Fairfax County grading policies
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It's amazing how dumb school systems can be, or at least when they try to make everything "fair" (or...equity?).
Anyway, short version is Fairfax County (in Virginia) I guess implemented a policy a year or two ago that students who didn't turn in an assignment would get a 50% on it. I'm guessing it was driven by the idea that they didn't want to punish too harshly students that have other shit going on and can't do their homework. Not sure, just my guess. They also require teachers to accept assignments up to 2 weeks late.
Anyway, they've changed it back to letting teachers give a zero for a student who doesn't turn in an assignment.
Quick article here: https://wtop.com/fairfax-county/2023/09/fairfax-co-updates-grading-policy-for-students-who-dont-turn-in-assignments/
But the DUH moment is:
“what was happening was students were realizing, if they put in a few weeks of work at some point, they didn’t have to do anything the rest of the year, and they would earn a passing score in a class. And so, we were seeing things like students flat out saying, ‘I’m not doing this, because I’ll get a 50% on it.'”
No shit. What did they think would happen?
Schools need to prepare kids for the real world. You do not get credit for work not done.
