Eduholic

Last week, Fairfax County changed its grading policy to adopt a “ten point” scale. In other words, instead of needing a 94 for an A and a 64 to pass, under the new system 90 or better bags an A and a 60 gets you over the hump.

The school board finally deserted its flimsy rationale that it was “setting a high bar” in the face of pressure from sharp-elbowed parents concerned that their children were somehow disadvantaged in the college admissions process, especially compared to applicants from neighboring school districts like Arlington and Montgomery that use metric scales. (At my current school, the grading scale is even tighter than the one Fairfax is deserting: a 94 only gets you a B+. It’s a non-kerfluffle for us because we record and report our grades, both on report cards and transcripts, as numerical averages only.)

The irony with the sound and fury is that, in the end, it doesn’t signify much. The notion that holding the line on a high A versus a low one means watering down standards implies that there is a single, objective standard applied in all cases when distilling student achievement into a letter grade. That’s bosh.

Standardized tests, with all their flaws, can at least claim to be more objective than grades. Grades are whatever teachers say they are, with virtually no checks or balances other than a rather generic and distant scrutiny from the administration and—here’s the saving grace-- each teacher’s own professional integrity.

Don’t get me wrong. Grades mean something. With good teachers, they are blisteringly accurate representations of achievement in a particular class. But exactly what they mean is not uniform: not from classroom to classroom within one school, and certainly not across buildings or districts. There will always be the legendary tough grader and the push-over, and every flavor in between. Grades are individual recipes concocted by each teacher from ingredients they value. Some teachers prize performance on tests and quizzes; others on papers; some care most about a student’s ability to synthesize material and respond with an original thought.

A dispassionate study of how letter grades are really used would reveal that they are many things: not just a measure of achievement, but also reward, feedback, motivator. In short, both carrot and stick. The one thing they inarguably are not is objective. Even the most intractable accountants, after all, make what are ultimately subjective choices: how many total points for the report and how many for the quiz? How heavily weighted is the homework versus the test?

No discussion of grades is ever dispassionate, of course, hence the recent parent push for a kinder, gentler A in Fairfax. Only time will tell if the goal-- to improve kids’ chances to get into colleges-- will be achieved. I suspect colleges are savvy enough to take the new information in stride, and will probably continue to let in about the same (still pretty high) numbers of FCPS kids as they have in the past. Their prerogatives for diversity, geographic and otherwise, will require this recalibration.

On the other side, will the change result in rampant grade inflation, the watering down of courses, and, by extension, the end of the free world? I’m agnostic here, too. Teachers will continue to govern their classroom economies, jiggering the point values so as to dole out A’s with enough scarcity to keep students honest.

Beyond the new math, getting an A means what it’s always meant: you are among the best. One more immutable truth? Making the grade means just as much to teachers as it does to students and their parents.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

In another corner of Teacher, editor Anthony Rebora is moderating a forum right now asking teachers a timely question:

On January 20, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the nation's 44th president, in an event that is expected to draw unprecedented numbers of people to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. How do you plan to address the inauguration in your classroom or integrate it into your lessons? Is your school making any special arrangments to allow students to watch and talk about the event? What do you hope students will get out of coverage and discussions of this historic transfer of power?

By the time you read this, I may be squirreled away with the wife at a little inn on the Eastern Shore, but crowds and freezing temperatures have not prevented me and my students from discussing this historic changing of the guard in the natural ebb and flow of our class. I wanted to share how the event has seeped into our classroom discussions of classic literature, giving them and it an entirely new cast.

My 8th graders completed The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass about the time Obama won the primary. I had them read from a piece called "In our Lifetime" by Henry Louis Gates (The Root, November 4, 2008) because I wanted them to see the connection between a history book past and the present in which we live. Here's a longish excerpt in which Gates traces the race’s traipse up the long staircase:

From Frederick Douglass, who visited Lincoln three times during his presidency (and every president thereafter until his death in 1895), to Soujourner Truth and Booker T. Washington, each prominent black visitor to the White House caused people to celebrate another "victory for the race." Blacks became frequent visitors to Franklin Roosevelt's White House; FDR even had a "Kitchen Cabinet" through which blacks could communicate the needs of their people. Because of the civil rights movement, Lyndon Johnson had a slew of black visitors, as well. During Bill Clinton's presidency, I attended a White House reception with so many black political, academic and community leaders that it occurred to me that there hadn't been as many black people in the Executive Mansion perhaps since slavery. Everyone laughed at the joke, because they knew, painfully, that it was true.

Now, as the inauguration takes place, we are nearly done with our next class read, what you may remember as the innocuous ode to fatherhood, To Kill a Mockingbird. Billy Holiday's Strange Fruit gave us chills when we discussed lynching, and Langston Hughes' poem, “Cross,” helped us understand the fear of racial mixing harbored by whites in Maycomb County, Alabama at the time of the story. For good measure, we’ve also taken a look at "I Hear America Singing" and Hughes' answer to Whitman, "I, Too, Sing America". Hughes’ words in particular have an indescribable resonance as an African-American assumes the highest office in the land:

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

The simple message I hope my students will get out of our discussions about this literature, and the inevitable connections to the historic transfer of power they raise? Tomorrow is today. And at last, America is keeping its promise.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 7:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here’s some stuff about building a book Annie Lamott never told us in Bird by Bird, her quickly classic writer's autobiography. Fortunately, I’ve got Andrea from Long Island to help me craft a marketable proposal. Over spring break, I knocked out a chapter outline listing the sections and what I want to put in each one. The organizing device is a metaphor, a suitable approach for a guy like me who has a license plate on his jeep that says METAAAA.

To keep you in suspense, or at least keep you reading this post, I will cagily withhold the controlling image for now. For loyal readers here’s a clue: it has more to do with a river than a mountain, and you can cook blueberry cobbler on it while it’s burning.

As I mentioned last post, the raw material will be furnished by this blog and its predecessor, “Certifiable?”, so I don’t think I’ll be over-exposing to say that Natty Boards figure prominently. (I might never get the sixty grand I set out for in the first place, but one way or the other I’ll get paid for that year’s hard labor.)

As to the proposal itself, there are quite a few other elements beyond a description of what I’ll be writing about; one I’m working on now is my platform. In it, I explain how I can help sell the book. And you’re it, at least a major plank. A few pieces in the Post help, too. (For How-to’ers following along at home, I mapped the yellow brick road from clipless to published most recently when giving the 18-minute talk of my life to some local teacher researchers).

And then there’s my old friend, the writing project. I’ve sung its praises from Capitol Hill to here, most full-throated when I was teaching writing courses for teachers at TJ, in Arlington, and at George Mason. Suffice to say it’s one of my favorite teacher things. Conveniently, it’s also a national network of like-minded teachers to whom to hawk.

I hope other old friends can help, too, like my mentor in education writing, Jay Mathews. We’ve agreed to disagree before over esoteric questions like what’s the best high school in the world, but he’s been a lodestar during my peripatetic journey from public school classroom (one leg of which he wrote about in Supertest, the true story of the IB program at Mount Vernon High School) to private school Dean’s desk. New friends, too, a fresh crop every year, might want to hear my twice-told tales, namely those pounding their heads against National Boards for the first time.

I may mill or salvage a few other planks, but you get the idea. It’s not just what but who you know, not to mention who wants to know what you know. So, after sixteen years of grading papers and writing about it, it's time to take Annie's advice and get to work on that - - itty first draft.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)