What's wrong with education. Part I: Completion

I went to school today and finally plowed through some student work that had accumulated for too long. Well, at least I felt it was too long. Others are much slower than me. Anyway, I entered a bunch of scores in the computer gradebook I keep and was disappointed to see that in one class I have eight of 26 students below 70 percent; in another I have six of 16. Here's why: Missing work.

I am disappointed because I saw my class sizes at the beginning of the semester and was interested to see if class size had anything to do with student success. Of course it does -- I can cruise through a set of 24 papers much faster than one of 32. And I can get around the room to answer questions, students are less intimidated and so on. But it does not account for lack of completion by the student. And there is the problem.

It's not that students don't learn. No, it is that I have not had an opportunity to assess the learning fully because work assignments have not been submitted. On one hand, the student has failed to meet a certain standard. I don't know of he or she has failed to learn. The problem then causes others to draw the conclusion that students aren't learning, teachers aren't teaching and so funding should be eliminated or staff should be replaced.

Ask any teacher at my school what is the top reason for students to fail a course. I bet every one says lack of completed work is the culprit. Perhaps some acknowledgement should be given to the idea that I have assigned too much work or it is too difficult. That has happened before. But this much is an irregularity.

A larger issue is that the system for assessing student work is the one area of education that has not been reformed in the push of the last decade. Legislators and school staffs have retooled and remodeled our testing system, our accountablity system, our teacher-training system, even our school composition. But we still give letter grades with intervals of 10 percentage points and 60 percent is passing. Colleges still look at grade-point averages. We still publish the honor roll.

I don't know the solution to combat the Culture of Incompletion. Perhaps we should look at the idea of dropping current grades altogether and replace them with a standardized test at Grade 10 (the Washington Assessment of Student Learning) and a culminating project where students have to prove what they know. As long as they have to demonstrate their knowledge in the end, who cares whether they turned in each essay or lab report?

At least I never made a resolution to be less cynical in 2005.

-- Wenatchee, Wash.