Dr. J Continues the Discussion On Rock Hill Schools Grading

Dr. Harriet Jaworowski and Dr. Lynn Moody continue a grading policy discussion on the January Rock Hill School Talk in the video below. After the video, there is a student perspective from the high school which is currently piloting some proposed changes and below that is an article on a high school that essentially allowed all students to graduate.

I should point out, School Talk is a production of the students at Rock Hill's Applied Technology Center. You can catch the complete January School Talk on Comporium's Cable channel 18. Check the channel for the next broadcast time.


Lukas Faris, in the Award Winning South Pointe High School newspaper, S.P.I.N., had this to say about the districts' new grading policy  being trialed at South Pointe this year:

New district grading policy rewards laziness
Rewarding someone with something they haven't earned is not right. Instead of a "Money Tree," Rock Hill School District Three has created a "Grade Tree". Students don't have to put in any effort, yet they easily can grab at the tree and pick off a 40. The district should overturn this new policy and return to the original policy.


If laziness is rewarded, people are going to be lazy. All it does is promote laziness.....  the new system acts as a disincentive to excellence......  the new system creates expectations and habits that will fail students in the real world. This policy is teaching kids that they can not try for a job when they're older, yet still get paid for it. Not show up for work and still get paid for it. This isn't true in the real world. You won't survive in the world with a policy like that. Doesn't the district want the best for our kids, our future?..... it's obvious this "Grade Tree" needs to go. It isn't fair and it isn't right. The Rock Hill School District Three is hurting its local students, not helping. The new policy needs to stop.
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In a related post from New York and the Joanne Jacobs blog:

The can’t-fail school

JANUARY 22, 2011 BY JOANNE 

New York City’s top-ranked school is under investigation for cooking the books,reports the New York Times. Theater Arts Production Company School, a middle and high school located in a low-income Bronx neighborhood,  graduated 94 percent of seniors, more than 30 points above the citywide average. The school earned a near-perfect score in “student progress,” based partly on course credits earned by students.  The school’s no-failure policy requires teachers to pass all students who attend class, regardless of their performance; no more than 5 percent of students can get D’s.

In practice, some teachers said, even students who missed most of the school days earned credits. They also said students were promoted with over 100 absences a year; the principal, rather than a teacher, granted class credits needed for graduation; and credit was awarded for classes the school does not even offer.

The school’s former Advanced Placement calculus teacher said he was pressured to pass students who didn’t deserve it.

Last year, every student passed the class even though each received a 1 — the lowest score — on the Advanced Placement test, in part because they had not taken precalculus, he said. Only one had passed the Math B Regents, a minimal standard.

Even some students complained to the Times about the no-failure policy.

Some said that it sometimes hurt their motivation to know that a classmate would pass even if he did not come to class. One said that his current average was a 30 — but that he could bring it up to a 95 with a few days of work — and that teachers sometimes handed out examples of student work that he copied from.

“You would have to be an epic failure to fail at this school,” said Deja Sawyers, a 10th grader. When students do not do their work, “there’s no consequences,” she said, adding that she did not get homework.

Another student, Luisa Cruz, said, “Everybody always passes; it’s really rare to fail.”

“It makes no sense,” she said. “You’ve got to learn from your mistakes.”

The college acceptance rate for graduates is 100 percent, but students’ SAT scores are low and many end up in remedial classes in college.

College acceptance is meaningless: It includes students who go to open-admissions or not-very-selective colleges, take a few remedial classes and drop out.  Sending graduates to college to retake eighth-grade English and math is nothing to brag about.