Whatever, Whenever, Always Better Grading

A conversation recently overheard on the parking lot of a shopping mall beneath a dense cloud of pungent smoke:

It's Like So Cool, Dude!

The kids are talking about their future and how the Dallas schools are going to prepare them for adulthood and “real” life by helping them avoid failure.

Now take a moment to peruse this “defense” of the Dallas Independent School District’s new grading policy. This should take care of educational problems in Big D for the foreseeable future. Why didn’t someone think of this before?

Inmates Running the Asylum

Did you get that? Teachers are mandated to accept late assignments without penalty. That should instill a strong sense of responsibility among the students and reinforce lessons of consequences for their behavior. It will carry through and make them much better corporate citizens in the future. It’s the route to assured success for graduates. Due dates are simply suggestions and whenever you get around to it is all right.

Don’t bother to study. Take the exam and you might squeak through without doing any reading or review. No harm, no foul, however if you fail. You just get to take it again and the only thing that can result is your grade goes up. Scores can never go down and failure is not an option…for the teachers.

Think you might get a zero on an assignment? Don’t worry, that isn’t allowed. The teacher has to track down your meth-head parent at the honky-tonk and get their coordination to assist you in succeeding. Think that’s gonna happen?

Kids will have plenty of time for their friends at the mall, since the total of all homework from all teachers and all courses can’t exceed one hour. Imagine all of those teachers gathering to try to see who gets to assign more than ten minutes of work tomorrow.

Those nasty old serious teachers will have to adjust their standards since they can’t fail more than 10% of the kids regardless of how lazy or undisciplined or inattentive or truant they might be. So, let’s all get together gang and take a dive in algebra. If we all suck together we all pass. Mediocrity isn’t the goal anymore. Now we can be totally dissolute. Dallas already has more than 80% of their high school students reading at below the 40th percentile. That should take care of the problem quite nicely.

Somehow I don’t see Supt. Michael Hinojosa getting a huge pat on the back from any conscientious parents that might still reside in Dallas. This is clearly a socially misguided attempt to reduce failure rates for the pathetic DISD schools but without instilling any sense of responsibility. I sincerely hope that within a week there are crowds of thousands in the streets outside of his office demanding his head on a pike.

Over the long term such a policy will first generate a migration to available private and parochial schools in the community. In a slightly longer period there will be middle-class flight from Dallas neighborhoods to more rational suburban school systems. About the same time there will be an exodus of competent teachers to more rigorous educational systems, leaving DISD on a downhill slide to abject ignorance and bumbling incompetence.

This is so incompetent that even the Dallas City Council might notice.