What do grades mean?

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," the flight attendant began. "Your captain this evening learned only 70% of what he needed to know in order to fly this complicated jet airplane. Enjoy your flight!"

Or how about the following scenario:

As the nurse wheels your gurney towards the operating room, you notice the surgeon's certificate on the wall stating that she learned only 73% of what she needed to know to operate on you. The next certificate stated that the anesthesiologist learned only 68% of what he needed to know to put you under safely, but an extra-credit book report allowed the teacher to round his final grade average up to 70%. 

Frightening, isn't it? But we don't give it a second thought when it comes to grades in school. Too many students and parents alike think that if the students can only get that passing grade, they're okay. But have they learned and retained the skills needed to function proficiently in life and in the workplace?

Grades are supposed to represent a percentage of how much a student has actually learned or mastered, but do they truly? 

• What if a student copied off another student's work? 
• What if one student did the majority of the work for a group grade while everyone else in the group coasted? 
• What if the parent did the homework or the big project for their child? 
• What if a research assignment was simply copied and pasted or even plagiarized the night before it was due? 
• What if the teacher had to constantly coax, threaten, or beg a student to turn in something before the end of the six weeks, and finally accept late work and a poor effort just so the student received a grade?

Little or no learning has taken place in each of those situations, yet the student received a grade. 

Is this the kind of workforce we want to do business 

with in all areas of our lives? 

Everyone pays when the learning process is missed in the pursuit of 'making the grade.' Grades are important in one's educational career, but they're meaningless in the workplace if the skills and knowledge are absent. 

One must be careful to not miss the learning 

in the pursuit of the grade. 

And yet it happens daily.

Educationese

Did you know 'educationese' is an actual word? According to Webster's Dictionary, it is defined as the jargon used especially by educational theorists. It's first known usage occurred the year I was born-- 1954. Darn. I just dated myself. I honestly thought I had personally discovered it a few years ago. Darn. I just revealed a little more about myself than I should've. But educationese is an ever-evolving language with new buzz words added each year.

Some of the catch phrases I've heard a lot in the past few years include differentiated instruction/ learning, best practices, collaboration, concept mapping, remediation, scope & sequence, benchmarks, core curriculum standards, rigor, strategies, individual learning styles, inclusion, accommodation, modification, interdisciplinary approaches, and so many more. And don't get me started on the acronyms-- ADA, ADD, ADHD, AP, ARD, ADA, AS, AT, and that's only part of the A's!

I can't tell you how many times I sat through inservice training and workshops attempting to understand this foreign language educators were supposed to be fluent in. And I don't meant to discount the effort the trainers put into their latest methods or programs or gaggle of new buzz words and phrases they've adopted to cure our education woes. But much of it is so far removed from real life and meaningful conversations, and especially the process of preparing kids for life.

c. Donna Van Cleve

Can you imagine a high school or college team-- or especially a professional team functioning like this illustration? And yet we see this every day in education. But does real life use these terms and practices? Very few companies will modify their employee job descriptions to accommodate what's lacking in our children's knowledge, skills, and abilities, and yet in education we make those modifications daily for students to be able to pass courses and especially standardized testing. So are we truly attempting to prepare children for life or are we simply attempting to appease the NCLB* god? Check off all the requirements down the assembly line, slap a diploma in their hand, and boot them out the door. Done.                                                                                                      

Thanks to so many required mandates outside of local control that have little to do with actual teaching, our teachers are given an impossible job that eventually drives many of them out of the field, or lessens the quality of education because of the unattainable requirements burying them. If they want to have a personal life, or be a mother to their children or spouse to their mate, or have time to get involved in community, charitable, or church activities, something has to give. Otherwise, the demands of the public education professional is all-consuming. I asked a number of teachers to think about how much of their day (and a teacher's day goes far beyond that last bell) is actually spent teaching or facilitating learning, and the results were from 20 to 50%. That wasn't a scientific study, but it does tell me that teachers who are passionate about teaching are frustrated with all the record-keeping and modifications and behavioral issues they're required to document daily that steals time away from actual teaching.

