Confessions of a D-student
The Seattle School District is considering lowering its graduation requirements and giving diplomas to "D" students. I know first-hand that some good can come from a lousy grade.
The Seattle School District is considering dropping the requirement of a "C" grade average to graduate or participate in athletics. Under the new regime, a "D" student would get a diploma.
It's part of a juggle in how the district grades students. Teachers would once again be allowed to give students "plus" or "minus" grades, and kids who fail would have their "E"s factored into their grade-point average, instead of being able to write them off as they can now. The present system doesn't reward failure so much as allow everyone to pretend it never happened, a far cry from times when "E"s or "F"s were feared and had consequences. I guess pretending failure never happened is good preparation for employment on Wall Street.
Some worry that if a "D" average is okay, the bar is being lowered at a time when everyone, from President Obama on down, is trying to raise it. In education, we're in an era of measurements, accountability, testing, higher standards, performance indices, assessments, and benchmarks to get a handle of student achievement. Lowering the graduation target at a time like this sounds like cheating, or surrender.
The district argues that you have to lower the bar in order to raise it, which sounds like a John Kerry quote. A principal who worked on the new proposal told the Seattle Times that "We are, in fact, increasing rigor." It turns out some students have been getting dishonest grades: The district has been giving out "C average waivers" to students who fell below the standard. We also know of examples in the recent past where some teachers and administrators regularly altered grades in order to make their schools and students look better and move them through the system. An honest "D" is better than a dishonest "C" I suppose.
I am not unfamiliar with the "D" grade. I have benefitted from high bars that have smacked me in the face. An academic high-jumper I was not.
I went to a mix of Seattle Public schools and local private ones. My long, tedious relationship with grades began at John Muir Elementary in Mount Baker. I have to say that from first grade on, I regarded grades not as something I could control, but rather like the weather, as something that simply happened to me. Sometimes, things would be sunny: a report card full of "B"s and "C"s, along with the usual notations such as "Disturbs others, Needs Improvement." Other times, storm clouds gathered or a tornado hit. Despite parental lectures about living up to my potential, occasional tirades and even rare rewards (my father once promised me 50 cents for every "A," but I don't think he ever had to pay out), I never understood that grades were something I could control. They were something the teachers did, an act of arbitrary (and often angry) gods.
I was helped through the academic minefield by Mrs. Branum, my 6th grade teacher, who treated me tenderly like a WWI doughboy blinded by mustard gas. She had previously taught both of my older sisters, and my mother insisted I be assigned to her class, which featured an over-abundance of smart kids, a few hard cases, and some mediocrities to add the appearance of egalitarianism. Mrs. Branum would review my "D" grade spelling tests, kindly amending them with reasonable explanations for my ignorance. "Well, the word was 'led' but you spelled it 'lead,' and we know what you meant, so we'll call that correct," she'd say, and miraculously, error by error, we'd find our way to a passing mark, not to mention a tutorial in the art of the rationalization.
Mrs. Branum was no softie, no indeed. She was academically demanding, but also a nurturer. She not only didn't give up on me as a speller, she encouraged my writing and reading. I wrote misspelled poems, cowboy songs, and appeared in the school talent show having co-written a "comic" script satirizing the evening news (on the same stage with a child flamenco dancer named Mark Morris). She steered me into non-academic productivity by anointing me to class audio-visual monitor, by allowing me to be on the School Safety Patrol, by frequently sending me to vacuum the chalk erasers. She made me useful, if not an academic all-star.
I finished school at Lakeside, the north Seattle prep academy that has graduated numerous billionaires and city council members (Peter Steinbrueck, Tom Weeks). When you're being graded along with Bill Gates, someone has to anchor the opposite end of the Bell Curve. I did that job ably, holding the fort in the bottom 10th percentile in SAT math.
At Lakeside, I once received a "gentleman's D" from my French instructor, Dennis Dunn. I had been sent down to Dunn's class after an "inauspicious start" in third-year French. I struggled back in second-year French too. Dunn tended to grade on quiz results, and at the end of the term, I'd earned a "D." He tenderly made it a "D+". I don't know what the plus was for, perhaps effort or a kindness. Maybe the plus sign simply looked jaunty, like an Izod alligator on a preppy's polo shirt. It didn't calm the bad weather on the home front, however. The doppler indicated I was screwed.
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Comments:
Posted Wed, Sep 23, 8:36 a.m. inappropriate
I identified with many aspects of this story from two positions, having been a teacher responsible for applying letter grades for performance and the personal experience of receiving them.
Educational systems are either better or worse by the fact that everyone has had some kind of school experience whether good or bad. We have had all kinds of teachers who either inspired us or demoralized us. We tend to think we are all experts and more often than not suggest solutions based on our own experiences. We less often see through the eyes of others.
Those of you who read biographies of great men and women have long since realized that through history not only some of the biggest names, but the most creative, were more often terrible students in one or more subjects. Philo Farnsworth who invented television at 18 flunked most all classes except physics and math. He got E grades, and didn’t graduate. He was so far ahead in advanced electronics there were no schools who could teach him. The world is full of brilliant people who flunked out. Does that mean performing a mental dance with D’s and E’s when giving grades will make a difference? The whole notion of teaching and learning can’t be reduced to a formula. It’s more complex than all that.
I honestly don’t know if Seattle’s change in policy will make difference or not. There are over forty thousand kids and 1600 or so teachers with dozens of subjects taught, some with no real measurable way to evaluate student performance. How do you grade a musician or an artist? Schools sometimes use “incomplete” associated with grades and what about grades for “effort” or “citizenship” ? How should these be handled?
Looking at education through the years a few things do seem important. “Accountability” is important. Whether it be from School districts, parents, teachers or kids, knowing that someone cares and is watching what we do is important. It’s the beginning of learning about social responsibility. How to measure that is something else again.
I think “Expectation,” is important. Having a goal, a target, an ideal or a bar high enough to motivate us also seems important. If we ask little we get little in return. Telling little Johnny it doesn’t make a difference leads eventually to cultural mediocracy.
Posted Wed, Sep 23, 10:35 a.m. inappropriate
In the perverse world where a failing grade has no impact on a student's GPA, a student with a high GPA who is struggling in a class should just quit trying and get a failing grade rather than take a "hit" to their GPA by getting a C. This sort of madness should stop.
Posted Wed, Sep 23, 10:38 a.m. inappropriate
Doesn't sound like the Seattle schools are doing anything novel here. Hasn't a "D" always been a "passing" grade? In all the public schools I attended, as well as college, a "D" was always considered a "passing" grade - although it would ruin your GPA. An "F" stood for "failed" (a D = 1.0; F = 0.0).
Posted Wed, Sep 23, 11:39 a.m. inappropriate
The D has counted towards the 20 credits a student needs to graduate and it will continue to count towards the credit element of the graduation requirements.
But there are graduation requirements other than credits. They include earning a certificate of academic achievement (passing the WASL), a culminating project, a high school plus plan, service learning, and, yes, a 2.0 GPA both in all classes and in core classes. It is appropriate for the District to say that students not only need a certain quantity of credits but a certain quality of credits as well.
In addition, it is appropriate for the District to prohibit students from participation in extra-curricular activities if they are not maintaining a "C" average. Those students should invest more of their time in study.
Some may contend that students drop out if the barriers to a diploma appear too high. Maybe. Is there data to support that contention or just stories? Aren't there also stories of students who, faced with adversity, rededicated themselves to their studies, worked hard, and got the grades they needed to graduate? Which story has a better ending? In one case we have a student who has learn neither academics nor character and we are certifying them as ready for college, work and life. In the other story we have a student who has learned both academics and character. Why would we choose the former over the latter? We aren't sparing that student anything. They are no more prepared for life with the sheepskin than they would be without it.
Posted Wed, Sep 23, 12:27 p.m. inappropriate
Thanks for sticking up for we who were mediocrities in our youth...either from boredom, sloth, the need for a slower pace, more repetition, less-stressed and more sympathetic teachers, or any of the many other reasons for "substandard" performance.
The issue here isn't isolated D's...it's the proposition that students who have--what?--1.0 averages? would be given a diploma and sent out into the world as "high school graduates."
Several thoughts occur:
1) Could that 1.0 student pass a GED exam? That's the current standard of achievement for those who dropped out of high school, and could be the minimum that we expect of a diplomate.
2) There's a rationale for "degrees" of diplomas, rather than a single, one-document-fits-all structure. It just makes sense that the graduate's award describe his/her level of achievement--so that a diploma conveys not just the fact of graduation, but the level of accomplishment, too. In this way, you could 'graduate' students at many levels, but with built-in indicators of their academic ability.
3) There could be partial degrees, based on minimum ('C' or otherwise) attainment. A complete diploma would consist of math, language, life science, current events/critical thinking, community service, etc.--but the student who completed only some of those 'modules' could still be accorded a degree, with the ability to add others at a later time--through a GED process.
One of the 'tyrannies' of standardized education systems is that they are only partly customizable, and the student who isn't able to absorb the content at a more-or-less normal pace tends to be left behind (absent that 'caring teacher' who can somehow help the laggards limp to the finish line; a special service that seems harder for our teachers to deliver, through no fault of their own). I can echo Knute's example--in high school, I lost contact with the pack in the midst of trigonometry, failed at that level, and caught up only years later through self-study. I didn't fall to the level of a 'D' AVERAGE, but certainly didn't look like a very promising student in many ways.
