An education rant

I'm quite tired of endless debates about how to improve our schools. Some issues seem hard to resolve, while other solutions appear fairly obvious. I am pretty darned sure, though, that the Dallas (TX) Independent School District does NOT have the answer. The Dallas ISB is upset that so many freshman (as high as 20%) fail to advance to 10th grade. The solution? Come up with some new rules. The highlights:

•Homework grades should be given only when the grades will "raise a student's average, not lower it."

•Teachers must accept overdue assignments, and their principal will decide whether students are to be penalized for missing deadlines.

•Students who flunk tests can retake the exam and keep the higher grade.

•Teachers cannot give a zero on an assignment unless they call parents and make "efforts to assist students in completing the work."

•High school teachers who fail more than 20 percent of their students will need to develop a professional improvement plan and will be monitored by their principals. For middle school the rate is 15 percent; for elementary it's 10 percent.

Also note, this is on top of last year's innovation that no student can be assigned a "six-weeks grade" lower than a 50.

I don't know just how to express my dismay. I did, though, enjoy some of the rationalizations offered up by ISD big wheels. One said, "We want to make sure that students are mastering the content [of their classes] and not just failing busy work." Well that's a noble goal, but according to the new rules, only 40% of a student's grade is determined by test grades and at least 20% must be determined by "class work." "Class work" sounds a lot like the dreaded "busy work" to me

I find the whole thing depressing, but this is not really an unexpected outcome of the much ballyhooed goal of standardization that is sweeping the education industry these days. Think about it. When you standardize are you going to standardize "up" to a more difficult level that fewer students will master or "down" to give yourself improved, measurable outcomes? Looks like Dallas has decided.