And since most classes have a wide spectrum of students at different levels of learning and styles of learning, teachers have to differentiate every lesson to include accommodations for visual, kinesthetic, and auditory learners, as well as simplify tests and lessons for those students with learning disabilities. And again, it all has to have a paper trail. It exhausts me just to think about it, and yet teachers are doing it every day. I don't know how they keep their sanity and health maintained, or even have a personal life. I have to tell you that some have very little life outside of school. They're on campus at seven and work until seven at night. Then they are asked to work extra-curricular events in the evenings and on the weekends. The teacher/coaches work even longer hours. And the band instructors I know have a monster schedule of before and after school practices as well as regular night and weekend events. I marvel at their accomplishments, but I know, too, that it's taking its toll on them. 

I'd like to resurrect some old terms for today's schooling. Getting back to the basics is a good phrase. I think we ought to cut out half of what we're requiring kids to learn (much of which they don't remember anyway until it's applicable to them), and focus on mastering the basics. Can they read and comprehend well? Can they communicate and write well enough to make an impact on their world? Are they capable of solving real-life problems? Have they been exposed to other cultures and ways of thinking? Have they learned to take risks and to persevere and to think creatively? Do they know how to give their best effort regularly, and to take responsibility for their learning? Do they appreciate the efforts of those who came before? Do they know how blessed they are to live in a country where its Constitution protects their freedoms? Do they know where they've come from? Have we prepared them to not only survive in life, but to thrive well enough to help others along the way? Are they healthy and know how to stay fit? Have we taught them to think and act beyond their I-me-world? Has school prepared them well enough for them to know what they want to do with their lives?  

Common sense and the freedom to use it is another phrase I'd like to see used again. Local control is something else that needs to be reinstated. Too much of what educators are required to do is mandated from outside the school district. And I understand why, but trying to fix a problem in a weak district by piling more directives on every district tends to create unintended consequences of pulling down the whole education system. NCLB started off with good intentions, but we've all seen it weaken education in general when school systems are forced to teach to the test to maintain a standard based on the results of that single test. 

Low student-to-teacher ratio is another phrase I'd like to see in our public schools. And a secure plan to fund education along with the freedom to use it as they see fit. Since when have we seen that in place? But along with adequate funding, the powers that be must allow school districts the freedom to do things differently if what they're doing is not working. Freedom is another word I'd like to see in our school systems. I'd like to see the freedom to act, speak, or express one's opinion on a school campus without fear of reprisals. Can't tell you how many times I've seen just the opposite of that in the education environment. 

But I've gone to meddling now. I'll expound more about that in novel #9...  

*No Child Left Behind

A New Education Model

I asked a high school counselor if anyone was tracking the students after they graduated to see how well they were doing. She told me no. I realize Texas education has these check-off requirements for a high school diploma, primarily a student's record showing evidence of a certain number of credits of required core and elective courses completed, and especially passing the exit level of the latest acronym for education mastery. Historically, that includes TEAMS, TABS, TAAS, TAKS, & now STARR, which completely fouls up the alliteration. But is anybody concerned if all these educational efforts and requirements are working?

Students receive a diploma, but has it prepared them for life? I've observed that many are well-trained in making a grade, but are retaining little learning. I've seen students-- even the supposed "good students" lie and cheat and plagiarize. I used to see a group of students in the public library where one student did the homework and every else copied off of him. I regularly saw students come in the school library the day before or day of a big assignment due and whip out something sloppy at the last minute, counting on the teacher's overwhelming number of students to mean as little time as possible is taken to grade it. I overheard a high school government teacher tell a guest speaker, "Assume they know nothing," to give him direction on what to talk about. I laughed, thinking he was joking, but then the students couldn't even answer the simplest questions about our leadership or highly publicized current events happening in the world. All of that was related to school. How are those things preparing an ethical, informed, and well-trained workforce?

