The Round Rock Independent School District appears to have found a cheap way to improve the test results of its students . . . it eliminated all Ds. That’s right, a D will now be a C. While insisting that it is merely following other schools, the move is a laughable recognition that the district cannot actually improve performance so it will instead artificially improve grading.
The common dig at millennials being raised with artificial senses of achievement (after being given “participation awards” in sports) appears to have taken hold in our schools. Currently, 90-100 is the letter grade “A,” 80-89 is a “B,” 75-79 is a “C” and 70-74 is a “D.” A failing grade is anything below 70. Now, there will be no D students in Round Rock. That is quite an achievement . . . if only it was an achievement.
By the way, it also happens to mean that student athletes will be able to compete and to go for scholarships in college to a greater degree. They may not be able to fully read or write, but they are now officially C students.
Strangely, RRISD executive director of communications Corey Ryan insisted that the change is not about lowering expectations, but leveling playing field. Well, yea, it levels the playing field by wiping out the actual performance results. Problem solved?
@TIN
re: affirmative action
I agree that has failed overall. The problem that I have seen is that people are selected because they are black,brown, Asian, handicapped, etc. simply because they fit in that profile. Not because they are qualified which actually hurts them as when they fail racists say “well, there you go – obviously “those” people are incapable. It is an insult to everyone.
@Olly
Spot on. The military, like any other organization has made mistakes and taken in some who should have been thrown out – Bergdahl come to mind.
BUT the military has been the most successful organization in terms of integration and allowing people to escape poverty by getting vocational training or a college education. My Dad post Depression signed up for the Army, was sent to Iceland and developed a love for travel. He came home, went to college on the GI Bill and spent 38 years teaching at DoD schools in France and Germany.
My siblings and I grew up with white/black/brown/Asian teachers and our school was diverse way before we even knew what that term meant. We learned to judge people on the merit of their character and accomplishments.
As a peacenik, I just wish we would offer the same to people who serve in the Peace Corps as it seems now to be overrun with those who can afford to serve.
Tin, Great comment. You would be shouted down if you tried to speak those truths on virtually any campus.
@isaacb
You said, “Affirmative action does not produce less capable professionals. It merely allows minorities access to the professional degrees to which they would not have had access to otherwise, because of a minor difference in GPA from high school. Once in university they have to perform just as any other student.”
and
“This means that many well qualified candidates don’t get in simply because others have had a more fortunate K-12 education. Most minority students that made it into undergraduate and graduate programs excelled to a level equal to that of those who had advantages from the beginning.”
That is the theory, and I have no problem with the theory. Because sometimes one’s academic record is not a reflection of ability. A lot of lawyers say they would rather hire someone with a C average in law school, as opposed to an A.
But then there is the reality. Once you have the quota set, schools tend to be lazy and just chunk in blacks to meet the quota. This is a common result of many laws, not just race quotas. The law is supposed to accomplish one thing, and yet in practice it goes haywire.
As a result, for law schools as an example, many black graduates can’t pass the bar exam. Frankly, they should never have been in law school in the first place. You might enjoy this article:
Very good post TIN!
Two quotes come to mind when I think of measuring the success of affirmative action programs (or for that matter, anything conjured up by the Administrative State) . The first comes from W. Edwards Deming. He said, “You can expect what you inspect.” Universities will provide whatever data that will continue the flow of money into the university. The second quote comes from Mark Twain when he said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” This won’t end well.
It is a myth that minorities in top colleges come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Most come from families with more money than the regular students. At my college and law school we had whites and Asians who came from working class or lower-middle class families, yet excelled academically and made it into a top ten on the basis of their own hard work. The “special admissions” (black and Hispanic) students often came from families where both parents were government executives or professionals. They nonetheless got tutoring all the way through that regular students were excluded from. I had a white friend whose mother was a secretary and father a mechanic, but was attending a top 10 law school. He was in work-study and tutored special admit students. One day he was waiting for the bus and one of his black students pulled up in a shiny new BMW and offered him a ride. He asked my friend where his car was. My friend responded that he didn’t own a car. The guy was surprised and said, “why not?” My friend told me that he was tempted to say, “Because I’m not disadvantaged,” but he held his tongue. People like Barack Obama, whose mother was a Ph.D anthropologist, and Eric Holder, whose father is a real estate developer from Barbados, certainly had more advantages in life than the vast majority of their white fellow students. Same is true of the guy who founded BLM. His father is a corporate executive. But elite colleges compete for blacks from privileged backgrounds and shower them with special treatment under the guise of “making up for past discrimination,” even though any effects of presumed discrimination have certainly been eradicated. Colleges also love foreign black students. I had a residence hall aquiantance from Ethiopia who had attended British boarding school. His father graduated from Oxford and was Minister of Economics in his home country. Hardly disadvanted! But it was great for my university because they could claim that they graduated a black student with a degree in engineering, even though the statistic was a farce in terms of the purpose of Affirmative Action. The whole AA industry is rife with cynicism and gamesmanship, but that is the fault of the government which insists that colleges graduate students to meet racial quotas.
Isaac:
“Affirmative action does not produce less capable professionals. It merely allows minorities access to the professional degrees to which they would not have had access to otherwise, because of a minor difference in GPA from high school.”
