The Ledger 5.9.15
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The Ledger 5.9.15
In this week’s column, Drs. Berney and Richard talk about the problem of giving students zeros.
Feel free to send us your thoughts and ideas about the purpose of zeros.
Read the article here: http://www.theledger.com/article/20150508/COLUMNISTS0419/150509410/1484/life?Title=Fallacies-On-Receiving-A-Zero
Dr. Berney administrator
23 Comments so far
DrBerneyPosted on5:23 pm - May 9, 2015
The Ledger 5.9.15 – The Mental Breakdown http://t.co/qgR4WLIJLW
Bobby KuzmaPosted on6:20 pm - May 9, 2015
Giving Students Zeroes? Sure there’s a place: when they’ve failed to achieve any of the assessment objectives, or when they’ve declined to submit work for evaluation.
Berney WilkinsonPosted on9:44 pm - May 9, 2015
I say it depends. Why didn’t they submit the work? That should make a difference. Also, an A student can be perfect most of the time, but if there are not enough assignments, they will not make an A. Mathematically, a zero has a more disproportional influence than any other score, even a 100%.
Bradford ChatterjeePosted on3:52 pm - May 10, 2015
In the real world, doing zero work results in zero compensation. If I don’t bid a project for a customer, they aren’t going to award me a few thousand bucks for some kind of consolation prize. Heck, they aren’t going to pay me if I bid and don’t win. Should we train our children that failing to turn in work results in something other than zero reward?
Berney WilkinsonPosted on4:00 pm - May 10, 2015
Not a bad point Bradford, however, consider this. As an adult, you are in control of your decisions. Well, for the most part you are in control of your choices and decisions. Day in and day out, however, I work with students who have no choice. They have no choice whether they will have time to do their homework in the evening. They have not choice if they will have paper and a pencil at home to do their homework. They have no choice whether their parents will provide an environment conducive for homework. So, do you still think it is the same? Of course it is not the same. As adults, we often assume that all children have the same availability of resources that our kids have. But that is not the case. We also assume that students who do not do their work made a CHOICE not to do their work and should therefore be PUNISHED with a zero for making said choice. I believe that is a dangerous assumption and puts some children at a disadvantage. My whole point is that automatic zeros are senseless, misused, and as I mentioned in a previous post, are disproportionately punitive than any other grade.
Bradford ChatterjeePosted on4:12 pm - May 10, 2015
Rework the scale from 0-50, with each letter grade comprising 10 points of the scale if the concern is that 0s are disproportionately detrimental. Although that presents other problems, where either a 20% becomes a D (which is probably not desirable) or all work is graded on a steep curve. But if you want to compensate children for having it tough, I think another way should be found than fudging their grades. That way is rife with opportunities for abuse. Perhaps running a second set of buses late or early so that those students have a distraction free place to study, or some other means of getting them the resources they need.
You ask the correct question in the article: what do we want zeroes to communicate to students? And I think that learning that no work = no reward is one of the most important things a person can learn.
Michael BrowerPosted on4:23 pm - May 10, 2015
I suppose The Ledger used up my allowance of reading their news feed as a “like” page. I’ll be “unliking” them now. Too bad. I’ll get my news elsewhere.
Berney WilkinsonPosted on4:25 pm - May 10, 2015
Those are great suggestions, though of course would require a huge change in the system, which I am all for. Just takes a lot of time. You are right about shifting the scale from 0-50, though I would shift it from 50-100, that way a D is still a D, and a C is still a C, and so on. In conjunction with that, there should be another system for dealing with the failure to do the work, which is a behavioral issue, not an academic issue. Grades are supposed to be a reflection of your understanding of the course material, not an indication of behavioral compliance. A student earning a 0 on a paper because he tried to do the work but answered everything incorrectly is very different than a student who got a zero because he forgot to do his work, yet if we use zeros in the current method, they affect those two student in exactly the same way. Anyway, I think that we agree that system wide change is needed for this issue. I really appreciate your thoughts on the subject!
Berney WilkinsonPosted on4:27 pm - May 10, 2015
Michael, I have not seen it happen because of liking a page, but I do get that message when I read too many articles online.
Michael BrowerPosted on4:30 pm - May 10, 2015
Liking the page puts them in my feed, but it just clutters my feed if I’m not allowed to see the articles (or the ads therein). No thanks. I unlocked the page now. I’ve shared The Ledger’s stuff before, but not now.
Michael BrowerPosted on4:31 pm - May 10, 2015
Sorry, just realized I posted this comment I your page, thought it was a direct comment on The Ledger.
Bobby KuzmaPosted on6:32 pm - May 10, 2015
This is one of the reasons I vastly prefer an objective based scoring system, which has a set of Go/No Go states indicating mastery. This provides the students with multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery in different ways, but is more work for the educator to implement
Bobby KuzmaPosted on6:35 pm - May 10, 2015
My eighth grade physical science honors class was on an objective grading system: I generally had a 98 or 99 because the only objectives I missed were “turns in assignments on time” and “demonstrates teamwork”. Since I fulfilled my objective with hands on labs and essentially oral defense, it worked for me
Michael BrowerPosted on6:45 pm - May 10, 2015
Society and the real world grade objectively. Why teach the little snots that as long as they participate on some level, they’ll be fine, when they’ll actually starve to death using that method of living when they’re grown. Well, unless that safety hammock keeps growing.
Bobby KuzmaPosted on6:45 pm - May 10, 2015
I dunno, the actual threat of starving to death is quite motivating.
Berney WilkinsonPosted on6:51 pm - May 10, 2015
Bobby, yours was a great teacher. Not all teachers/systems work the same way… Unfortunately. Michael, I think viewing them as little snots negatively biases how one might view any behavior as volitional disobedience, which is typically not the case, yet results in a strict reward/punish mentality that justifies excessive consequences without consideration for causal factors outside of the child’s control.
Michael BrowerPosted on7:08 pm - May 10, 2015
“Little snots” is an endearing term.. But seriously, are we not getting them ready for the real world where that’s how it really is? It’s a really strict reward/punish existence, unless you can live with your parents until you inherit their leftovers…
Berney WilkinsonPosted on7:18 pm - May 10, 2015
I don’t feel like my life is reward/punish. As adults, life is a series of stimuli and responses. Some responses are negative and some are positive. But it begins with my choice. As I said earlier, children do not have sole control over their stimuli, though they are held accountable for the responses. What does that teach them? It teaches them that there are times when you are punished for things you have no control over. That leads to a perspective known as an external locus of control, which will do one of two things, it will either teach them that they should be dependent upon others, as they have no influence on their world, or it will teach them to be obsessively controlling of everything that they can, just to attempt to have some say in their world. In my experience, some of the most behaviorally disordered kids I have ever worked with come from homes where an external locus of control was fostered by parents who rely strictly on a reward/punish system.
Ed McAllisterPosted on8:43 pm - May 10, 2015
Let’s continue to dumb down the populous— everybody does great every time and all will workout in the end ——not
Berney WilkinsonPosted on10:05 pm - May 10, 2015
The only alternative, however, is not blind punishment.
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