The Chicago Tribune reports on the newest socialist scheme in government schools:
Your kid comes home from school with an A in math and reading, a B in science and a D in history. Pretty easy to understand, right? Good marks in math, reading and science; got to buckle down and do better in history.Are you a bad parent if you send your kids to government schools?
Now, imagine if your kid came home with something called a "progress guide" that contained no letter grades, instead listing a series of "competency dates" that mark the point when your kid mastered a given concept. Squishier, right? Not as black-and-white as an A or a D.
An elementary district in Downers Grove adopted the latter approach this year for math grades for K-6 students and science grades for seventh- and eighth-graders. To varying degrees, other school districts in the Chicago area, and across the country, have begun moving in the same direction.
It's called standards-based grading, and it's predicated on the idea that student evaluation should be all about a child's mastery of core academic concepts, omitting from overall grades other traditional elements of the educational experience, such as homework completion and classroom participation.
