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Comment by alanfranz | Hacker News Reader

I think that the point is not about lowering standards; it's about preventing unrelated variables to enter the equation.

Examples:

  - A lot of redundant homework is assigned, quantity over quality. Some students with external duties (e.g. family, work) are just unable to deliver all the homework, and thus get lower grades, even though less homework would be enough to demonstrate ability in a topic;
  - Deadlines are set too close to an homework availability date, so students with external duties are sometimes unable to meet them;
  - Students in affluent families could be helped by third parties with their homework; it's hard to verify that;
  - Students that do a bad homework or fail an exam should be able to retake it, since it's easier to have a "bad day" if your family has issues.

The point is measuring actual student ability, not busywork throughput or the willingness to meet arbitrary deadlines.

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And to not penalize students (.i. homework grades) if they have to work to help support their family, or have so many other trauma issues. GP here really seems to have an idealized version of how school works, ignoring all facts that actually influence learning and stuff (.i. socioeconomic ones). Homework just compounds those problems, and I'd also say there's no such thing as "objective assessments" as well.

> And to not penalize students (.i. homework grades) if they have to work to help support their family, or have so many other trauma issues

Just to explain my point: if a student has worse skills, whatever their reason is, they should have lower grades. That's what a grade is for.

Then, you may want to address the causes of such low grade.

What you don't want to do is penalize students for arbitrary reasons like deadlines, absence from school, et cetera.

> Just to explain my point: if a student has worse skills, whatever their reason is, they should have lower grades. That's what a grade is for.

This, I absolutely agree with. Last year I implemented a standards-based system. If you could prove to me you knew the material, you got the points. If you learned it later and proved to me you knew it then, your grade changed.

I did do homework grades (I was required to have one grade a week, and there's no way I could do enough continuous assessment), but it was solely participation and as long as you turned it in and tried (.i. didn't cheat), you got full credit.

Generally, I completely agree you don't want to penalize them for arbitrary reasons; to me, that includes homework. I had to do it, but as long as it was turned in eventually, and honestly attempted, they got full credit (it was like 10% the overall grade). To me, that's how it should be done.

Basically, I completely agree and didn't mean to seem as if I was disagreeing with you!

Just wanted to say thank you for providing actual, reasonable things to think about. As someone who is very skeptical of movements to ignore grading/etc, as are many others here, it's nice to have good counterarguments against my default view.

(That said, and agreeing with the above completely, I think many people are saying things that are far less reasonable than everything you say above.)

Thank you! Your point is reasonable.

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