Reply to Is it time to end the 50% rule in math?

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Reply to "Is it time to end the 50% rule in math?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why does the 50% rule matter again?[/quote]

It doesn't.  I have no idea why OP is so concerned about other people's children passing with Ds.[/quote]

It is the biggest question of our time!!! OMG![/quote]

These must be middle schoolers.   Some of us don't want to support you when you grow up.[/quote]

That's why we needs the 50% rule![/quote]

The reason that the 50% rule is a problem is that it is misleading.

Grades are not the goal of school. Learning is the goal. Grades are just a rough indicator of whether that learning is taking place.  Having a 50% minimum when the student knows 0% of the content may support their grade, but it sabotages learning by indicating that the student knows more than they actually do. In order to fix the problem, people need to recognize the true extent of the problem.

MCPS seems more invested in preserving their reputation as “one of the best school systems in the country”  than to actually educating kids. When the methods MCPS uses are unsuccessful, rather than changing course to fix the problem, they change metrics to hide the problem.  So, the grading system which parents use to evaluate their child’s learning progress involves:

homework which is often checked for completion rather than correctness
home that when it is actually graded has a 50% minimum
tests that can be retaken for a higher grade
finals that were abolished because too many students were failing

That’s not even counting writing assignments where teachers are supposed to only focus on a few issues at a time rather than identifying all problems (which would be too discouraging). But at least their papers get a lot of peer review/editing from peers who may not know any more, if as much, as the original writer. [/quote]

This is not true because what is assigned and how it graded is rather arbitrary, so 0 vs 50 carries minimal useful information. The useful information is "what the kid doesn't know" which is easy to read directly from the  graded work, without the averaging formula.[/quote]

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