Last year I visited with an outstanding teacher from a foreign country who told me he saw his first multiple choice test when he was nineteen-- that most all of his tests up to that point were taken in a composition book requiring essay answers. His teachers had no doubt of his knowledge about a subject or lack thereof when he had to write comprehensively about it. But that type of assessment takes a tremendous amount of time to grade, and when public school teachers have 150-200 students to teach, test, and evaluate, along with all of the record-keeping and behavioral issues they have to deal with, the day literally hasn't enough hours for them to do that adequately. They're just trying to survive. Thank you, Texas legislators. That's the same mentality as fixing a traffic jam problem by adding lanes to a highway by painting more stripes on the same size pavement.

But back to post HS graduates. I keep hearing about students getting into financial trouble immediately, especially with the over-use of credit cards (it's free money, I've heard some students say) or over-extending themselves with vehicle loans and/or living above their means in housing, shopping, and recreational activities. I see young adults in fast food and retail businesses that can't seem to handle money or recognize when a bill is incorrect. I've learned from employers that some of their young employees would simply not show up for work if they decided to quit, leaving the business in a lurch to fill empty shifts. I was talking to a man whose son graduated 16th in his class from the highly-rated Round Rock ISD, and he told me his son was not prepared for college-- that he really struggled his first year. If all of these students received a high school diploma, then according to the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills), they were exposed to knowledge and skills that should've prepared them for some level of the workforce or college. Why didn't that knowledge and those skills stick?

I wrote a fable about learning for life after observing so many students who seemed to be clueless that school was supposed to be preparing them for life. Too many couldn't make the connection between classroom learning and real life, and we as educators are not doing nearly enough to change that. Everything in the classroom needs to have real life application, otherwise, why are we wasting time teaching them stuff that they will never use, much less remember until it's applicable or meaningful to them? How can we make it applicable and meaningful to them now?

We need a new education model. We need to shift more of the responsibility of the learning on the student's shoulders-- make them clock in like a real job. School is their job at this time of their lives. Maybe instead of a grade, they should be given a paycheck showing their earning capability based on the effort they made in school. Some wouldn't be bringing home a paycheck, and they need to know that is their future unless they start applying themselves. But too many are counting on the government check each month-- low-performing students have actually told me that.  With the way our government is borrowing in order to keep spending more and more money with little or nothing in return, the coffers are empty, but nobody's addressing that. A crash is inevitable since our leaders can't seem to work together to solve this massive problem. We've set ourselves up for chaos when folks who've never learned through home OR school to take responsibility for themselves and their families... suddenly have to.

We need a new education model when it comes to college, too. The debt for student loans is staggering, and too many students aren't getting a good return for the money invested when it comes to the kind of jobs they're getting, if any. I hear that industries are saying they have to go out of the country to find highly skilled workers. What's wrong with that picture? Are our colleges not preparing students to be highly skilled workers?

Let's really think outside the box here. Is college even necessary to fill these positions? Most companies have to train their new employees anyway, why not go a step further and invest in training non-degreed people for these highly skilled jobs with the agreement that they commit to a certain time frame of working for them in exchange for the training. The military services and medical schools already do that. Hands-on training is the best type of training. Those efforts warrant creating new types of diplomas or certificates that would open doors for them in other jobs. A 'college' diploma shouldn't be the end-all in determining the consideration of a good employee on a resume.

I know this is over-simplifying a very complex matter, but something needs to change. Part of the problem is that we get in a traditional mindset of doing something a certain way because it's always been done that way-- whether it's working or not. I've been guilty of that, too, usually in education situations so over-whelming it was all I could do to keep my head above water. I didn't have the time or energy to stop and even question whether things could be done in a better way-- especially when it came to preparing children for life. That's where many of our educators are at this point. Worse, that's where many of the mandates are, too, and local administrators and teachers have little power to change that when they do figure out how to improve something.

One place to start is to look beyond that diploma at the end to see if all those years of investment of time and money and teaching efforts actually paid off in our students' lives. I think if we talked to former students, we'd be surprised to hear what they had to say, and we could definitely learn something from it. Then maybe we don't want to see the results of our efforts because we feel powerless or just too tired to change it.