A fight is brewing at my grandkids school district

[Ms. Toad]

8. This is an old re-kindled argument. Went through it in my school district in the 70s and 80s.

Let's say a school district is on semesters (just to paint the best argument for this scheme). Whether you pass the year (or have to retake the class) depends on whether your average, at the end of the year, i above 60% (or whatever the cutoff is for passing).

If you don't bother to turn a thing in 1st semester and earn 0%, why even bother doing anything second semester? The highest you can earn for the year is 50% (0% + 100%)/2 = 50%. So you're stuck with kids who have no hope of passing that you ave to try to motivate to work during the second semester - even though they know they will be retaking the class.

So the goal was to avoid taking away all hope from students who were doomed to fail, no matter what they did.

Obviously, the more grading periods, the less this makes any sense.

My argument to the contrary was that I had students who were working as hard as they could, and couldn't manage to earn much more. It was unfair to reward the goof-offs by giving them almost the same grade as those who were working their hardest.

There are other ways to address the problem:

Go to a 4.0 grading system (where there isn't a huge point range in what is failing (0-1, as opposed to 0-59). Create a look-back system: Promise students who steadily improve their performance that they will only be penalized 1 letter grade for 1st grading period performance, etc.