Yeshiva Ketana of Long Island

nylon

Tue, Jan 19 2016, 7:55 am

Tablepoetry - while I agree in theory the MO/Centrist high schools in the NY area all use a common exam, the BJE. I do not know if/how many YKLI students are choosing schools that use this exam though.

IMO if there are kids who are doing so badly that they need to be lied to to protect their feelings, the problem lies elsewhere. The grading system is off, the expectations are too high, or these children have learning needs that are not being attended to. Many public elementary schools no longer use traditional grades and instead key it to mastery of skills, with a more detailed format. It's somewhat limiting because there's no room within the format to talk about a child who is surpassing these standards, but that's fixable, too. Telling me my child gets 85% in English is actually less helpful than saying he has mastered XYZ, is making good progress towards ABC, is not making sufficient progress towards CDE, etc. At my kids' schools, behavior, effort, etc is all marked separately from content which is keyed towards objective, predetermined benchmarks.

amother

Jetblack

Tue, Jan 19 2016, 9:45 am

I didn't have time to read this whole, but I feel "fake" grades are very helpful in certain situations.

I have a child in a regular school, who is very weak academically. But not socially. She will say, why am I dumb, she struggles so much and goes out for help in a few subjects.

She has an "easier" chumash class. She doesn't yet understand/distinguish that a 90 in her class might have been a 75 in the regular class. She is finally feeling some success and accomplishment. Despite trying very hard - the regular curriculum is too hard. I already left her back once and cannot do that again.

Please understand that the good mark is such a uplift for her, helps her to want to work hard despite how hard it is for her. She can finally feel good about herself.

DrMom

Tue, Jan 19 2016, 9:58 am

amother wrote:

Offering special classes for those who need extra help is not the same as arbitrarily inflating a numerical grade on a test. That solution is straightforward and above-board; arbitrary grade-inflation on a fake report card is not.

SRS

Sun, Jan 24 2016, 2:09 pm

I saw the yeshiva note and the school's response. Yes it was shocking. But it is also disturbing that a "trailblazing" school that believes grades are detrimental, can't think outside the box so just has to play with the grading system like it is sacrosanct . If it is true that grades are detrimental, the solution need not be grading, but creating a different format of grading that tracks mastery of all the pieces of development, both social, emotional, and academic. What I have seen in public school and private school is that a passing grade is a passing grade. Kids get pushed forward without mastering the foundations and then they hit their ceiling and, in private school, there seems to be few options to "rewind." I think the entire approach to grades should be revisited and a mastery of skills should be the benchmarking system. Have you mastered the four functions and the order of operations, decimals, percentages, and fractions? Great. You might be ready for pre-algrebra? Have you mastered enough biblical Hebrew to read and translate Chumash and basic commentaries? Excellent. It might be time to introduce gemorah. But instead, we push kids into Algebra when they don't have the foundations for it. And don't even get me started on the rush to Talmud for middle school boys for more time than Chumash when could wait 2 more years and have more advanced thinking skills to help them along.