked thought for the day

This is reminding me of that famous social psych experiment where perfectly normal people checked into mental hospitals as patients with psychiatric diagnoses, and then acted normal.

All of their normal behaviors, IIRC, were interpreted by staff as acting-out or psychotic. (NOT FACT-CHECKED)

Some writer-parent with time on his/her hands ought to write all his/her kid's papers some year as an experiment.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS PERSON WILL NOT BE ME.

I'd love to see someone do it, though.



update: fact-checked

"On Being Sane in Insane Places"

I was right.

After the 'pseudo-patients' were admitted to the psychiatric hospital, all acted sane. None of the doctors picked up on it, but some of the patients did:

The pseudo-patient's sanity went undetected. They spent an average of 19 days (range of 7 to 52 days) on the ward, before being released. When released, they were diagnosed as being `schizophrenic in remission' not as being sane. Some visitors and patients detected the pseudo-patients' sanity (35 out of 118 patients).

^* I must add this: Christopher's new English teacher is lovely, and is teaching a serious course. Christopher comes home nights and reads me the notes he's taken; he's shown me the grammar and spelling they're working on (excellent); I've read the writing instructions she's given them (also excellent). She's even working on his handwriting, which is almost enough in and of itself to put her in my pantheon. Her grading may be stricter than I think right (we'll see), but she is teaching and Christopher is learning. Perhaps even more importantly, he's motivated to learn. In her class, he wants to do his best. UPDATE 9-27-2006: She was a pretty harsh grader, but Christopher was able to improve his work over the course of a semester. The comments at rate my teacher are interesting.


no grade inflation in the suburbs
grade deflation in Irvington
grade deflation in the suburbs, part 2
is there a dangerous myth of grade inflation?

gradedeflation



-- CatherineJohnson - 31 Jan 2006

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