As some of you may know, my daughter Robyn is part of an inaugural class of kids at a new Advanced Studies Magnet program... which means that she's a guinea pig for how this program will work in the future... and there have been some bumps in the road...
I just finished talking to a friend who has a different perspective from me on the program... she also has a child in Robyn's class, but also has an older child who has already finished middle school and is at the Academic Magnet high school .... and her concern is that the marking scheme for some of the ASM classes is too tight, that one mistake creates a situation where a student drops from their average grade level to the one below and that the rules are getting tighter about late work and assignments so that our sixth graders are working harder than her high schooler...
And it has me thinking - what is more important at this point... getting through the work that is on the books or is it getting the understanding of what they need to accomplish...
My problem is, and always has been, that grades are somewhat arbitrary and mostly meaningless quantitative assignments that may or may not be an adequate measure of what someone knows... and lets face it - everyone has bad days, life happens... should there be room in a quantitative world for a little humanity?
I look at my husband, the university professor, who still accepts papers and assignments late with good, and sometimes not so good, excuses from students and gives six in class assignments with the knowledge that he will drop the lowest mark ... and this is UNIVERSITY...
So the roundabout question here is... should I say anything to the one teacher (2 courses) about the inflexibility of his grading scheme and how it may not be serving any really good purpose... or should I leave it well enough alone?
It's a fine balance for me - because one of the things I've said about the program going in, was that I wanted my child to know about the realities of finding failure and being challenged... but by the same token I would now be going and asking that 'reality' take 'real life' into account...
Thoughts?
