Mediocre students make the “good effort” honor list

Awesome. Maybe the NFL will rename the playoff rounds leading up to the Super Bowl so they are more sensitive to players, with the conference championship series being the Great Bowl, the divisional round being the Good Bowl, the wild card round being the Okay Bowl, and those who did not make the playoffs being recognized as the Good Effort Bowl.

Also, some congratulations are in order to Chris Carpenter of the St. Louis Cardinals, who last night became only 3,925,793rd pitcher in MLB history to throw a yes-hitter. Condolences to Roy Halladay, who in May was robbed of an imperfect game.

Quote:

EP said

Yeah, but now, ebrownp, you've got me thinking about all those women who were deserving of some adulation but couldn't possibly be considered for ranking as "the Best", sort of the 'C' students who will now be listed on the "Good Effort" list. How do think I made them feel? **

(There was one who never took off her fluffy slippers, I mean, come on, let's have a joint effort here!)

(I know.....my fault....Must have been sumpin' I shudda done done.)

====
The new official words of America the Beautiful are now:
"Oh, pretty good, for so-so skies,
and quite a lot of wheat."
"For really swell green places and
folks who are all so neat."
====
Replacing the individual usually named as Miss America, there will now be a team of America's Cheerleaders! 50 Girls 50!

Joe(Hey!!! What about Puerto Rico???!)Nation

**I am thinking about going back and giving them all another chance to be the best. What do you think?

So funny, shapeless.

I wonder what kind of tempers would be displayed by those in the "Good Effort" Bowl????

Joe("The problem started,"said Troy Aikman" after it started to be called the Sissy Bowl by some of the players.")Nation

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

In other news, everyone was elected President of the United States when vote-counting and somehow being "better" or "more worthy" or even "more maverick-y" were deemed too injurious to those who were merely engaging in "good efforts" or "regular politics as usual". Ferd Berfel (pictured below) was declared President for forty seconds today. In a stunning display of political oneupmanship, he declared bowling illegal and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Conway Twitty and George Steinbrenner, even though both are dead.

President Berfel:



jes(when does it get to be my turn to be President? I need to declare war on Andorra)pah

Sort of like you said - it depends on the subject. Math for instance is less (for the most part) about creativity than facts. Reading (if you separate reading from English) is more about critical thinking - book reports/reading comprehension. Science I've found is a combination - many times you draw conclusions from experiments; projects that give points for creativity. History I've found to also be a combination - critical thinking - creativity on projects.

This just from observing my daughter's tests and projects and she is only 11.

But you didn't put them on the "good effort" list. Be honest, you put them all on the honor roll (and the one you are with now is still "the Best" isn't she).

Performance reports at work. Most companies have required semiannual and/or annual performance reports. Almost like school.

Yes - I was wrong even math shows critical thinking - basics adding/multiplying (like all basics of a subject) require memorizing and spitting out - you go beyond the basics and you actually need to think to do well.

Thank you for correcting yourself there. I worked for a while on developing an algebra curriculum... and the idea that math shows no critical thinking was about to make me spit my drink.

Sure Linkat. But there are a lot of differences between school grades and company performance reviews. One being that you can leave a company if your particular skills aren't being valued.

They are similar in that a performance review at a particular company isn't that much a measure of your success as a human being.

You can also be asked to leave a company if your particular skills aren't up to snuff.

A performance review is also used to measure employees against each other and can be valuable for promotion.

If I get a poor performance review, I take it as a sign it is time for me to look for another company where my skills will fit better. I had a really bad performance review once. After a quick change in working environments... my next one was stellar.

Grades don't work like performance reviews.

This reminds me of a discussion I had with a mother of a boy who was my son's friend and lived in our neighborhood. He went to the school where I taught and she came up to me one evening very upset that Brian had received a 'C' on a paper on which he'd worked very hard. She couldn't understand why he didn't get an 'A' because as she said over and over again- he had put a lot of effort into it - much more than was customary for him.

