Pittsburgh schools garner national attention for 50% policy

Eyebrows raised over city school policy that sets 50% as minimum score

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08266/914029-298.stm

This has been discussed on web sites Fark.com and Slashdot this week (links point to discussion forum posts on the article). The policy is simple, and has been in place for some time; in this article the news event is that the school district requires all its schools to enforce it. On any assignment, a score below 50% is to be rounded up to 50%. Minimum score: 50%.

Rationale: A score below 50% makes recovery impossible for a struggling student. The boost gives that student an incentive to try for the rest of the year. If we make success numerically impossible, the kid has no reason not to just blow it off.

The comments on the sites linked above reflect a popular theme for American political blowhards: self-reliance, no breaks to anybody, to smooth things over hurts the kids who actually work, such policies coddle kids and prepare them for a lifetime as welfare dependents, etc. Local talk radio airs similar themes. (I caught part of Marty Griffin's rant on KDKA on Monday.) These comments seem to miss a key point.

We're talking about kids who earn an F (well, an E in the Pittsburgh system, but still the lowest grade on the scale, the one signifying failure). That's 60% or below in this system. Any student in this range already has a serious problem, whether it's a learning disability, a major life issue, or a severe case of apathy.

To my mind, this means that the concerns about equity don't really play. Helping these failing students is more important than making sure everybody's pile is the same size.

The pundits seem really concerned with punishing students who don't do any work. They say that giving 50% to a student who does literally nothing is unfair to the student who works for her 50%. Maybe that's truly how this second student would feel. But that student has more pressing concerns, because he's still failing.

As I prepare to go into teaching, I'd like to go on believing that no student has to fail for just a little while longer. This policy removes one tiny little obstacle, but it doesn't solve the problem.