I vigorously disagree with you. My professors in college lamented that they had to teach the class to two completely different groups – those who belonged there, regardless of race, and those who got there on affirmative action and were completely lost, and would flunk out shortly. Lowering the bar did no one any favors, and it’s always appeared racist to me, like you don’t think blacks are capable of being held to the same standard. The time to intervene is in public education. Families need to value education, kids of working moms need help with homework and tutoring, and kids need a safe place to study and play after school. You cannot pretend that a student will be prepared for college if he or she has an inferior level of education, just because they are black.
Justice is colorblind.
Isaac:
“There was a valid reason for lowering the bar to get greater minority representation in the professions.”
OK. Would you feel the same way if your oncologist, neurosurgeon, or pediatric surgeon had the bar lowered? Or would you want to know, with certainty, that any of the above who walked into the exam room to see you or your child got where he or she is on merit alone?
Sometimes, lowering the bar means you lose your life. Ask the grieving families of all of those patients who died of malpractice in King Drew hospital because they only hired black people, and lowered the bar to do so. They lost their accreditation, and yet there were activists who claimed it was racist. Apparently, it’s righteous to die of malpractice at a greater rate than any other hospital in our country, because the basal melanin concentration of your doctor, nurse, and pharmacist mattered more than merit.
The solution is to ensure that a pubic education is high quality, and to help minorities get the most out of that education so they can compete academically. You don’t lower the bar. You get lower quality graduates, obviously.
squeaky
Affirmative action does not produce less capable professionals. It merely allows minorities access to the professional degrees to which they would not have had access to otherwise, because of a minor difference in GPA from high school. Once in university they have to perform just as any other student. In the case of doctors, lawyers, and other professions, it is the professional degree that makes the professional, not the high school degree. To get into some medical schools a candidate has to be in the top percentile. This means that many well qualified candidates don’t get in simply because others have had a more fortunate K-12 education. The top percentile is designed by the number of applicants. The more the applicants the higher the scores needed to gain entrance. If, due to an increase in applicants the admission area is the top five percent the same number of applicants enter medical school from that top five percent as when there are fewer applicants and the applicants are taken from the top ten percent. Most minority students that made it into undergraduate and graduate programs excelled to a level equal to that of those who had advantages from the beginning.
The point of affirmative action was to introduce to minorities the reality that this society could indeed include minorities in the professions. The other end of the equation is the more important one, but without examples the cynicism and negative perspectives prevail. Affirmative action has been and continues to be a tremendous success in leveling the playing field in America. One must get past the knee jerk.
The problems with the US education system are many and varied. Primarily they stem from too much perspective and control from disconnected administration dependent on statistics and too little perspective and control from teachers. The money and control should be focused on raising the education and compensation of teachers, as in other countries with higher standards and results.
Willy – Singapore Math is an excellent resource for parents wanting to improve their children’s math education at home. They’ll have to learn common core at school, but at least you can teach them real, actual, functional math during school breaks and on weekends.
Lowering the bar in education and hiring practices, exhibit 1,136.
LTMG – “If I was a college admissions officer I’d be tempted to routinely reject applicants from certain public school districts since I’d have no confidence is whether their graduates were ready for college level work.”
No you wouldn’t, you would take these idiots in and make them take remedial classes and collect another 25-50K a year per student and make more money off of them. This is why colleges are a big part of the problem. Just like everyone does not deserve to own a house, not everyone should go to college.
If you folks think the grading scale has anything to do with achievement or performance, you are incorrect. For example, England scored higher than the US in Math on the 2011 TIMSS. Their grading scale sets an A as 70% or better, failing (F) is below 34%. Yep, our 70% C is an English A. Singapore, which routinely kicks most of the world’s butt in math, has a 70% A-grade cutoff also.
Thanks David, for an incredible story.
To the people here who read the Round Rock story and “tsk, tsk, it’s Texas”. What a bunch of elitist, ignorant jerks. You think this sort of “let’s have no educational standards” crap derives from Texas? Try California, NY, D.C., etc.
Grades, both in high school and college, are becoming meaningless. The value of a high school diploma from some public school districts is approaching zero, Round Rock and San Francisco for example. If I was a college admissions officer I’d be tempted to routinely reject applicants from certain public school districts since I’d have no confidence is whether their graduates were ready for college level work. As a manager who has hired scores of people, I’d be very reluctant to hire recent graduates from some colleges and universities.
The student doing poorly at learning can recapture esteem by the school simply dropping
the grade of “D.”
I suppose they could just give every kid an A …..
Seriously, everyone should have the possibility of failing. The moral issue is, what to do about those who fail? Try to help them, or just condemn them to the junk heap of society?
More lose of discrimination and judgement. In this case judgement is taking the hit.
In my last two high schools, if you got a D, you retook the class. However, the D was 69-60, lower that this school. So at Pointed Rock you get at least a C or you retake the course, because you failed it. I see what they are doing and it really is not making any difference educationally.
@Issacb
You said, “There was a valid reason for lowering the bar to get greater minority representation in the professions. Hopefully that reason will disappear. There is no valid reason for lowering the bar for all.”
And the valid reason is, SYMBOLISM! Oh look, we have black attorneys! And black CPAs! And black nurses! And black doctors!
The problem is, that there is always some suspicion that the person did not really earn the position. And not just from white people. My BFF Penelope Dreadful is an attorney, and I help her a lot. She has a lot of black clients who say very openly that they do not want a black attorney. Not when their money or their future is on the line.
Go figure.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter