"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.