But on the A- and extra credit issue, I never understood the point of rigid grading schemes. I've taught at a college level, and I always give students the chance to improve their grades if they want to put in additional work. To do otherwise seems like saying "nope, even if you learn more and improve to the point of A-level knowledge, you're still getting a lower grade".
My wife is a college psychology professor and is fairly strict with her grading scheme. She makes this clear on the first day of class and spells it out directly, in bold, on the syllabus.
Her rationale is this: The likelihood of you asking for extra credit, or excuses, or various "grade grubbing" activities is largely influenced by your socioeconomic background. Students who make special grading requests overwhelmingly skew white and female and are more likely to take place at institutions that take students from more affluent backgrounds. She doesn't want her grading inadvertently biased against males, non-whites, or less affluent students so her grades are final. Despite this inflexibility, her student evaluations are sky-high.
In any case, I get around the whole "grade grubbing" issue by having my policy of "extra" work spelled out, also up front on the syllabus. No one gets anything extra just for bugging me about it. Basically it amounts to allowing homework assignments to be re-done (once). A single quiz grade can be replaced by doing some fairly difficult extra problems. No makeups on the midterm and final, but a research project can be done to get up to 5 points on their final grade. Beyond that I hold office hours and happily spend them further helping students with anything they're stuck on.
Short of (provable) extenuating circumstances, that's about it. I even ask for a police report for students claiming "car accident" for things like missing a quiz. (In one case, a student told me there wasn't one because it was just a minor accident that scratched the side view mirror... I pointed out that an accident like that wouldn't have prevented them showing up to class, even if it was a few minutes late.)
You also say that a student who does poorly didn't put in the time. In some cases yes, but broadly it's simply not true. I've analyzed LMS data at large scales: Students who get F's don't put in much time on average. But students who get D's, on average, are putting in just as much time as the students getting A's and B's. The F students I can't do much about, with some notable exceptions, they mostly don't want to help themselves. But the rest are teachable.
For me and my like minded colleagues, it's not that we expect ourselves or others to do more work. It's that our vision of what the job's baseline work requirements entail goes beyond a rigid grading process that implicitly assumes that learning takes place in discrete bits of time, uniformly for all students.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that teachers can't dynamically adjust their attention across students as the class progresses based on grades. But at the same time teachers should not just be the pawns of parents. A parent shouldn't be able to just demand extra credit work for their child. This sort of special exception is something that should only be made by the teacher, at the teacher's complete discretion, if they legitimately think there's a truly good reason for treating that student differently.
Giving students the chance to learn is important. Expecting them to actually master some skills within a given timeframe is also important. I have a relative in a European system in which changes have been made to allow students to take tests on a class for the next two years. The students are not better off -- it sounds miserable for all.
I'm not suggesting that the vast majority of teachers would be tempted or give in to bribery. But it sets up perverse incentives and the optics are terrible. It's also unfair to students who didn't do well and whose families can't afford to pay the teacher to grade their extra credit assignments.
My third daughter played in the band, and we decided that we could finally afford $20 a week lessons from one of the instructors. She's in the top band and got to play in the county competitions. She's had alot more opportunity.
I don't personally think she's significantly better, even though the lessons have helped her notice certain shortcomings more quickly. I do think she's noticed more by the band leaders.
If little Jimmy wants to get into Princeton, he should study.
Donations and connections work much more reliably. Work gets you into les Grandes écoles in France, their model is different.
A+ Student has demonstrated that they have exceeded a firm grasp of the subject. (How do you measure to 11 on a scale of 1-10?)
A Student has demonstrated that they have a firm grasp of the subject. (makes sense, this means they know their stuff.)
A- Student kinda has a firm grasp of the subject. (WTF?)
Now apply that silliness to B, C, and D. A,B,C,D,F is enough. Excellent understanding, Good understanding, General understanding, Poor understanding, Does not understand.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grading_systems_by_country#Rus...
I saw once a 2+!
In life there are things you won't always get second chances for.
The problem is the absurd college process that way overemphasizes clearly inflated grades in a ridiculous race to get into college. It's a shame what kids have to go through these days.
Why should students be coddled instead of being prepared for the real world? I have a high school student who is always getting better grades because of “extra credit” and “make up tests”. I cringe every time he does it.
Often times there is homework, multiple tests, projects, etc.
If you fail your job multiple times I highly doubt you will be progressing in your career. Just because you aren't fired doesn't mean you aren't losing out in some way.
What I find interesting is that people like to talk about how much harder the real world is than school... but that just isn't my experience.
At work? as far as I can tell, 70% means I get a pretty good raise. A really good raise if one of the things I got done was really impressive.
(that is one of the weird things about school for me; At work? if you really hit one out of the park, that matters. In school? you have to be within 10% of maximum all the time if you want to do well academically... and going above that maximum doesn't really help you.)
At work? If you aren't good at something, but are really good at other things? they give the things you are terrible at to other people. In school? they make you spend all your time on that thing you are terrible at.
(I mean, I totally understand that people have different experiences of school and of work, and I also understand that I have an unusually good experience of work... but all this "real world" stuff makes me laugh, just 'cause it is soo much easier for me to keep a job where I work with people that got good grades at good schools than it is for me to... get into good schools at all.)
That’s very true. My last four jobs were supposedly for a “full stack developer”, but it didn’t take long for managers to realize that when I told them up front, my weakness was on the front end and any pages I design look like something you would see on Geocities was not an exaggeration. Once they realized I was telling the truth, they stopped assigning me front end work.
In high school, I was forced to take Art classes - hilarity ensued. I’ve never been in favor of participation trophies but the B I got was definitely a “participation grade”.
There were at least 3 classes I recall from university where I really didn't learn anything of substance past the midterm. I managed to pull a B+ or an A- by turning in every single assignment on time, doing a decent job on the project, and applying test-taking tactics on the final. For at least one of those classes I wish I could slow the pace and spread it out into the next semester. But the way it was structured at my university, it as "all-or-nothing" on the curriculum within an artificial period of time.
In most of these cases you can't really scale back; you're either ready by the deadline or you're not, with catastrophic consequences for not being ready.
I’m honestly unsure whether extra credit is even a thing outside the US and it’s near abroad in Canada. I don’t think there’s a single country in Eurasia without a school leaving exam with summative assessment, some of which have a coursework component.
A better way to handle this case is to drop the student's lowest grade, or maybe even the lowest couple of grades.
You should learn more but doing it for extra grades misses the point. These kids learn you only learn for rewards.
Isn't it 'rigid' to give only a limited amount of time( end of yr or whatever) for that chance. Seems like saying "nope, even if you learn more and improve to the point of A-level knowledge, you're still getting a lower grade".