An article in the New York Times Week in Review section tells the story of Ellis Middle School, where the teachers, after examining four years of data, discovered that the pupils earning As and Bs often did worse on end-of-year tests than those who habitually received Ds and Fs. ?Over time, we began to realize that many teachers had been grading kids for compliance?not for mastering the course material,? the principal, Katie Berglund, said. ?A portion of our A and B students were not the ones who were gaining the most knowledge but the ones who had learned to do school the best.? Ellis has since enacted a system of ?standards-based grading? in which missed homework, half-complete assignments, tardiness and truancy and poor classroom conduct will be noted but ?will not hurt a student's grade.? Such standards-based practices, the Times points out, are catalyzed by concerns about preparing youngsters to work in the modern ?knowledge economy? and about making ?college readiness? a paramount goal (as the president so urges).
The impulse is to applaud. Certainly pupils should be graded on how well they understand academic material, not how well they suck up to their teachers. But then, alas, we remember the real world, where adults suck up to their bosses and colleagues and coworkers in all but the rarer cases, where what one knows, what one says, is usually less central than when and how and to whom he says it. Perhaps the brown-nosing, apple-for-the-teacher-toting tots and teens deserve their As?
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow