At West Potomac High School, kids literally can’t fail: any grade that would have been an ‘F’ is automatically converted into an incomplete. The teachers, as the Washington Post reports, are ‘livid’ — but of course what they think doesn’t count.
There are so many things wrong with this plan, I don’t even know where to start. There’s the responsibility thing — if a kid fails a test by getting, say, a 20%, this is not a freaking incomplete, it’s a failure to do well on the test. And no, that doesn’t mean the kid is a bad person or anything, but it sure means they aren’t going to get ahead in the world if they keep it up.
A demotivational poster, a zillion times copyright by Despair, Inc. (www.despair.com) which you should totally visit. And hey, taking away failure as an option is as demotivational as you can get!
As for the reasoning behind this, one offending superintendent explains: ‘Once they demonstrate mastery, you give them credit for what they know.’ Yeah, sure, if you’re living in Candyland, where everyone has unlimited time, resources and sugary snacks to help fix massive mistakes. Fast forward to these kids, now grownups, explaining to their bosses that even though they did ‘F’ work on their jobs, they can’t be fired; no, they must be allowed infinity do-overs until they get it mediocre.
Quoth another administrator: ‘I think the students who are struggling should not be penalized for not learning at the same rate as their peers.’ Um, actually, that’s exactly what grading does. And no, it’s not fair that some kids have more resources/brains/motivation/supportive parents than others — but that’s life, and it’s never going to be fair, and they might as well learn that too.
Maybe the problem is people like these administrators, who impart a moral value to the letter ‘F’ instead of treating it as a standard for measurement. Wait, aren’t these the same people who insist on quantitative measures of success, and are positively infatuated with teaching to the test? And thanks so much, admin, for thinking this one through — oh, you say you didn’t figure on who’s going to help the kids fix their ‘incompletes’ during non-school hours? Sounds like a total failure to plan. No wonder you don’t like ‘F’s.
But what really bothers me is the life lesson this isn’t going to teach: failure happens all the time. Learn to accept it, learn to move on, and learn how to use it to your advantage. And know that an epic win usually belies a thousand epic fails.
After you get out of school, you’re going to have to deal with failure. A lot. In the business world, there’s a conference, FailCon, devoted to how to learn from failure. Or just read Henry Petroski’s great book, To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design. In January there was an entire issue of Wired devoted to failure, complete with an article on the neuroscience of accepting defeat and including a great Alec Baldwin interview where he talks philosophically about life’s failures. (And the philosophical side of failure is something much on my mind as I meet more and more people wondering whether they’ve failed at life.)
Alec Baldwin makes any failure better.
It makes sense that the word fail isn’t terribly welcome in an educational setting, especially when an ‘F’s are treated as something indicating you may as well give up now. Here’s the solution to that: make sure not to treat each ‘F’ as anything more than a single blip on the radar, an indication of a course that can be changed — not by some magical Back to the Future time machine do-over, but by looking back, admitting you screwed up, and moving in a different direction.
(And actually, if you’re failing hardcore, it’s more likely you didn’t show up at all, which is how many of my ‘F’ students failed. But you know what? That was their choice, not mine. And it wasn’t an ‘incomplete’.)
Given that it’s okay, even constructive, to talk about failure in cutting edge business arenas, why deny these future leaders the opportunity to learn about failure from the get-go? Why shield them from the real world to make them feel better about themselves? It won’t last, and in the meantime it’s an enormous waste of time and money.
So I give this idea an ‘F’ — no, wait, an ‘I’, standing for ‘It’s time to get your administrative butts back to the drawing board and come up with a plan that doesn’t suck.’
You summed it up perfectly for me. I’ve been disgusted with this stuff for years. Like sports contests with no score kept so we don’t hurt someone’s self-esteem. Failure sucks but it also motivates and instructs! I could wallpaper my room with tales of rejection from all walks of life. Wasn’t fun but I sure got better.
I guess a former drill sergeant would make a terrible teacher.
I love this commercial too!
This high school is behind the curve. At least one Ivy League school does not have F’s – they give “No Credit” instead. The best part is that the “No Credit” then vanishes from the student’s transcript.
Ugh, ugh, a thousand times ugh! I can kind of see giving feedback rather than letter grades for some things — but that is just disgusting pandering. On the other hand, it makes me glad I left!
I would like to (probably incorrectly) think that those who put this policy in place won’t be around long. It will be interesting to see what the average SAT score looks like for students of this school in another 5 years. These kids might not “fail” high school, but they will definitely fail life if this leads down the road we all think it will.
Good point. If they’ve got to use test scores as a measurement of success, hopefully it will at least prove that this was a really bad idea down the road. Still, the poor student guinea pigs!
Agreed. Honestly, very few students fail because of a lack of ability, in my experience. Yes, students should be given credit for effort (I suspect my German instructor did this for me in college, because I was working my butt off, meeting with her multiple times for additional help, etc), but normally the potential F students just aren’t putting in the effort. I have never, ever given a F to a student putting in real effort. I haven’t even needed to fudge the numbers. It’s almost impossible to fail my paper assignments: you pretty much either need to cheat, write it in a foreign language, or write something blatantly off topic.
Fs are not for challenged students. They’re for lazy students. And, yes, they absolutely deserve to fail.
Another good point, and I agree, I’ve never had to fail someone who was actually trying; the struggling students are at least in the ‘barely passing’ category. This is why it ticks me off when people act like giving out F’s is something teachers do as a random act of cruelty.
Expecting teachers to spend more time tutoring students to turn their I’s into real grades is obnoxious. If the student didn’t listen and work hard the first time over the material, why should I be required to spend yet more time going over material that has already been tested….just so the kid doesn’t get an F. Reading articles about this, I feel like people assume that teachers aren’t available for one-on-one tutoring for the student who isn’t keeping up with the pace — but that’s what office hours and appointments are for.
It isn’t like resources aren’t available for struggling students before they get the F!
To be fair, in high school I guess they don’t have office hours (one of the many things wrong with how secondary ed treats teachers — 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? Not even.) but you’re right, a teachers’ job description cannot be ‘make sure no student ever gets an F’. Talk about lowering standards!
For school districts in bad shape, where resources may not be as readily available, I can understand that there may be a lot of frustration, but eliminating the letter grade is not going to prevent real-life failure in the long run.
I suspect there will be a lot of underachievers wanting to transfer to that school…WTH?!
If the administrators don’t jive with a traditional letter grading system, they should come up with something else, HOWEVER, those that don’t put in the work or effort should still be penalized for it whether that means an “F,” or the letter “I” tattooed to their forehead…
I’m not totally opposed to alternative grading systems, such as giving written feedback, as long as everybody understands that this is going to take much more of the teachers’ time and schedules things accordingly. Although when it comes to the real basics — multiplication tables, spelling, etc. — it’s one of the rare times I’d favor black-and-white, you-either-know-it-or-you-don’t types of tests. And yeah, maybe they could do something creative with ‘I for life’ students.
An “F” was one of the best things to ever happen to me; actually many Fs, to be precise. When I finally got booted out of my undergrad program for the second time (i was too busy discovering drugs and boys), i was forced to take stock, go do something else for a while; figure it all out. I blamed my French teacher: “YOU’RE the reason I am getting kicked out!” I sobbed. I remember she rolled her eyes. Now I am the one in her position, having adjuncted for a few years. I know that the Fs didn’t happen to me, I made them. That’s what students at that age don’t fully get.
As a result of my experience I can often recognize those students who are crashing and burning even before they themselves realize it. Sometimes my early intervention works; other times not. In those cases, they take it less hard when they know my own story.
i just filed my dissertation, so am entering the field, full of trepidation, but optimism too…wish me luck.
Wow, that’s a great story — thanks for sharing! Some of the best teachers I’ve met were the one who were self-described ‘fuckups’ for the first part of their lives. It’s great that you can use your experience to help students; I just hope you end up teaching somewhere where the admin will appreciate that. So yes, best of luck, and don’t forget that there are always choices…
My son’s English teacher was recently quoted in the school newspaper in response to the following question “What do you like least about your job?” She said: “I don’t like grading. I mean, it’s hard to tell the difference between an A and a B. I just want everyone to be happy.” I wanted to call the school to make an appointment to bitch-slap her.
I don’t want my kid’s teacher to worry about my son’s self-esteem. I want my kid to learn. And if a teacher can’t assess the difference between an A (astounding, ass-kickingly excellent) and a B (“bene” as in the Italian, good), I want a new middle school English teacher. There should be very few A’s. Very few. Precious few. But there are a lot because no one wants his or her child to be average. Reality check: most people are.
Yeah, if you can’t tell the difference you probably shouldn’t be teaching! That’s awful — and people who want everyone to be happy usually lack the balls to help anyone achieve that goal! Booooo.
Totally agree about the average!
WoPro- you may or may not be pleased to know that this post is now required reading for my remedial pre-baccalaureate English composition class. The majority of my remedial students report earning A’s in honors/AP English…
Flattered but unsure what to think; let me know how it goes…