"Is there anything I can do to get a passing grade?” How many times have each of us heard that questions two days before the end of a semester? “What the heck have you been doing since the semester started??” I want to ask.
There has been controversy among educators for a long time about whether or not to allow students to “slide by” by letting the student complete make-up or additional work in order to earn the credit. Is it fair to other students to allow someone to pass who has not been showing effort throughout the semester? Are we doing justice to the child who really hasn’t learned what he needs to in order to pass?
This article suggests that these sort of practices are being abused (which I am sure we have all suspected already.) Another unsurprising fact: state education officials (in NY) are looking into regulating programs that allow for credit recovery. I know that a credit recovery program is different from just giving a student an opportunity to pass but they both run along the same lines.
In my Junior English class last year, several students were failing at Christmas time due to missing or incomplete assignments. A couple of them asked me if they could do extra credit to improve their grades. I told them that they could read the book “Ethan Frome” over break. It is a short book that I would have liked to include in the semester anyway, but would not have time. I gave the entire class of 25 the opportunity to read the book over break and take the 100 point test in January when school started again. They could earn up to 100/100 extra points. How many kids read the book? Two. One of whom had a B average anyway. The other wanted to ask me questions about the book before the test. Questions like “Who died at the end?” let me know that he not only did not read the book but didn’t even bother to Sparknote it either. He failed the test and ended up failing the class as well. When he asked for extra credit, he wanted to draw a picture of write “I want to pass” on the board 100 times. He didn’t actually want to do anything extra.
I don’t think that extra credit work needs to be regulated by the school. Teachers don’t need to be micromanaged; but we do need to be responsible. When we allow students to do extra work, it needs to be something that will actually help the kid learn, not just busywork.
Your work was very interesting and it has been in the mind of all educators. Bill Gate once said that we always tell our students there is always a make up, but we fail to tell them that there is no make up in life. Our students are just lazy; they want to pass the class without doing any work. Many of them will wait until few days before the end to ask you about improving there grade. I am of the opinion that makes up need to be modified and grand rules about it be made and followed. We need to instill responsibility in our students at all time.
ReplyDeleteI don't allow extra credit work. I tell my students if they'd take care of business the first time they wouldn't have to worry about it. Late work needs to be turned in by the time we take the unit test, after that scores move to 0. If they don't learn the skill of meeting deadlines and managing time now they never will. Do we get extended deadlines for turning in grades? This is really one of my pet peeves. Extra credit just ends up being more work for the teachers. I'm also pretty sure it's not ok to offer extra credit opportunities for just a few and not the entire class.
ReplyDeleteThis is a trap many fall in to and it really becomes a problem when you have administrators who cave to parental pressure. One of the replies quotes Bill Gates and it is one of the best quotes I have ever heard on this topics. We coddle these kids, allow them to sluff and then extra credit their way to passing, and then they go into the world and a huge reality hammer hits them on the head. We are not doing them favors and we are not upholding our responsibilities as educators when we do this. In fact, we let our kids down.
ReplyDeleteThen there is the related topic of corrections. I am a little squishy on this topic too but I have done it because a) it is not a case of letting students by the whole semester and then making it all up with one or few meaningless extra credit assignments. It is on going. and b) there is something to be said for repetetion. I have found benefits to letting students do the same peoblems over again. Not just give them credit. Makie them do the work again. Perhaps repeating it will help solidify it in their minds.
When I look at the actual words I read that it says EXTRA credit, not INSTEAD OF credit. You can't have something extra until you've done the initial work first. That is why I never understood why kids even asked to do extra credit assignments when their primary assignments aren't even turned in yet. I think extra credit can serve a couple of purposes. It can help a student improve his grade (not SAVE his grade, but improve it), and it can help reinforce the lesson and provide a deeper understanding of the material for students.
ReplyDeleteIf extra-credit is used for those reasons I think it is acceptable. We are not doing our students any favors by reinforcing their belief that there will always be a way out of a sticky situation they have gotten themselves into.
I agree with you that extra credit should be determined by the teacher and not the school. I think extra credit can be allowed however it’s a tough decision. If you have a really good student who does poorly on a test and wants to do extra credit to improve their grade, that’s one thing. If you have a student who asks for extra credit but does not want to do any work, than that’s a different story. Extra credit should be worthwhile to help not only the student’s grade, but to enhance their learning. I also think extra credit should be worth something but not as much as a test or paper. If you make it worth the same, students might attempt to blow off the real assignment knowing that they can just do the extra credit to get the grade that they want.
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