I tried to explain to her that compared to all of the other twenty-five papers in the class, Brian's was not among the best - which is what an 'A' represents. She couldn't seem to grasp the fact that Brian's 'C' was not indicative of the fact that it wasn't his best work - it was indicative of the fact that compared to the other work presented, it was average.
I think this is because she had nothing to compare his work to. Maybe if I'd been able to show her what an 'A' paper looked like, she'd have understood more readily why Brian got a C.
I understand her frustration; it was probably hard watching him struggle to get a C, but again, I don't think she had a realistic view of what work was being produced that also had to be recognized and graded fairly.

I bet this 'good effort' honor's list is the direct result of parental input.

I like how they grade exams over here. There's Fail, Pass, Pass with Merit, Pass with Distinction and Pass with Honors. I think that explains it fairly clearly.

No. But performance reviews work like grades.

I disagree. But then I don't think that schools work like corporations either. Even the goals are different.

Ironically enough, last year I was given a bonus for good work. I was aked not to tell anyone about this bonus (since not everyone got one). This was kind of a reverse honor roll from the corporate world.

I was kinda thinking in the lower grades - basic stuff. My kids being younger (although one is entering middle school)

Yes I was comparing "real life" with work life - should have been more clear of course work life isn't real life either.

A million years ago, when I was at college (uni), it was just pre a lot of changes re grading. My graduation year was '63 but I was out in '64. Many changes around 65-67. For one thing, pass/fail had been rallied for, and won for some classes, but the whole curve thing changed. In many of my classes, average was C, and those were pre-med classes. Grades for med school were not all 4 pointers back then, those were rare as hen's teeth. Average meaning C meant that most people in class got C, a batch got B and D, and a scattering or sometimes none at all got A or F. I once had the highest grade, and that was a B+ and the prof wanted to hire me, as I was a senior then. (Not to brag, as in one class I probably got the lowest lowest D). I'm not saying that people didn't work hard after what we then called grade inflation, and that they weren't as smart or smarter, but norms changed. We also weren't dumber.

I went to school again in another field and got mostly A's and some B's, still worked my butt off.

I probably have a slight preference for the more rigorous, older, take on grading of the pre inflation days, when an A was a ******* A. Heard the term, a gentleman's C? That was... everybody, mostly.

University is fundamentally different then public elementary K-12 education. In a University people are their by their own choice... they signed up for the program.

In public education, you need to meet the needs of all students. As such...

- Your native intelligence impacts your grade.
- Your hard work... effort impacts your grade.
- Your behavior and your participation impact your grade.
- Your willingness to do "filler" work that is meaningless to you impacts your grade.

The goals of grades (i.e. why professors give grades and for what reasons) is much clearer in University then in any earlier time. And, again, to me the fact that University isn't responsible to everybody--- they take a select group of students who choose to be there and can leave at any time, makes the the process of grading less problematic.

I'm only speaking for myself and I didn't go to public elementary school, except for kindergarten.

In my elementary school, appreciation tended to mean something, whether it be a shiny star or a Satisfactory grade, it wasn't that you tried. That would have been under Deportment (satisfactory, unsatisfactory). There are some people, brilliant or not, who learn for their own reasons, whether or not they get acknowledgement, but those I've known work that out over some time.

I grew up in a rigid (while sometimes playful) elementary school. One nun to, say, 45 students. A moderately rigid girls' high school (classes for college prep, secretarial, and I don't remember the other categories). A breath of fresh air college, where thinking was fostered (what? I loved it), and university, where the world was open suddenly, and luckily for near free (remember, this was long ago).

To me what happens is that understanding something is it's own reward, and the grade is just a verification, or a clue to you're not there yet. As others, I'd probably have been insulted to get a star for trying. I'd have figured Deportment, just one tick on the boxes, would have covered that.

The biggest difference between then and now to me was the that kids in grammar school in the forties who were doing badly were considered the dummies, disability being a word we'd never heard of, and sometimes were the cutups. The class often, in my memory, was on their sides, as was the nun, depending on the nun and the year.

I have friends who were in that group, who wouldn't remember it the same, re their schools, indeed, heatedly differently.

I don't have any answers, education isn't my field, but I'm not sure no distinction re grades, essentially no grading, is a solution: it seems a gross solution, when more particular attention would seem to be the answer.