First I should say that I hope I don’t get in trouble for this. My teachers have been known to stumble upon my blog every now and again…

I am sick and tired of teachers who don’t fully understand what they want kids to get out of the work they assign, and thus don’t assign grades based on those expectations. They’ll grade according to one set of expectations about an assignment, while the explicitly stated reason for the work is entirely different.

Example: Reading quizzes. Reason given for them: To ensure the student has read the book. Actually tested: Student’s retention of certain facts about the book which may or may not have been considered “important plot elements” in the opinion of the student. The teacher doesn’t realize that they aren’t testing what they want to, and in the process are giving students faulty information about what to study.

But my big complaint is with how my Calculus homework is handled. We get a set of homework on day 1, go over it in class on day 2, and it’s due on day 3 (and will be graded for correctness). The logic used here is that, if we go over it all in class, you can simply wright down the correct work, and you’ll get a perfect score on the homework. But if you wright down everything that’s going on on the board, that takes your full attention - you end up simply blindly copying down work without any chance to think about what’s going on. Excuse me for trying to use my time in class to actually understand the material we’re covering… If I just copy down the work, I’m not going to be able understand it later, and I won’t get anything out of it.

If a grade is based off attempt and not correctness, more effort can be put into the actual understanding of the material. Let quizzes and tests be judged with the red pen. Effort should still count for something, and homework’s the perfect place for that.

[...] off a post I made on Sunday. Is it too terribly ironic that within hours of my posting “Educational Complaint No. 839,” the very teacher whom the post concerned found my blog and read that post? It’s [...]

[...] and I’ve gotten hundreds of hits from WVIR’s IP address since. Thanks, Waldo :). A critique of my math teacher’s grading practices (and his subsequent reading of the post) led to a certain amount of awkwardness for the first few [...]