When Harold Carswell was nominated for the Supreme Court, I think some congressman argued that there should be room for "the mediocrities of the world." While I'm glad Mr. Carswell never sat on the Big Bench, I think there's a grain of truth in that attitude, and it's worth considering how our educational (aka human resources) systems treat those less fully capable at a given moment in time.
Posted Thu, Sep 24, 9:20 a.m. inappropriate
Great story, thanks for the insider perspective on this struggle. In my humble opinion if you have a passing grade - not an "F" - then you have passed. How does it make sense to hold back someone from graduating when they have made the 12-year journey without 'failing'? Most of my grandfather's generation (within my family) had successful lives without the benefit of a high school education. 8th grade was as far as most of them got. Give a "D" student his/her due; a diploma isn't going to hurt them while facing life's inevitable challenges.
Posted Thu, Sep 24, 9:21 a.m. inappropriate
A genuine success story. We always knew you would amount to something!
But, for every Knute Berger, there probably are a number of students who are slacking through and not at all being prepared for what they will face in the outside world.
Our state and city have had trouble accepting or meeting educational standards---to the point where federal money has been withheld for lack of such standards. Hate to see the bar being lowered even further.
Posted Thu, Sep 24, 12:25 p.m. inappropriate
Well, the simple fact is, it's easier to get 'A's than 'D's, a fact well known to slackers, who use it to cruise through our lives as well as their time at school. Anyone who's had much contact with doctors or lawyers will know what I'm saying.
The prominence of the slacker is a tax imposed by a formal system that can be gamed, and the more formal systems you have, the more of this tax you pay.
It might be proposed that the educational system should act as a sort of sieve, allowing only the more industrious and intelligent to percolate upwards, but in actual practice people like George Bush and John McCain are too well connected to fail.
In spite of these obvious examples, millions of people would like to see most advancement based on tests they could pass, and with the competition for employment sharpening the demands for more testing and "higher qualifications" will continue.
Of course, the greatest achievement is this regard was the Mandarin class in China. And we've already seen how that turned out.
Posted Sat, Sep 26, 12:56 p.m. inappropriate
A lot of truth in everything said here. I had a college roommate - son of a judge - who ripped Ds from the headlines (as it were) in high school but was admitted to a small 'creative studies' program at a state university due to his 1350 on the SATs and writing ability nigh 40 years ago.
So, as Mr. Van Dyk points out re Sr. Mossback, the slacker kids - mostly male historically - with the intellectual chops to perform can, arguably, afford to slide through the inflexible system with Ds and still get where they want to go in life.
For others not from those lofty origins, a D has considerably more sinister implications for their future and society's for that matter. I'm on a local school board in the tentacles of Pugetopolis and I can tell you that dog would neither hunt nor get fed in our district and we've got plenty of single-mother DSHS, as well as non-English speaking families in our area.
While it is difficult for me to deny any student the opportunity to get a high school diploma, are lowered academic standards the only way to improve graduation rates? I think not.
If grade inflation and gaming the system is rampant then take that on and give out fewer gratuitous As but don't tell a kid that's gotten 'honest' Ds that it's acceptable for graduation and not to worry. It perpetuates anotion that sub par performance is an acceptable consequence of hard work. That's a difficult notion for the average Joe & Joanne to accept. . .
Posted Wed, Sep 30, 4:44 p.m. inappropriate
The D- student will be happy to know that this is the first Crosscut article I have read, and I not only enjoyed it, but I agreed with its content, and empathized with the author as well! The grade school I went to didn't have letter grades for the first three grades. I coasted along on "Satisfactories", and "Penmanship needs improvement". But who cared about penmanship? After all, doctors, some of the smartest, most educated, people in the world, wrote in chicken scratch. I could follow their path to success. And what is more, fellow students already thought I was smart because I wore glasses! Success came easily! But why, strangely, did the fact that I wore glasses, not seem to impress my teachers? Cold reality hit in fourth grade when I got my first D. I was embarrassed. I always though D's were what other students received. I could now see my feet were made of clay. I knew that there were three grades higher than a D that I could have gotten, with varying degrees of probability, and somehow my arrow had missed not only the bullseye, but had actually missed the whole target widely and probably broken somebody's window. That was all the impetus I needed. "Never again!" became the cry. Yes, I'm glad I received the D. Following that nadir, I applied myself much more dilegently, and that same "raw material" oddly began to yield much improved results!